It seems fitting that Lana Del Rey would post and then delete a video (à la Britney) about persona on her Instagram the same day as the release of her ninth record, the verbosely-titled Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. The topic/keyword has been a notorious source of feather-ruffling for the chanteuse in the past several years, reaching a crescendo when Ann Powers “dared” to mention “Del Rey’s persona as a bad girl to whom bad things are done” in her review of Norman Fucking Rockwell. In an increasingly common instance of celebrities “breaking the fourth wall” to address their detractors, Del Rey responded to Powers on Twitter with, “Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will.” And yet, lo and behold, Powers appears to be vindicated by Del Rey remarking on this since-deleted video, “I would say that at the heart of the album, there are songs that have keys, if you really listen closely to, like, some of the stumbled-up lyrics, that would unlock a reason why someone might need a persona. I mean, like, if they needed one, it’s like, if anyone ever had a question about why I ever was feeling what I was feeling when I was feeling it and why I might need, like, some kind of veil, it’s, like, all there. And it always has been.” Ergo, point to Powers/where’s her apology? And why was it so hard to admit to creating an “alter ego” (though still closely aligned with her “real” self and her real heartache) until now?
Del Rey digs the knife in further to a needlessly terrorized Powers by adding, “It hasn’t been a bad thing to sing about things being hard. And also, just ‘cause you do that while you’re all dressed up doesn’t mean that you’re, like, it’s a put-on. Because we’ve been storytelling through our presentation for eons.” Alas, Del Rey hasn’t much been in the mood to “dress up” in the no makeup era of her career that took hold after 2017’s Lust For Life was released. The eyeliner and fake eyelashes now only come on for very special occasions (i.e., photoshoots and appearances at awards shows). Maybe that’s, in part, a testament to how she has entered a middle-age phase. No longer possessing the emotional wherewithal to be bothered with putting on her drag every day when she could just be chillin’ at home or driving around aimlessly like Maria in Play It As It Lays.
Being that millennials are a generation known for having Peter Pan Syndrome, it’s telling that it took Del Rey this long to start addressing what is commonly known as a biological clock. Only for women, of course. And Del Rey’s is ticking in overdrive from the moment Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd kicks off with “The Grants,” a roving rumination on memory (and how it’s all you can take with you in the end) and Sylvia Plath’s fig tree metaphor. Del Rey, unapologetic for being the “sad white girl cliché” who quotes Plath, refers to the passage in The Bell Jar when Esther describes, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet… I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Del Rey feels this time crunch palpably and unapologetically throughout the album, her most experimental to date in that there is scarcely the same level of sonic cohesion as there is on previous records. Even the folk-oriented Chemtrails Over the Country Club is actually more listenable than this. In short, it’s not exactly the type of album one puts on “any old time.” And it’s not really the type of record one would necessarily listen to from start to finish, as has usually been the case with LDR albums. Instead, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is the sort of work from which you pick and choose songs to listen to (among the prized gems being the title track). And only the die-hards are going to commit to listening to the cumbersome interludes every time (just because Jon Batiste has some Grammys doesn’t mean LDR enthusiasts want to hear him play the piano for three minutes and thirty-three seconds as he laughs maniacally and repeats “I feel it” with occasional “ooo woah” interjections from Del Rey). This includes the cringey “Judah Smith Interlude” that takes place after four songs, placing it at number five on the album. As Smith, a lead pastor at Churchome (formerly The City Church), prattles on about some mumbo-jumbo related to appreciating what you have, all one can think is that Del Rey has fallen into the Hillsong substitute cult of Hollywood. Or, is she including the interlude as a way to be sardonic? One can never truly tell with Del Rey, perhaps because we’d like to believe there’s more complexity to her than meets the eye. That she isn’t, in fact, one of the “basic bitches” at the Beverly Center she rails against in track three, “Sweet,” another clear dig aimed at Sean Larkin. On a side note, though, these days, the least basic people are the ones still going to the Beverly Center.
