TRACK REVIEW: Lana Del Rey - White Dress

TRACK REVIEW:

Lana Del Rey

White Dress

9.6/10

The track, White Dress, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJuV8PDwvC8

GENRES:

Americana/Folk

ORIGIN:

California, U.S.A.

The album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, is available via:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/lana-del-rey/chemtrails-over-the-country-club/lp-plus

RELEASE DATE:

19th March, 2021

LABELS:

Interscope Records/Polydor

PRODUCERS:

Jack Antonoff/Lana Del Rey/Rick Nowels

TRACKLISTING:

White Dress

Chemtrails Over the Country Club

Tulsa Jesus Freak

Let Me Love You Like a Woman

Wild at Heart

Dark But Just a Game

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Yosemite

Breaking Up Slowly

Dance Till We Die

For Free (ft. Zella Day and Weyes Blood)

__________

WHEN we get new music…

from Lana Del Rey, it tends to be a pretty big deal! I am going to get to a song from her excellent new album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, in a minute. I feel that it is important to provide some background and a fuller story regarding Lana Del Rey (Elizabeth Grant). She is one of the most compelling and fascinating artist in music. She has just announced a new album, Rock Candy Sweet, that has taken people by surprised. I think that she will go on to be one of these artists people look back on decades from now. From her cinematic and wonderfully rich videos to her evolving sound and intriguing personality, she is grounded and modest; there is also this huge aura around her. She has huge star quality, and I feel that we will see many more brilliant albums from her. Who is Lana Del Rey, then? I guess one has an impression of the artist and, perhaps, a different one of the woman behind the artist. I will come to misperception and why people have sort of labelled Del Rey as gloomy and sullen. Last year, in a feature which saw Del Rey in conversation with producer Jack Antonoff, Interview Magazine took a run at answer the question as to who Lana Del Rey is:

“Lana del Rey is Elizabeth Grant, the New York City-born musician who got her start playing Brooklyn’s underground club circuit. She is the scrappy singer who uploaded two homemade videos to the internet, only to watch her career explode in the aftermath. She is the self-described underdog, an oft-misunderstood purveyor of glamorous and tragic Americana, apocalypse and utopia, breathless romance, and devastating isolation—often crashing into one another. She is the pop star who hasn’t had—or needed, really—her own top-40 hit since 2014, operating as she does on the outskirts of the mainstream. She is the outspoken lightning rod, who, whether or not you agree with the things she says, says them anyway. And she is, above all else, the songwriter who last year released Norman Fucking Rockwell!, her most clear-eyed artistic statement to date.

At 35, Del Rey has tapped a new creative vein. Just one year after her last studio release, she has come out with a new poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, and her sixth album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, is out this month. All of it has been in collaboration with the tireless super-producer Jack Antonoff, who, as evidenced in the following conversation, knows exactly who Lana Del Rey is”.

I have said how Lana Del Rey is grounded and she is someone we could relate to. Although this is true, there is this sense of grandeur and romance regarding her. I think she has such a huge personality and name, one cannot help but feel this expectation and drama! I have never met her myself but, when I read an interview with NME, there is an interesting section given to the start of the interview and what it was like waiting for this big star:

“Waiting to meet Lana Del Rey is like waiting to spot a unicorn. Before she arrives at her management’s office – a gorgeous Hollywood house on the cusp of Laurel Canyon that feels exactly like the kind of place she might inhabit, with rich green vines lining its cream exteriors and Grecian pillars – it feels like waiting for a mythical figure to materialise. It wouldn’t be a shock to glance outside and see her lounging by the azure swimming pool, just like one of the starlets she sings of. And as our scheduled interview time creeps back later and later, the anticipation grows ever stronger.

People have an image of Del Rey that’s almost a caricature; someone blue and untouchable, a depressed icon who belongs in another time. But in reality things couldn’t be more different. Maybe it’s a California thing, but Lana has a disarmingly relaxed manner. She looks like she’s come straight from the beach, her golden brown hair crinkled into the kind of haphazard, voluminous waves you only get from dunking your head into the ocean.

