In some ways, Lana Del Rey did a disservice to herself in releasing so many of the tracks before the album release date of August 30th. For it takes away from some of the effect of cohesion that might have been experienced in listening to it all the way through for the first time. Nonetheless, the title track that opens Norman Fucking Rockwell is the perfect choice for establishing Del Rey’s overarching thesis: not only has America as we once saw it through rose-colored glasses gone the way of the dodo, but so has any “great artist” that might have been brought up along with it (hence that shade-throwing line in “The Greatest,” “Kanye West is blonde and gone”). With bittersweet string arrangements opening “Norman Fucking Rockwell,” Del Rey croons, “Goddamn, man-child/You fucked me so good that I almost said, ‘I love you’/You’re fun and you’re wild/But you don’t know the half of the shit that you put me through/Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news.” As though putting every “Guy in Your MFA” to shame with that obliterating last line, Del Rey sets the stage for a world in which not only is little expected of men these days, but also of their art. Of course, for men with any modicum of sentience, this kind of shitty output can result in an underlying self-hatred, pinpointed by Del Rey in the lyrics, “Self-loathing poet, resident Laurel Canyon, know-it-all/You talk to the walls when the party gets bored of you.”
This image of a man content to talk to anything, regardless of whether it’s animate or not, conjures the average bloviating white male in the modern epoch. So afraid of his irrelevancy that he will let no one else talk over him, nay, couldn’t hear what you were saying even if you managed to. Luckily, we have LDR to cut through his bad artist white boy noise. Though she seems gentler toward him on “Mariners Apartment Complex,” a reassuring Dylan meets Cohen-esque ballad that promises she’ll take your hand if you lose your way (which plays into the album cover of her reaching out to her listener from her perch on a boat with Duke Nicholson).
The glorious and sweeping “Venice Bitch” fits perfectly into the sonic motif of NFR (an abbreviation that perfectly complements LDR), and gives it some of its strongest edge in moments when one can’t help but think this record is a Bizarro World Lover if the post-production elements were slightly altered. And it’s not just because Jack Antonoff produced both of these back to back in release records (though that is a strong part of it). But because so much of Del Rey’s lyrics could be dropped easily into a pre-packaged pop melody. What distinguishes her Del Reyness from other pop stars is the presence of musical arrangements that stay forever true to bluesy balladry (as opposed to “E-Mail My Heart” balladry).
That and her penchant for moody vocals, as present on “Fuck It I Love You,” an exploration of her revelation that the age-old adage about “Wherever you go, there you are” holds true even when you move to the “utopian” state of California. The place Del Rey traded in for her New York roots. The city where, incidentally, Norman Rockwell himself was born. But there is more than just a shared city of birth in terms of kinship between Del Rey and Rockwell. Both are extremely prolific in their output, polarizing at times in terms of being deemed “truly serious” or just a product of media fluff and both have tracked a trajectory of America from sentimental and more cynical viewpoints (in Rockwell’s case, the most glaring example was The Problem We All Live With, a 1964 oil on canvas exhibiting the racist crescendo in the South during the time of desegregation in schools). But Del Rey didn’t choose Norman Perceval Rockwell as her album’s namesake for this reason, so much as a representation of the douchebag artist who knows he can be because he’s actually good. A twentieth century phenomenon more than a twenty-first one. As she put it to Zane Lowe, “So the title track is called ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ and it’s kind of about this guy who is such a genius artist but he thinks he’s the shit and he knows it and he, like, won’t shut up talking about it. So often I ended up with these creative types or whatever, and you know, they just go on and on about themselves, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I just like the title track so much that I was like, ‘OK, I definitely want the record to also be called that.’”
As for “Doin’ Time,” the cover Del Rey has made most her own (despite already having many covers in her canon to choose from), its distinctly “herness” was recently made all the more solidified with the pasticcio overload of an accompanying video. What follows is “Love Song,” sentimental not only for its title but because it was the first song recorded for NFR, ergo the one that officially made Del Rey want to work with Antonoff in such an exclusive capacity (though Rick Nowels shows up to produce “The Next Best American Record,” “Bartender” and “Happiness Is A Butterfly,” as well as Zachary Dawes for “California”). Echoing the sweetness of certain moments on Born to Die, Del Rey begs, “Be my once in a lifetime,” wielding the background of the car (“I’m a star in your car”) as yet another symbol of when Americana meant something. That it no longer does perhaps foreshadows that this relationship is just as doomed as the automotive industry. Using her signature of repeating key phrases from other songs, Del Rey mentions a “party dress” and says to “dream a dream” (her new addition to the catalogue of Del Reyan terms as first established on “Fuck It I Love You”–it’s a borrowed term, of course, that now belongs to her). She also favors a nod to new bestie Ariana Grande’s recent lyric from “Boyfriend,” “I’m a motherfucking trainwreck” in saying, “I’m a fucking mess.” For yes, once again, Del Rey’s underlying connection to mainstream pop rears its Botox’d head.
