Although it took a while for people to get on board with the idea that Lana Del Rey wasn’t “glamorizing” America in her early work (just abuse, right?), so much as eerily and ironically presenting its long-standing decay, at present, there are plenty who have accepted her as the poet laureate of describing putrefying Americana. And yet, in 2012, it didn’t seem as though Del Rey was being very “sardonic” with the second track on the Paradise EP, “American.” Co-written with Rick Nowels and Emile Haynie (both of whom also co-produced), its wistful and nostalgic tone is present from the outset, with musical notes that sound as though they could soundtrack a home movie of the “perfect American family” circa the early 1960s.
To immediately belie that notion, Del Rey commences with the line, “Play house.” In other words, the relationship she’s in isn’t “real” or “serious,” but rather, an ersatz performance of what it would be mean to be “domestic.” A concept that’s easier to romanticize when one is still younger, and, therefore, too naïve to comprehend the sense of darkness and depression that tends to go hand in hand with “settling down.” For, sooner or later, even the most “in love” of couples tend to grow tired of (thus, hostile toward) one another. Del Rey, in the perspective she’s speaking from, still wears rose-colored glasses about the nature of being in a “grown-up relationship,” which is why she’s able to so convincingly deliver such lyrics as, “You were like so sick, everybody said it/You were way ahead of the trend, get, get it.” “Sick,” of course, isn’t the only “millennialism” wielded in the song. There’s also “dope,” used in the chorus as, “Be young, be dope, be proud/Like an American.”
And this, to be sure, is the sentiment that is most retroactively “cringe” (to use a Gen Zism). Not that it wasn’t already a bit difficult to stomach in 2012. But, by the same token, there was much more hope for America—particularly on the political front—that year. One that marked the end of Barack Obama’s first term and heralded what would then become his second. Indeed, Del Rey was starting to make some progress in her career (or so she thought in the moment) just as Obama was campaigning the first time in 2007-2008 (otherwise known as “Lizzy Grant’s” 5 Points Records era). Using the simple, all-capitalized word: HOPE (courtesy of an indelible design by Shepard Fairey). And yes, some might have “parodied” that poster by placing the word “DOPE” underneath it instead. Because, as Del Rey tells it through “American,” that’s what being an American in that time felt like. A small blip between the buffoonery of George W. Bush and the lethal combination of soullessness and doltishness of Donald Trump.
Except that, for his second go-around, that soullessness/doltishness (or sociopathy/narcissism, as Del Rey would bill it) has become even more dangerous than it was during what should have been a total fluke of a first term. So sure, within the context of that too-short period of hope for America between 2008 and the part of 2016 before the Orange One finagled the presidency, Del Rey was likely sincere in the sense of pride she wanted to evoke in the recording of “American.” Even as she still left some of her signature traces of irony regarding a deteriorating nation. Case in point, by mentioning Bruce Springsteen (via the lyrics, “‘Springsteen is the king, don’t ya think?’ I was like, ‘Hell yeah, that guy can sing’”), Del Rey is simultaneously referencing a “beacon” of “peak” American culture while also alluding to an “American icon” who is known for his own complex, often resentful feelings toward “the great nation” (hear: “Born in the USA,” which Ronald Reagan infamously used for his 1984 presidential campaign without appearing to have any realization that it’s a song about a disenfranchised Vietnam War veteran).
But Springsteen isn’t the only American (musical) icon Del Rey references. She’s also sure to name check “the King” himself, Elvis Presley, when she sings, “Elvis is the best, hell yes/Honey, put on that party dress” (this line also embedding a Tom Petty nod within it, to boot). Needless to say, Elvis offers yet another dual representation of America and the so-called American dream. Because, on one side of the coin, he’s the poor boy who pulled himself up by his bootstraps with sheer talent and will (the U.S. is forever a sucker for a rags to riches story, after all), yet on the other, he was the ultimate cautionary tale about letting American success and excess destroy him. Namely, by being essentially prostituted by his own manager.
Among the other “icons” of America that Del Rey mentions is Los Angeles (her honorary home, before Louisiana got to her), crooning, “Drive fast, I can almost taste it now/L.A., I don’t even have to fake it now.” Here, too, there is a nod to the idea that most of “making it” in America is based entirely on faking it (see: Anna Delvey). Hence, the rise of scam culture at the dawn of the twenty-first century, when Del Rey herself started to fully come of age.
As for the naïve perspective of “the culture” that “American” ostensibly presents, Del Rey emphasizes the lens through which she’s speaking in the part of the chorus that goes, “You make me crazy, you make me wild/Just like a baby, spin me ’round like a child/Your skin so golden brown.” This latter phrase also being attributable to The Stranglers and their 1982 single, “Golden Brown.” A song that itself provides a dual meaning—one with positive connotations (a love letter, if you will, to a girl) and one with, let’s say, less positive connotations (heroin addiction). Which is exactly how a lot Del Rey’s songs, especially “American,” operate.
Take, for example, the verse, “Everybody wants to go fast/But they can’t compare/I don’t really want the rest/Only you can take me there/I don’t even know what I’m saying/But I’m praying for you.” On the one hand, it’s a sentiment that could be directed at the object of her affection. And, on the other, it could be something she’s directing at America itself. A possibility that would come up again more blatantly on a later song of Del Rey’s, “Arcadia,” during which she flexes, “I’m leavin’ them as I was, five-foot-eight/Western bound, plus the hate that they gave/By the way, thanks for that, on the way, I’ll pray for ya/But you’ll need a miracle/America.” It’s a far cry from the unbridled affection for the country she exhibited in 2012, with Del Rey essentially “shrugging” on “Arcadia” about how fucked the country is. But oh, what a difference almost a decade can make (“Arcadia” was released in 2021). Not to mention bearing witness to a second Orange One presidency—one where, this time, he actually did secure the popular vote.
So yes, listening to “American” in the present is much more than just “bittersweet.” It’s all but impossible to listen to all the way through (even more than 2017’s “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing”), particularly when Del Rey gets to the part about being dope and proud like an American. For there is nothing dope about what’s happening to the country, nor is there anything to be “proud” of in the current landscape, so much as utterly embarrassed of and apologetic for.