She’s late not because she’s a superior being with no need for the concept of time, but because she’s spent hours driving from northern San Diego where she lives “some of the time”, to this house on the hill behind the Chateau Marmont, in the black pick-up truck that’s parked in the driveway. As she settles on a dusky green couch, she clutches a chunky square vape covered in pink holographic plastic in one hand and a coffee in the other”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chuck Grant

One important aspect of Lana Del Rey and her work is Los Angeles. I feel that there are themes that run through her albums (especially her earlier ones); these include California as a state and her hitting the road. I will come to that itinerant angle of her music. Apart from elements of 1950s music and cinema, there is ‘70s sounds; a wonderfully old-skool look and feel to her music. Lana Del Rey is very modern and old now, yet her music has a great sense of the past. Even though her sound has moved from Hip-Hop and Pop to something more akin to Folk and American, L.A. is dear to her heart and has remained consistent. Returning to that NME interview, and they mention how Del Rey is always pulled back to the city:

“These days, Del Rey spends a lot of time on the road, orbiting around LA as she escapes to either the north or the south, but always returning back to the city. Being behind the wheel so much played a big part in shaping ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’, released last week, and its lyrics are dotted with geographical locations like pins being pushed into a map. Each marks out tales lived at each spot – Laurel Canyon, Venice, Santa Ana, Topanga, Malibu, Long Beach, Newport, Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood and Vine, the PCH, and the 405 freeway”.

In the Interview Magazine feature, Jack Antonoff (who co-produced Chemtrails Over the Country Club) asked Del Rey about her attachment to Los Angeles:

“ANTONOFF: Do you feel like you’re ever going to leave L.A.?

DEL REY: I guess I can’t because I have all the animals and I have my family. I don’t know if I’ll do this drive again in a hot minute. The fact that you can be in Kansas in two hours by plane is amazing.

ANTONOFF: With Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, I feel like you’re mourning a piece of L.A., sometimes literally, sometimes in feeling and tone. Then, coupled with Chemtrails, it’s like you’re starting to talk about all these new places and slowly planting little flags and creating little emotional homes in other parts of America. Obviously I’m here for it, but it does make me wonder if we’re going to be making records in Tucson or Tulsa next year.

DEL REY: It’s funny, the record was Midwestern-sounding before I even went to the Midwest. What’s interesting about having a true muse—and it sounds kind of ridiculous—is that you’re at the whim of it. When I’m singing about Arkansas, even I’m wondering why. The one way I would describe the Midwest, Oklahoma in particular, is that it’s not cooked or oversaturated, and there’s still space to catch that white lightning”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mat Hayward/Getty Images

Before I look at other subjects regarding Del Rey, I want to come to the point of perception and the sort of image we have of her. Listen to early albums such as Born to Die (2012) and Ultraviolence (2014), and one might think Del Rey is morose or have a depressive side. I think many misconstrued romance and a tenderness with misery or sullenness. Although Del Rey appeared to be downbeat in her videos, as the NME interview brings up, the reaction she got from some people was quite harsh:

“You could read the public response to her unsmiling face in the videos for the likes of ‘Video Games’ as a telling insight into people’s expectations of women. The commentary on her perceived mood is the pop star equivalent of men thinking it’s okay to tell women they don’t know to smile. Del Rey says it isn’t as cut and dry as that. “That’s some of it, but women were also quite tough on me,” she says. “Again, I think that tells more about themselves – [women are] tough on themselves.”

Del Rey isn’t the only modern artist to be painted as this perpetually glum figure because of the melancholy that lives in their music. If she was considered the prom queen of sadness, James Blake would likely have been named king. Last year, he dismissed the “sad boy” label appointed to him, calling the phrase “unhealthy and problematic” and damaging to the discourse around male mental health. Del Rey feels similar about the tag being thrust upon her. “I really never felt like much of what people said about me resonated with how I felt at my core,” she says”.

In an interview with Billboard from 2019, we get a new impression of Lana Del Rey: someone who smiles more and appears cheerier in her videos and on album covers:

“Somehow this only makes Del Rey weirder and cooler: the high priestess of sad pop who now smiles on album covers and posts Instagram stories inviting you to check out her homegirl’s fitness event in Hermosa Beach. You could feel the shift on Lust for Life, which enlisted everyone from A$AP Rocky to Stevie Nicks and traded the interiority of her early songwriting for anthems about women’s rights and the state of the world. She even seemed down to play the pop game a bit, though by her own rules: She worked with superproducer Max Martin on the title track, even as it quoted ’60s girl groups and cast R&B juggernaut The Weeknd as the long-lost Beach Boy”.