Del Rey shows the signs of her age further by singing, “Lately, we’ve been makin’ out a lot/Not talkin’ ’bout the stuff that’s at the very heart of things/Do you want children?/Do you wanna marry me?” It certainly gives Marisa Tomei talking about her biological clock ticking in My Cousin Vinny a run for its money. As it happens, Del Rey once made her career out of “sad girl ennui” that had nothing whatsoever to do with thoughts of the future vis-à-vis pumping one out. And so, “sad girl ennui” has now transcended into middle-age angst. Where she formerly said, “You’re boring me to death and I’m already dead,” it seems the death, now, comes from the idea of not adding to her family line. A decision every woman must make sooner or later—for even in “not making the choice,” it ends up being made. Perhaps no other piece of art has addressed this dilemma so well as Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, a book that, despite being called that, is actually all about the decision not to have a child. Something Del Rey hasn’t fully committed to writing off entirely. To this point, she also uses the following rhyme in “Sweet”: “I’m sweet, bare feet” and “sweet in bare feet.” Obviously, it alludes to the “barefoot and pregnant” trope. That she follows this song up with “A&W” (a.k.a. “American Whore”) is a deliberately sharp contrast, and one that shows her vacillating viewpoint on the question of being forever “young and desirable” or surrendering to the next phase of her life fully by giving in to the expectation of motherhood.
Del Rey’s increasingly mature subjects are at odds with a fanbase still largely comprised of Billie Eilish-aged twits. Apropos of this demographic, Adele noted during the 30 promotion cycle, “If everyone is making music for the TikTok, who is making the music for my generation? Who is making the music for my peers? I will do that job gladly.” Del Rey, who is slightly older than Adele (and has recently joined the platform on a more active level as @familyheirlooms—always with the family gushing), might think that’s what she’s been doing all along but, in fact, her brand of “theatricality” is what has drawn in so many Romeo and Juliet-in-intensity tweens and twinks over the years.
“A&W” still fits that bill. Where once Del Rey told us, “Yo soy la princesa,” here she says, “I’m a princess, I’m divisive.” Herself seemingly divided internally (perhaps the curse of being a Gemini cusp). In addition, she trolls those who would bother analyzing her with the lines, “Ask me why, why, why I’m like this/Maybe I’m just kinda like this/I don’t know, maybe I’m just like this.” Of course, that would be taking the easy way out—for no one is the way they “are” without years of contributing backstory. The one Del Rey thinks she’s giving us plainly in her music, but it’s all safely coded in the protection of the “persona.” One that allows her to capitulate to no longer bothering with seeking affection from the critics, instead leaning into being the “American Whore” that is a famous person selling their art to the masses under constant risk of condemnation and critique. Del Rey then does another motif one-eighty by segueing from a song about a prostitute into a religious interlude (and yet, prostitution and religion have always gone hand in hand—something Del Rey knows as a Catholic).
At the conclusion of the “Judah Smith Interlude,” he declares, “I used to think my preaching was mostly about You. And you’re not gonna like this, but I’m gonna to tell You the truth. I’ve discovered my preaching is mostly about me.” It’s these last lines that must have appealed to Del Rey the most, as she finally starts to more freely admit that the music was always about her, never about “preaching” a lifestyle—one that her disciples have taken up for themselves through the application of thick eyeliner, flower crowns, beehive hairdos, “party” dresses, Mary Jane stilettos with white socks, ribbons in their hair, etc. Might as well call it Lolita cosplay, but yeah—that’s the “lifestyle.” And it doesn’t translate as well past “a certain age.” At least not in this patriarchal society that so loves to tar and feather women “clinging” to their youth. Plus, Gen Z is fucking savage when it comes to shaming people for their age, as though they, too, aren’t doomed to hear the knell. This much is exemplified by an erstwhile Lana Del Rey TikTok trend that centered on 2013’s “Young and Beautiful,” wherein people would compare how she (as well as other celebrities) looked at the beginning of her career versus now. A blatant shade-throwing at her heavier, makeup-free aesthetic of the moment (as for the former physical attribute, it’s odd that Del Rey would ask in “Sweet,” “Do you wanna run marathons in Long Beach by the sea?” Doesn’t much seem like her cup of tea these days, though it is Adele’s). And, talking once more of age and the schizophrenia that Del Rey (and essentially every female musician) appears to be experiencing with it, the song that follows the “Judah Smith Interlude” is cringey for a number of reasons (nonetheless, it’s slated to be the next single). For, like “Cruel World” and “Pretty When You Cry,” “Candy Necklace” is definitely of the Songs to Slit Your Wrists To category. In fact, Del Rey even sings (in a blatant nod to fellow Tumblr icon Marina and the Diamonds), “Sittin’ on thе sofa, feelin’ super suicidal.” Not only that, but a candy necklace—the song’s central focus—is sexually suggestive. Designed as a lure worn by girls who want to suck on candy at a moment’s notice to invoke sexual attention (it’s definitely more effective than signaling people with jelly bracelets), Del Rey infers she likes the thrill of attracting a dangerous, predatory man. Again, is this a “good look” for someone who, without brining age into it, “knows better”?