The long anticipated “Cinnamon Girl” (it can’t be a coincidence that Radiohead covered the same titled track originally recorded by Neil Young after all that “Get Free” drama) is another sweet little ditty providing a synesthesiac wet dream of color usage (“violet, blue, green, red”). But beneath that sweetness in melody lies Del Rey’s contrasting brand of lyricism, delivering the all too real admission, “If you hold me without hurting me, you’ll be the first who ever did.” Maybe that’s why she’s become so adept at hiding from the world (hear: “13 Beaches”), as evidenced on “How to Disappear” (again, one has to wonder, is she trolling Radiohead?–for they have a song called “How to Disappear Completely”). Sounding slightly more produced than the version fans heard at her performance of it at BAM in the fall of 2018 (and switching out the name Jim for Joe), the bittersweet nostalgia that colors the song once again relates to how she lived in New York in the past but left it all behind for California, where wholesomeness and sunshine ring truer.
To this point, it was only a matter of time before Del Rey released a song called “California” (though the one Grimes has called that is infinitely better). Possibly slightly out of place for being one of the tracks not produced by Antonoff, it also sounds as though it’s still part of her Lust for Life era, blending seamlessly with the likes of “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” (certain notes of “California” even delivered in the same pitch). This is further corroborated by her peacenik 60s phrase, “I’ll catch you on the flipside” (this latter word also being one of her song titles on the Japanese edition of Ultraviolence). Her patriotism for a single state is so intense that she’d rather lose a potential love than leave California, urging her love interest, “If you come back to California, you should just hit me up.” Doing that repetition of phrases thing for her own self-reference, top shelf liquor is also mentioned here as it is on Born to Die’s “Carmen.”
And, speaking of self-reference, the subsequent track is called, “The Next Best American Record,” an actual residual from Lust for Life, unlike “California.” Originally called “Architecture” and then “Best American Record,” it was recorded in 2016 and revitalized for Norman Fucking Rockwell. All for the best really, when considering how well the song fits in with the theme of impossible to achieve greatness in art in the current century. The mention of Led Zeppelin’s iconic record Houses of the Holy further iterates that such greatness in art only exists in a bygone era. Elsewhere, tinges of “Groupie Love” creep in with Del Rey seeming to have the epiphany that maybe she’s only attracted to this man for the same reason other girls are: he’s a musician. But kind of a shitty one.
Transitioning into “The Greatest,” yet another title that seems to ironically bemoan an artist and an America that can no longer be, Del Rey speaks on her New York sentimentality once again, though it’s not so much about the place as that particular time in her life, when it was all so innocent. When creating art was done for the pure joy of it as opposed to the paycheck (as she puts it, “Miss doing nothing most of all”).
The irritation with the expectations and pressures of fame speak to the Lauperian sentiment in “Bartender”: “But sometimes girls just want to have fun.” The way she used to when she actually drank perhaps. All those years ago. Her mention of “Bartender” back in January of 2018 at the Grammys iterates that it was one of the first to make the cut for the album and anchor its theme. In this case, she herself being the great artist preferring the company of blue collar men. Who better than a bartender to serve up fun? Even if non-alcholically as she reminds, “Baby, remember, I’m not drinking wine/But that Cherry Coke you serve is fine.” Another nod to trying to find solace from the public eye as evidenced on “High by the Beach” and “13 Beaches,” Del Rey yearns for the escape only a car can provide, welcoming the bartender as her accomplice in running away from it all. The unbridled joy of a “fast ride” (in more ways than one) on the highway also evinces the imagery present in “Burning Desire” from Paradise. Declaring, “I’m just tryna keep my love alive with my bartender, hold me all night,” Del Rey seems to think that if the daylight never comes, then maybe reality never will either. The alcoholic’s reasoning still alive and well within her.
Another OG of being leaked early on in the recording process, “Happiness Is A Butterfly” serves as the penultimate track on the album. Reworked from its first appearance on Del Rey’s Instagram while on tour in March of 2018, the intro begins, “Do you want me or do you not? I heard one thing, now I’m hearing another/Dropped a pin to my parking spot/The bar was hot, it’s two a.m., it feels like summer.” An ephemeral moment and a season that always evokes so much in the Del Rey oeuvre. For unlike most people, summer seems to be a time tinged with too much sadness to be enjoyable for her. Thus, the title itself is inspired by an aphorism from Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” For Del Rey, so often, that happiness appears as though it could be love, only to slip through her hands every time. In this way, the lyric, “If he’s a serial killer, then what’s the worst that can happen to a girl who’s already hurt? I’m already hurt” speaks to female millennial resignation as only Del Rey can.
At the same time, like so many others of her generation, she can’t help but still be slightly foolish enough to hold out hope. Not just for something “better” in the sense of men and the general state of the world, but perhaps for the eventual improvement of art in the twenty-first century, which has fallen so hardcore prey to banality and laziness that we seem to have to rely on Del Rey to reinvigorate it with her ironic melba toastness (a self-admitted “basic” she is, after all). But it is art deco melba toast. So it is that Norman Fucking Rockwell concludes with “Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have — But I Have It.” And maybe you will, too, for the once required grandiosity of art, after listening to the record.