I brought up how there is almost this gravitational force around Lana Del Rey; interviewers with this sense of expectation – almost like a film star is about to walk through the door. Her music has this sweeping and cinematic quality that might fool some people. In the flesh, I think it is more important to separate Lana Del Rey from Elizabeth Grant. In the NME interview I have sourced from before, we learn there is something regular and un-starry about an incredible artist:

“You might expect Del Rey to be making her own legends in her downtime but her life, she insists, is pretty regular – a healthy mix of creativity and friend time. There’s the driving (“a lot of driving,” she says), the game nights with her friends, the trips to the dog park with her photographer and director sister Chuck Grant, the poetry writing, the swimming, and filming the things she sees as she flits between LA, San Diego, San Francisco, and other communities along the coast.

“I’m a big chronicler,” she explains. “I spend a lot of time just capturing stuff, even on the phone. When the wildfires were happening [in 2018] I wanted to get up in a plane and see it and film it.” As if to pre-emptively reinforce her point, a day earlier she posted a candid video on her Instagram of a conversation about aliens taking place on a green-lit boat”.

I want to stick on this theme a little longer. I think press and public perception of Lana Del Rey has resulted in a lot of negativity and unfair comments. Whether people see her as too sad or they think they knew who she is, it must have been quite galling for her – I guess many big artists have to face the same thing. Coming back to that Billboard article of 2019, and the regular-day Lana Del Rey seems very cool and like someone you’d hang with:

“In person, Del Rey’s vibe isn’t noir heroine or folk troubadour so much as friend from college who now lives in the suburbs. Her jean shorts, white T-shirt and gray cardigan could’ve easily been snatched off a mannequin at the nearest American Eagle Outfitters. A couple of times in our conversation, she lets out a “Gee whiz!” like a side character in a Popeye cartoon. Between the tour announcements and Gucci campaign shoots, her Instagram consists mostly of screenshot poetry and Easter brunch pics with her girlfriends. For the most distinctive popular songwriter of the past decade, she appears disarmingly basic.

“Oh, I am! I’m actually only that,” agrees Del Rey, eyes gleaming. “I’ve got a more eccentric side when it comes to the muse of writing, but I feel very much that writing is not my thing: I’m writing’s thing. When the writing has got me, I’m on its schedule. But when it leaves me alone, I’m just at Starbucks, talking shit all day.” Starting in 2011, when her nearly drumless, practically hookless breakthrough single “Video Games” blew up, the suddenly polarizing singer found it hard to move through the real world unbothered. But something changed a few years back; she’s not sure if she chilled out or if everyone else did. In any case, she’s happiest among the people, whether that’s lingering in Silverlake coffee shops or dipping out to Newport to rollerblade. “I’ve got my ear to the ground,” she says with a conspiratorial wink. “Actually, that’s my main goal”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Stephanie Keith

I feel that Lana Del Rey has become more political. She is not as overt as some artists, though one can feel a shift in terms of the importance modern America plays. One can understand why the presidency of Donald Trump and a distinct change for the worse would motivate her to weave politics into her music. The NME interview (where she was promoting her previous album, Norman F*cking Rockwell), gives us a point in time when politics came more to the fore:

“Politics is something Del Rey has only recently become more outspoken about. Pre-‘Lust For Life’ she was often criticised for not talking about important things in the world. “People were pissed before when I didn’t say anything,” she says, before offering up her justifications for being focused on other subjects. “We didn’t have Trump as President before. There was less to say. I grew up with Obama and we were happy in New York. We were really, really happy with everything. That’s what I think people miss. We had gotten to a point where we could focus on the music and the arts. It was great.”

On ‘Coachella – Woodstock In My Mind’ from ‘Lust For Life’ she wrote of attending Coachella as tensions between the US and North Korea mounted, and on ‘When The World Was At War We Kept Dancing’ asked if Trump’s presidency meant the end of America. Both songs signalled a shift in her songwriting. But ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’ doesn’t keep it up, with politics only briefly appearing via the final verse of ‘The Greatest’.

