While Lana Del Rey may have moved on from a darker side of her “Americana-loving” phase—that is to say, dating a cop—that aspect of herself will eternally be colored in blue by a song that came out long before she ever met Sean Larkin. That track, of course, is 2014’s “Shades of Cool,” from her sophomore record, Ultraviolence.
Written by Rick Nowels (LDR’s staple before Jack Antonoff came along) and produced by Dan Auerbach, the song is sandwiched between “Ultraviolence” and “Brooklyn Baby” on the album, tying together a certain “addicted to the pain” theme (hence, the still “passable” pre-#MeToo move of Del Rey incorporating The Crystals’/Phil Spector’s line, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” into the track—as it is her usual shtick to borrow from the boomer canon knowing full well that, for the most part, millennials and Gen Z have no idea who the reference originally belongs to). And what could offer a girl more pain than allying herself in any way, least of all romantically, to an officer of the law? Even if Del Rey did her best to excuse it away at the time with the assurance, “Well, the thing is, he’s a good cop. He gets it. He sees both sides of things.” Yes, sure. Never mind that the Edmond Police Department right near the very city Larkin works for was responsible for killing an unarmed seventeen-year-old Black man the same year Del Rey saw fit to start falling for this “silver fox.” The one she seemed to dream up in “Shades of Cool.”
In the video, the prototype for that silver fox is Mark Mahoney, a beloved celebrity tattoo artist for the likes of both Lana Del Rey and Marilyn Manson (a pair that, let’s not forget, have been intertwined in the past, which doesn’t help the cause of Del Rey insisting she hasn’t fetishized abuse throughout her career–and that’s fine girl, just like, own it). One look into his piercing blue eyes, and Del Rey seems to be inspired to croon, “My baby lives in shades of blue/Blue eyes and jazz and attitude.” The very same shade of blue Larkin has (because all famous people are required to have this color iris—it’s just some kind of tacit rule carried over from the days of Aryan-enforcing Old Hollywood).
“Casually” walking through the same neighborhood Silver Fox lives in (some would call this simply “stalking”), Del Rey’s impassioned reaction to this man appears to be best manifested by the superimposition of bullet shells raining down that subsequently ensues. It’s all too foreshadowing for a girl destined to love a cop. Before one knows it, Del Rey is swimming in a vibrant blue pool like a fish in a tank (as Silver Fox looks on with voyeuristic gusto) to further drive home the point that “Blue Lives Matter.”
“You are invincible,” she cries out at one point—not an inaccurate assessment of the fortress of protection granted to any police officer (including the likes of Larkin), no matter how severe their own crimes. Like say, murder. And even though it might seem as though Del Rey has warmed this icy, steely man in the video (by pulling some “Blue Jeans” redux shit with her white bathing suit and slowly emerging from the pool to let him drink it all in), she must soon reconcile that things will never work out between them “‘cause you live in shades of cool/Your heart is unbreakable.” Realizing just how monstrous that makes him as the “alter ego” version of herself, one wonders why she didn’t learn her lesson about Larkin before it was too late.
“Shades of Cool” is a lullaby that beckons to any boy in blue (the number one “shade of cool”), but in the end comes off as being designed to put ideas of ever being with them “for real” or “forever” to bed. Thus, the conclusion, “But I can’t help him, can’t make him better/And I can’t do nothing about his strange weather.” A.k.a. his irascibility when it comes to any interaction with “minority” groups that somehow transforms into a life-threatening altercation.
Upon the internet catching wind of Del Rey’s dalliance as it initially unfolded, the reaction was expectedly, well, “cool”—as in frosty, with such comments circulating as, “Lana Del Rey dating a cop… is a level of commitment-to-the-bit that we haven’t seen since Andy Kaufman.”
Yet it’s unlikely that public opinion had anything to do with her eventual breakup, for Del Rey was bound to inevitably comprehend of Larkin and his fellow “boys in blue,” “Your hot, hot weather in the summer/Hot, hot, neglectful lover/You’re crumbling, sadly/You’re sadly, crumbling.” Without the love of a Republican woman who can meet his mercurial demands and expectations by not saying or doing much of anything at all—least of all writing a song about a profession’s capricious moods. Yet with this cop lullaby, it’s possible Del Rey preemptively created the breakup song she needed to put her love of la polizia to sleep.