And yet, if one regards Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd as Del Rey’s own kind of “Eras Tour,” it’s clear she’s reached a point in her canon where she can’t help but be self-referential, using two recycled lyrics in this song alone: “You’re the best, baby” (repurposed from “Baby, you the best” in “Summertime Sadness”) and “Cinnamon on my teeth” (changed from “Cinnamon in my teeth” in “Cinnamon Girl”). Jon Batiste joins in vocally to chant “candy necklaces” along with Del Rey at the end for a highly unsettling effect. One that isn’t soothed by the aforementioned “Jon Batiste Interlude”—though it does bear the same Rick James-esque sample from “Blue Jeans” and “National Anthem” as Batiste shouts, “Ohhh!” at the twenty-eight second mark (a legitimate citing, as opposed to Del Rey claiming that Harry Nilsson’s voice “breaks at 2:05”).
Batiste’s piano notes fade out to transition us into “Kintsugi,” a lamentation over family members lost, including her uncle, Dave Grant (additionally alluded to on “The Grants”). It also marks yet another track in which the word “Daddy” is wielded. As a person who was troubled by the thought of death from an early age, there is honesty in the lines, “And I just can’t stop cryin’ ’cause all of the ways/When you see someone dyin’/You see all your days flash in front of you/And you think about who would be with you/And then there’s Donoghue.” This name-check being a wink at the other Jack besides Antonoff in her life. And it must be serious if Del Rey was willing to immortalize the relationship by using his last name as opposed to his generic first one. More notable than that, however, is Del Rey’s interweaving of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem,” during which he assures, “There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” So it is that Del Rey uses the latter line for her own chorus, repeating, “That’s how the light gets in/That’s how the light gets in.” She also once more calls out a fear of having no one after her to carry on her lineage as she describes, “They sang folk songs from the 40s/Even the fourteen-year-old knew ‘Froggie Came A-Courtin’”/How do my blood relatives know all of these songs?/I don’t know anyone left to know songs that I sing.” That is to say, apart from the stans of the present, will her music (and the music she likes to listen to) mean something to people in the future, when 1) she’s long gone and 2) there isn’t much future for those who aren’t obscenely rich.
Del Rey had commenced “Kintsugi” by saying, “It’s just that I don’t trust myself with my heart/But I’ve had to let it break a little more/‘Cause they say that’s what it’s for.” And it’s the repeated breaking of her heart in so many ways throughout her lifetime that she dissects in “Fingertips,” arguably the densest, most thorough track of the record, and maybe even her entire discography. Her starkest reflection on her troubled past and her other favorite topics, death and family, Del Rey begins, “When I look back, tracing fingertips over plastic bags/Thinking, ‘I wish I could extrapolate some small intention/Or maybe just get your attention for a minute or two.’” The two minutes factor will serve as a key structural device in the song. But before then, Del Rey gives us the one-two punch of family and death (the preeminent themes of the record, as mentioned) via the simple verse, “Will I die? Or will I get to that ten-year mark?/Where I beat the extinction of telomeres?/And if I do, will you be there with me, Father, Sister, Brother?” In the Hannah Ewens-written piece on Lana for Rolling Stone UK, she gives context for “Fingertips,” asking, “Do you know about telomeres? They’re the strange, hand-shaped nerve endings that shrink as you age. Experts think that within a decade we’ll be able to preserve them. During the creation of [the album], Del Rey continued her research into telomeres and the concept of the extinction of death, wondering if she and her family will be all right, will they reach this ten-year mark?” That all tracks when hearing the above lyrics.