PHOTO CREDIT: Vera Anderson/Getty Images

For Del Rey, the dramatic events unfurling over the last year or so – the historic wildfires, the Hawaii nuclear bomb scare caused by an erroneous warning message – mirror what we’re putting out into the world. “The President is a reflection of the culture, the culture is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves and, of course, nature is our great reflector and equaliser,” she says. “Maybe that’s a bit metaphorical but it’s probably no coincidence that it’s raining fire everywhere. I read a caption about the Amazon that said the lungs of our world are burning. It makes me wonder what’s our heart?”.

In January, Lana Del Rey spoke with Annie Mac at BBC Radio 1. This article focuses on when Del Rey talked about Donald Trump and why his sort of madness and misrule was inevitable:

“As well as suggesting a pandemic was inevitable, Lana says of Trump that she was "surprised we didn't have a live-television psychopath crazy person as a president a long time ago because that’s what we see on TV and that’s what we see on Instagram. A lot of really self-obsessed influencers…"

She continued: "The madness of Trump… As bad as it was, it really needed to happen. We really needed a reflection of our world’s greatest problem, which is not climate change but sociopathy and narcissism. Especially in America. It’s going to kill the world. It’s not capitalism, it’s narcissism."

Despite the "terrifying death toll", Del Rey added, the pandemic and last week's violent pro-Trump storming of the US Capitol have been a "huge wake-up call."

"Your life is not about what kind of shoes you buy, it’s not about going to Harvard or Oxford. It’s about what kind of person you are"

PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Kopaloff/Film Magic

Moving on, and I want to spend a little time highlighting how Lana Del Rey has taken back control and how what feminism looks like to her. Reading an interview from NPR, I was intrigued by what Del Rey said:

“A good handful of women who make music have sat here with me in the last year, and it's been interesting to talk about what this all means. When St. Vincent was on, we were talking about the sort of latex costume she wears on stage, where she looks like Wonder Woman or Catwoman. She said it makes her feel incredibly powerful, and that "This is what feminism is, is getting to decide what power looks like for you." It reminded me of your attitude, which is sort of unabashed saying what you need to say. I think that's a very powerful thing.

In a way I did what I had to do in terms of chronicling my own stories. You know, I wasn't happy with how a lot of my own story went up until recently, so I didn't always like the way I was putting things, but it was just the way it was, you know? I don't know if that's feminism, but it is what it was. One of the issues I had over the last 10 years was there weren't that many options to be super vocal and powerful without a lot of backlash and repercussions. It was a very male-dominated environment at certain times. That's why I think this whole movement is so important — the people that don't get the #MeToo movement are just, I don't get them. I don't get those people. It's like, do you not get how hard it is sometimes just to sort of be safe and have your own voice as a woman”.

With this sense of control and power came/comes a sort of misogyny. If a woman in music is successful and popular, it is assumed that they must have been directed by men or have a huge team around them. Flipping back to the 2019 Billboard interview, this subject was explored:

“That battle for understanding has followed Del Rey for much of her career. “People just couldn’t believe she could be so impactful without some svengalis behind her. I still think there’s a tinge of misogyny behind all that,” says Millett, referencing the endless debates about Del Rey’s creative autonomy. “She realized very quickly, being at the center of that storm, you’re not going to win.” So she went deeper into her own weird world, and somewhere between her third and fourth records -- the haunted jazz of 2015’s Honeymoon and the new-age folk of 2017’s Lust for Life -- it felt like people finally got it. Or, at least, the people who were meant to get it got it. After all, Del Rey never had intended to make popular music, even if she now headlines festivals. It just kind of happened that way: a poet disguised as a pop star”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chuck Grant

Before coming to Chemtrails Over the Country Club, I want to look back at Norman F*cking Rockwell and how there was a sonic change. Not only does the aforementioned Billboard interview outline Lana Del Rey’s success and how her fanbase has swelled; they also reflect on how her sound has progressed:

“Yet it’s an approach that has worked for Del Rey: Her songs, even the long, weird ones, easily rack up tens of millions of streams, and overall they have amassed a solid 3.9 billion on-demand streams in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. Collectively, her catalog of albums has sold 3.2 million copies in the United States, and all of her full-length major-label studio albums have debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 1 or No. 2. The first of those, 2012’s Born to Die, is one of only three titles by a woman to spend over 300 weeks on the Billboard 200. (The other two: Adele’s 21 and Carole King’s Tapestry.) Born to Die also has spent 142 weeks on Billboard’s Vinyl Albums chart -- more than Prince’s Purple Rain, tied with Michael Jackson’s Thriller and just behind Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. It’s an indication that, as broad as her fan base is, it also runs deep, with a ratio of hardcore devotees to casual ones that even stars with inescapable radio hits might envy.

