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Lana Del Rey · S3 E4
Ultraviolence
The album, the guitar-driven darkness, and the critics who finally started listening
June 13, 2014. Ultraviolence enters the Billboard 200 at #1, and for the first time in her career, Lana Del Rey is the best-selling artist in America.
"White Dress" (Lana Del Rey, 2021). Lana looking back at the waitress she used to be, her voice pushed to its highest register, fragile and exposed. Ultraviolence was the album where the world finally took her seriously. This song is what it sounds like to remember the version of yourself that nobody believed in.
Ultraviolence: The Album
The Shift
The reviews are different this time. Where Born to Die was dismissed as style over substance, Ultraviolence is being called ambitious, cohesive, and genuinely surprising. Critics who spent two years questioning whether Lana was real are now arguing about whether she's a genius. The album lands with the kind of critical warmth that Born to Die never got.
Sources
Pitchfork
NME
The Guardian
Rolling Stone
“I feel like this is the album I always wanted to make. Born to Die was for them. This one's for me.”
— Lana Del Rey, on Ultraviolence
TAP TO REVEAL: How much did Pitchfork's opinion of Lana change between albums?
White Dress, Lana Del Rey (2021)
Lana sings in a breathy falsetto that sits on the edge of breaking for the entire song. The production is built from a single warped loop and her voice, nothing else. Listen for how she never drops into her normal register, staying up in that fragile, exposed range as if the memory she's describing is too delicate for her real voice. The waitress from the pre-fame era, singing about herself from the other side of everything.
Sources
Pitchfork
Rolling Stone
Pretty When You Cry, Lana Del Rey
From Ultraviolence (2014). One of the most emotionally devastating tracks on the album, built on a single electric guitar and Lana's voice cracking under the weight of what she's singing about. No orchestral safety net, no electronic polish. Just a woman in a room with a guitar, and the sound of something breaking.
Pretty When You Cry, Lana Del Rey (2014)
"Don't say you need me when you leave and you leave again." The lyric repeats like a bruise you keep pressing. This is the Ultraviolence deep cut that fans point to when they say the album is her best.
Which photographer and filmmaker directed the "Ultraviolence" title track music video?
Ultraviolence has earned the respect Born to Die never got, and Lana is sharper than anyone realized. Next: "Brooklyn Baby," the most self-aware song she's ever written, and the proof that she's been in on the joke the whole time.
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