Del Rey’s hope for “self-preservation,” as she calls it, is likely compounded by her uncle’s death, seemingly a suicide the way Del Rey talks about it (though she could just be using a literary turn of phrase): “Give me a mausoleum in Rhode Island with Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and Dave/Who hung himself real high/In the National Park sky.” For, yes, he died while mountain climbing in Colorado. And yet, with suicide having come up on “Candy Necklace,” it doesn’t feel like a coincidence as it enters the picture twice here, with Del Rey adding of her own ostensible attempt, “When I was fifteen, naked, next-door neighbors did a drive-by/Pulled me up by my waist, long hair to the beach side/I wanted to go out like you [a.k.a. her uncle], swim with the fishes/That he caught on Rhode Island beaches/But, sometimes, it’s just not your time.” And, mercifully, for a legion of Del Rey acolytes, it wasn’t her time at fifteen, with so much more music to deliver unto Planet Earth.
Like, for example, “Paris, Texas” featuring SYML, who generously offers his own 2021 track, “I Wanted To Leave,” as the background for Del Rey’s vocals. Fittingly, the sound of the piano-backed number smacks of something out of Amélie, and yet, it is small-town Paris, Texas (the song also being an homage to the movie title) that Del Rey speaks of. This in addition to another town name that people would automatically associate with Italy: Florence. But she means Alabama. In this way, it’s evident that Del Rey’s affection for and affinity with “the heart of America” remains steadfast, even with all of its icky, MAGA-related problems. And even if the only reason she took a road trip through them was to escape a botched relationship back home (“Venice, California,” as she whispers). After all, “When you know, you know/It’s time, it’s time to go.” Whether permanently or as a way to cope with trauma through a brief escape. Or even a long one. At each new destination, Del Rey advises that the time to leave is, “When everyone star’s bright/Brighter than you are/It’s time to go/And you’re the only one left/Dancin’ while they’re on the floor/Time to go.” In many ways, however, it sounds like it could be a grand reference to staying in New York for too long… but maybe that’s a personal bias. In any case, by the end, Del Rey recounts, “I flew back home/It seems everything’s the same (Venice, California)/Except that you weren’t home/‘Hello,’ I call to no one”—how reminiscent of Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns. Being away appears to be just what she needed to re-appreciate where home truly is as she croons, “When you’re home, you’re home (Venice, California)/When you’re home, you’re home (Venice, California)/When you’re home, when you’re alone/When you’re right, you’re right/Even when you’re wrong.”
But even if she’s alone, Del Rey is certain to remind us that she can always take comfort in her famiglia, as indicated by the ultra-lengthy-in-title “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing.” Featuring RIOPY on the piano, the track is, you guessed it, another soul-searching meditation-meets-self-defense. Discussing the ever-scrutinized “persona,” Del Rey is quick to inform us, “I know they think that it took somebody else/To make me beautiful, beautiful/As they intended me to be/But they’re wrong/I know they think that it took thousands of people/To put me together again like an experiment/Some big men behind the scenes/Sewing Frankenstein black dreams into my songs.” But, by Del Rey’s account, the only “big men behind the scenes” who have contributed to who she is today are her grandfather and father, the former of whom she asks to stand on her father’s shoulders (a bit weird, but okay) while he’s deep-sea fishing. This itself forming a kind of “Grantenstein.” The “monster” that Del Rey hails from. The one that has rendered her into her own “fame monster” (to quote Del Rey’s Lower East Side competitor), “A fallible deity wrapped up in white.” And, speaking of white, Del Rey also acknowledges being called a Karen after her 2020 debacle by declaring, “I’m folk, I’m jazz, I’m blue, I’m green/Regrettably, also a white woman/But I have good intentions, even if I’m one of the last ones.” Spoken like someone who’s a little too internal to see themselves objectively for, as it is said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Like, was it a good intention to film and then post footage of Black and brown people protesting and looting without blurring out their faces? Any who, Del Rey is a white woman apologist now—while still remaining a peak emblem of being a white woman. Who also keeps saying the word “white” in this song by summoning white butterflies repeatedly.