Credit Del Rey’s strong aesthetic and singular throwback sound that, as it has moved away from its initial pop and hip-hop influences, has kept young fans interested and allowed them to grow up with her. “When we sign [an artist], it’s not necessarily what everyone was listening to, but they had real vision,” says Interscope chairman/CEO John Janick. “Lana’s at ground zero of that. There have been so many other people who’ve been inspired by Lana. She’s massive, she has sold millions of albums, but it always has been on her terms”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mat Hayward/Getty Images

I think that her previous album has a more personal tone. Lana Del Rey was singing about herself to an extent on previous albums, though I think there was a lot of characterisation and a degree of detachment. As described in the Billboard article, something interesting happened during the recording of Norman F*cking Rockwell:

“Del Rey has been thinking a lot about hope and faith lately. She has been going to church every Wednesday and Sunday with a group of her girlfriends; they get coffee beforehand, and it has become something to look forward to. She likes the idea of a network of people you can talk to about wanting something bigger -- just another extension of her fondness for pondering the mysteries of the universe. (Fittingly, she studied metaphysics and philosophy at Fordham University in New York.) “I genuinely think the thing that has transformed my life the most is knowing that there’s magic in the concept of two heads are better than one,” she says.

That has crept into her music, too. Del Rey says she hadn’t realized until recently how isolating her creative process had been for so long. These days, studio sessions feel more like cozy jam sessions, according to Laura Sisk, the Grammy-winning engineer who worked closely on the record with Del Rey and Antonoff. “Something I love about Norman is how much of the energy of the room we’re able to record,” says Sisk. “We often don’t use a vocal booth, so we’re sitting in a room together recording, usually right after the song was written and the feeling is still heavy in the room”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ashley Gellman/WXPN

Not to repeat herself, Chemtrails Over the Country Club feels like a different record to what has come before. I want to bring in some recent interview material when we learn more about the sound on her latest album. Starting off with the Interview Magazine feature of last year:

“ANTONOFF: I feel like you’re on this very long path to breaking down everything until it’s at its most authentic. Chemtrails feels like another breakdown on top of Norman, but what’s interesting is that it breaks down into different directions.

DEL REY: The one thing that makes me upset is that if I hadn’t been so distracted with my personal life and my poetry, I could’ve broken it down in a more delicate, precise way. I guess the way I could’ve done that is just by adding one more defining song to it. Right now it’s really, really good, but I don’t know if it’s perfect, and that really bothers me. I think I need to add that song, “Dealer,” where I’m just screaming my head off. People don’t know what it sounds like when I yell. And I do yell”.

I think that Chemtrails Over the Country Club is a more reflective and personal album (compared to other albums of hers). Lana Del Rey spoke with MOJO and chatted about the sound of her new album:

“For Chemtrails Over The Country Club, though, she “had to turn back inward”, she explains, for an album that reveals, says Segal, “a more vulnerable Del Rey: lighter on the LA menace, more innocently emotional.”

The album closes with a cover of Joni Mitchell’s 1970 gem, For Free, a song that Del Rey confesses means “everything” to her.

IMAGE CREDIT: Getty Images/Ringer Illustration

“The way things started off for me in the way I was portrayed was that I was feigning emotional sensitivity. I really didn’t like that,” she says. “Because I didn’t even get famous ‘til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a fuck.”

Del Rey says she finds listening to Chemtrails… “a fight. It wasn’t so much that I thought the songs fantastically fit together with like seamless, sunkissed production – but you know, there’s a life lived in there”.

Just to bring this section to a conclusion and, going back to Interview Magazine, a very important question was asked about Chemtrails Over the Country Club:

“ANTONOFF: I remember you listening to some of the hardest stuff in the room. I think the best part of really feeling something that someone else does is that it inspires you not to mimic them, but to do you. With Chemtrails, do you feel like you’re revisiting the past?

DEL REY: Not so much where I’ve been, but more like where I’m going. It makes me anxious listening to it, because I know it’s going to be a hard road to get to where I want to be, to do what I want to do. A lot of that’s going to involve writing classes and being uncomfortable in new places with not many friends and raising my dogs and my cats and my chickens alone. It’s going to be work. I hear Chemtrails and I think “work,” but I also think of my stunning girlfriends, who so much of the album is about, and my beautiful siblings. “Chemtrails” is the title track because it mentions them all and it mentions wanting so much to be normal and realizing that when you have an overactive, eccentric mind, a record like Chemtrails is just what you’re going to get”.

There is one more thing that I want to tick off the list before reviewing White Dress. There has been some debate and criticism regarding the album cover for Chemtrails Over the Country Club. It is a black-and-white photograph where Del Rey is seen at a table surrounded by her friends. The lack of diversity in the photo was highlighted. In the BBC Radio 1 interview with Annie Mac, Del Rey addressed that point:

“Lana argued she was responding rather than pre-empting criticisms that the cover to Chemtrails Over The Country Club - a black and white photo depicting Del Rey and an entourage hanging out in vintage attire - showed a lack of diversity.

"Before I even put the album cover up, I knew what people were going to say," she told BBC's Annie Mac.

"So when they actually started saying things, I responded and I just said, ‘I got a lot of issues but inclusivity ain’t one of them.’ It just isn’t. You can’t just make it my problem."

"My friends, my family, my whatever… They’re not all one way and we’re not the ones storming the Capitol. [Laughs] We voted for Biden. My girlfriends come from all over the world, they have children from all different types of people. And I’m mentioning all this, like, to people who are listening because people really wanted even more people of color on my album cover”.

Reiterating what she explained yesterday, the women in the photo are Lana's "longest-term, nicest friends" and she "felt uncomfortable having them somewhat brought into the controversy, but I spoke to them as well and they were like… ‘We don’t care. You should not care about… everything you’re doing… Your friends are from all over the place and you’ve never represented yourself in any other way”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Chuck Grant

This takes me to a song from Chemtrails Over the Country Club that I was eager to highlight. Many critics have selected White Dress for special praise. I think it is the best cut from a sensational album! In the MOJO interview, Del Rey talked a little about the song:

“She also discusses forthcoming single White Dress, which recalls being “only 19”, working as a waitress, listening to the White Stripes and Kings Of Leon.

“I’m sure the grass is always greener,” Del Rey says, looking back on her waitressing days, “but I had a lot of fun dreaming about what was going to come next. Also, I really liked being of service and I still do – I do lots of little things in my spare time that put me back sort of in that service space”.

In the video for White Dress, we see Del Rey on roller skates as she caresses, sweeps and glides down the street. Dogs bark in a neighbouring yard. There is this romantic and almost carefree attitude that really grips you. The song itself has a beautiful piano coda which is graceful and delicate. Whereas I associate a lot of Lana Del Rey’s songs as having a lower vocal register and perhaps having a distinct sound, her delivery On White Dress is higher in pitch. There is a breathiness and beauty that really brings the words to life. The opening verse has the artist in pensive and nostalgic mode: “Sun stare, don't care with my head in my hands/Thinking of a simpler time/Like Sun Ra, feel small/But I had it under control every time”. I really like the vocal sound on White Dress. As opposed to the earliest sound where there were strings and Del Rey had this sort of smokiness and drawl, White Dress (and Chemtrails Over the Country Club) has a very different sound.

PHOTO CREDIT: Melodie McDaniel

The chorus, where Del Rey thinks back to her waitressing time, provokes some very clear and wonderful images: “When I was a waitress wearing a white dress/Look how I do this, look how I got this/I was a waitress working the night shift/You were my man, felt like I got this/Down at the Men in Music Business Conference/Down in Orlando, I was only nineteen/Down at the Men in Music Business Conference/I only mention it 'cause it was such a scene/And I felt seen/Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm”. I can understand why White Dress is an important song to Del Rey. She really puts her heart and soul into the track! I am hooked on the video. Seeing Del Rey skate and weave down the road, it is quite enchanting and transfixing! Although the sound of White Dress has elements of Folk and Americana, the second verse finds the heroine discussing a particularly favourite duo of mine: “Summer, sizzling/Listening to Jazz out on the lawn/Listening to White Stripes when they were white-hot/Listening to Rock all day long”. The chorus almost finds Del Rey’s voice breaking. It is a very striking and emotional delivery that draws you into the song. The notion of her looking back at the pre-fame days where was listening to Kings of Leon and was doing a waitressing job really does stick in the mind. I was hugely moved by this beautiful song.. With very little responsibility and pressure, there is this sense of loss and need to return to that time, I feel. In the video, we see some people (friends of Del Rey?) roller-skating and grabbing some good to go (whilst wearing masks in a very COVID-responsible way). The bridge is, possibly, the most stirring moment of White Dress: “Summer, summer's almost gone/We were talking about life, we were sitting outside 'til dawn/But I would still go back/If I could do it all again, I'd fly/Because it made me feel, made me feel like a god/'Cause it made me feel, made me feel like a god/Somehow it made me feel, made me feel like a god”. As the sun goes down, Del Rey skates around by the water. Like so many of her videos, one keeps coming back to see all these beautiful scenes. It is a wonderful video that paints this idyllic picture where Del Rey is free and liberated. It is dreamy and utterly memorable. The song itself is a sublime moment on a fabulous album. I can see why so many people selected White Dress as a highlight of Chemtrails Over the Country Club.