As though realizing all of the sudden what a buzzkill she’s been for most of the album, Del Rey decides to throw the fans a lifeline after this, starting from track twelve onward. To kick off that “bright spot” on the record, the song is accordingly called “Let the Light In” (a title very similar to the chorus of “Kintsugi”) and features one of Del Rey’s musical homies, Father John Misty. Sounding un petit peu like “Karma Police” at the beginning (which Del Rey should be careful of considering her history with Radiohead), the “upbeat” tone is negated by the melancholy of being, once again, “The Other Woman” (which Del Rey covered on Ultraviolence). The implications of the song are also somewhat scando considering Father John Misty is married, and Del Rey already sang about him on “Coachella – Woodstock In My Mind” via the verse, “I was at Coachella leanin’ on your shoulder/Watchin’ your husband swing in time.” A.k.a. Emma Elizabeth Tillman’s husband—Father J. M. The “swing in time” retroactively has a “swingers” connotation with “Let the Light In,” minus the part where the wife is consenting to her husband stepping out. Which he seems to do nightly in order to bang Del Rey, who shrugs, “‘Cause every time you say you’re gonna go/I just smile, ‘cause, babe, I already know/You know I got nothin’ under this overcoat.” The secrecy of their affair is the part that Del Rey deems as being “in the dark,” hence her urging to “let the light in” and expose their relationship. There’s also sexual innuendo aplenty in a chorus that goes, “Ooh, let the light in/At your back door yelling ’cause I wanna come in/Ooh, turn your light on/Look at us, you and I, back at it again.” In another moment, Del Rey builds on her tradition of mentioning bands or solo male singers from the 60s by suggesting, “Put the Beatles on, light the candles, go back to bed.” An easy way to forget the reality that awaits them outside, for it is in the dark that they can actually stay in what Tay would call the “lavender haze.”
In contrast to the relationship presented on “Let the Light In,” “Margaret” is about the on-blast nature of true love, inspired by none other than Margaret Qualley’s (who was fortunately spared from ending up with Pete Davidson) relationship with Antonoff. Thus, the track naturally features him as Bleachers. As though inspired by a Nancy Meyers movie, Del Rey says the same thing she did on “Paris, Texas” about love: “When you know, you know.” And Antonoff definitely knew that it wasn’t Lena Dunham (incestuously still tied to Antonoff through her “bestie” status with Taylor Swift).
Despite the track being about another couple’s love, Del Rey still finds a “subtle” way to refer to the clock ticking on her own chance for “eternal” romance as she self-deprecates, “‘Cause when you know, you know/And when you’re old, you’re old/Like Hollywood and me.” Perhaps feeling “old” in the present is what keeps leading her to retreat into memories from the past, as is the case on “Fishtail”—named after the (white woman’s) braid style. Initially, it comes across as another lulling track before the beat picks up at the one-minute, four-second mark, with Antonoff able to faintly recreate the sonic landscape that made Del Rey synonymous with baroque pop upon her debut. Although the song draws elements from her own past, it was confirmed in Rolling Stone UK that the primary inspiration was from “a friend’s date [who] promised he would come over to her house to braid her hair, but he never did.” The intimacy implied in such an act makes it all the more affronting that the date couldn’t deliver on his promise, ergo Del Rey berating, “Don’t you dare say that you’ll braid my hair, babe/If you don’t really care/You wanted me sadder, you wanted me sadder.”