I am going to round things up. Before then, there are a couple of points I want to address. Coming back to the NME interview I have sourced from a fair bit, Del Rey was asked about her contemporaries and any artists that she follows or counts as important:

“Grande’s name is one that crops up a few times during our conversation and is clearly someone Del Rey respects. When discussing the long flow of singles in the run-up to ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’, she credits Grande’s “reactiveness” for making her feel “more comfortable putting things out as I wanted to and as they happened”. Later, after having the “the culture is lit” line from ‘The Greatest’ recited back to her (she responds by repeating it in a voice that can only be described as valley girl on spring break), the pop star is one of two artists she cites by name as getting her approval (the other is Billie Eilish, someone who has done a similar thing to Del Rey and carved out her own inimitable cultural niche).

As for the rest of pop culture in 2019, Del Rey is mostly on board. The only other thing she singles out as something she’s enjoying right now is “all the mumble rappers”, whose number includes Lil Uzi Vert, Juice WRLD, and 21 Savage. “It feels sexy and authentic,” she enthuses. “I’m into it. Personally, I’ve been waiting for a bunch of different people to flood in and they’re all here. It’s awesome”.

The last thing that I want to bring in was a segment from the Interview Magazine feature. Nodding back to the presidency of Donald Trump (even though Joe Biden is President now and things look more hopeful for America), and Lana Del Rey had some interesting thoughts:

“DEL REY: I subscribe to the idea that what’s going on in the macrocosm, whether it be in the presidency or a virus that keeps us isolated, is a reflection of what’s going on in the individual home and inside bedrooms and what people intimately talk about. I think there’s been existential panic for a long time, but people haven’t been paying attention to it because they’ve been too busy buying shoes. And shoes are cute. I love shoes. But now that you can’t go shopping, you have to look at your partner and be like, “I’ve lived with you for 20 years, but do I even know you?” You realize maybe you’ve only ever allowed yourself to scratch the surface of yourself because if you went any deeper, you might have a mild meltdown for no reason, just out of the blue, and no amount of talking could explain why. It’s just a part of your genetic makeup. You could just be prone to panic. I think a lot of people are that way. I got a lot of shit for not only talking about it, but talking about lots of other things for a super long time. I don’t feel justified in it, because I’m not the kind of artist who’s ever going to get justified. I will die an underdog and that’s cool with me. But I was right to ask, “Why are we here? Where did we come from? What are we doing? What happens if this insane, crazy, sci-fi crisis happens, and then you’re stuck with yourself, and you’re stuck with your partner who doesn’t pay attention to you?” I’m not saying it’s more relevant than ever, but my concern for myself, the country, the world— I knew we weren’t prepared for something like this, mentally. I also think it’s a really good thing that we’ve gotten to this point where we have to bump up against ourselves, because it’s not going to be the same when the Beverly Center reopens”.

If you have not got Chemtrails Over the Country Club, then go and get the album. It is one of Lana Del Rey’s best. I think that she will have a very long career to come! I really like everything she puts out, so I am going to be looking forward to seeing what comes next. I think we learn more about Lana Del Rey (Elizabeth Grant) on the album and, in terms of the sounds/genre fused, is the most satisfying blend yet. Del Rey is always moving forward and trying to create something beautiful, moving and true. She has definitely achieved that on Chemtrails Over the Country Club which is, to me…