Things aren’t so sad, however, on “Peppers” featuring Tommy Genesis. As one of the only tracks classifiable as a “bop,” Genesis is largely responsible for that tone as she starts the song with, “Hands on your knees, I’m Angelina Jolie/Hands on your knees, Angelina Jolie/Let me put my hands on your knees, you can braid my hair/Do a fat crisscross in the back somewhere.” Braiding has clearly become a theme now. But here, it’s because Lara Croft (Jolie) had a French braid.
Del Rey could be talking about any number of men (as usual) when she says, “Me and my boyfriend listen to the Chili Peppers/We write hit songs without tryin’ like all the time,” but, in this case, it could be a gesture to Mike Hermosa, who helped with the production of this album before they broke up. Or maybe she considers Antonoff her “work boyfriend.” Either way, the lyrics here also remind one of “The Next Best American Record.” Because, to reiterate, Del Rey has gotten so self-referential at this point that she’s even referencing things she’s freshly said on this album, i.e. “Take a minute to yourself, skinny-dip in my mind (having already used this metaphor on “Fishtail” with, “You’re so funny, I wish I could skinny-dip inside your mind”). But that doesn’t stop her from incorporating her influences from the past as she says in the bridge, “I don’t know, maybe we should do something like, like merge this song/You know that song ‘Wipe Out’?/Yeah, dance type of song.” So it is that elements of The Surfaris’ “Wipe Out” start to enter the fray before Del Rey gets even more self-referential on the finale, “Taco Truck x VB” (originally titled “Bonita”—perhaps too close to “La Isla…”). The “VB” standing for, as fans had speculated, “Venice Bitch.” Specifically, the “grimy, heavy, original and unheard version” of “Venice Bitch.” A song that seemed “experimental” at the time for its length, but now feels garden-variety amid the ever-meandering flow of Del Rey’s “later work.”
Like “A&W,” it is two songs in one, starting out as a slow jam about meeting her boyfriend at the taco truck before it focuses on another usual topic: self-defense against the big, bad “critics.” Thus, Del Rey provides the disclaimer to anyone who would write about her work, “Spin it ’til you whip it into white cream, baby/Print it into black and white pages, don’t phase me/Before you talk, let me stop what you’re saying/I know, I know, I know that you hate me.” An easy way to write off responsibility for any “problematic” statements. At 3:05, Del Rey shifts to “Venice Bitch” after letting Qualley give a vacuous outro to “Taco Truck.” Which soon brings us to a line that serves as the ultimate protection from being perceived as caring about anything at all, least of all outside opinions about her or her music: “Everything’s whatever.”
It’s in this version that the way she says “older” in “We’re gettin’ high now because we’re older” also feels more earnest. As though she really means it this time when she says she’s older. To be sure, the entire record is like an undercover wake for the girl we knew during the years from Born to Die through Honeymoon. There’s also a hometown callout in the line, “Jealous of your love (not tonight, Lake Placid).” But maybe some other night, when she’s in the mood for reflecting on that period in her life again. Though it seems it’s been vivisected to (another) death on this album. Which, incidentally, features Del Rey on the cover looking peak “I’ve seen the world, done it all” in expression, staring at us in a manner that suggests she’s only still doing this out of a sense of world-weary obligation. And yet, with her level of success comes the rare opportunity to feel beholden to no one. A phenomenon that comes across in the music of Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, rife with a boldness in willing to get more experimental. Something that Del Rey’s foil, Taylor Swift, has shied away from in her bid for perfectionism even ten albums in. The same goes for someone with even less to prove, Madonna, who brought us the experimental leanings of Madame X in 2019, only to become so afraid of not being in the charts again that she’s now teamed up with Max Martin in the studio to ensure a hit.
With Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Del Rey is showing the process of her final growing pains that have allowed her to metamorphose into an era where she can no longer subscribe to the Britney defense, “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman.” Britney, meanwhile, insists she’s still twelve and you can’t tell her otherwise. Call it the necessary “persona”—just another word for defense mechanism—for her survival. Which is far more understandable in Spears’ case. As for Del Rey, she once said, “Goddamn man-child.” On Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, her own “woman-child” is at war with itself as the former seems to be getting the upper hand in jettisoning the latter.
