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Lana Del Rey · S6 E3
Norman Fucking Rockwell!
The album arrives, the critics lose their minds, and the vindication is complete
August 30, 2019. Pitchfork publishes its review of Norman Fucking Rockwell! and gives Lana Del Rey a 9.4, the highest score they've awarded any album in five years. Seven years earlier, the same publication gave Born to Die a 5.5.
"Norman Fucking Rockwell" (Lana Del Rey, 2019). Press play. This is the first thing you hear when you put on the album the critics called the best of 2019: a piano, a whispered "Goddamn, man-child," and a song that rewrites every expectation anyone ever had about Lana Del Rey.
The Review That Changed Everything
Jenn Pelly's review doesn't just praise the album. It calls Lana Del Rey "one of America's greatest living songwriters" and names her "the next best American songwriter, period." For an artist who was dismissed as fake, manufactured, and incapable of genuine artistry just seven years earlier, these words from Pitchfork land like a verdict being overturned.
Sources
Pitchfork
“A millennial troubadour, singing tales of beloved bartenders and broken men, of fast cars and all of the senses, of freedom and transformation and the wreckage of being alive.”
— Jenn Pelly on Lana Del Rey, Pitchfork, August 2019
TAP TO REVEAL: How dramatic is Lana's Pitchfork redemption arc?
Universal Acclaim
It isn't just Pitchfork. Rolling Stone, NME, The Guardian, and Stereogum all publish glowing reviews. NFR! earns a nomination for Album of the Year at the 62nd Grammy Awards. By December, it appears on virtually every major publication's year-end best-of list. The conversation about whether Lana Del Rey is a real artist is finally, permanently over.
Sources
Metacritic
Grammy Awards
Rolling Stone
NFR!: The Numbers
Norman Fucking Rockwell, Lana Del Rey (2019)
The album opens with "Goddamn, man-child," and from the first second it's clear this isn't the Lana of Born to Die. Antonoff's piano sits wide open in the mix with nothing hiding behind it, and Lana's voice is the most unprocessed it's ever been on record. Listen for how the melody keeps climbing but the dynamic stays flat, as if she's too exhausted to shout at the man she's singing about. The restraint is the whole point: this is an artist who finally has nothing left to prove.
Sources
Pitchfork
Stereogum
Happiness Is a Butterfly, Lana Del Rey
From Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019). Buried near the end of the album, this is NFR!'s most fragile moment: a song about how joy feels temporary by definition, something that lands on your hand and flies away the moment you notice it. Underneath all the critical acclaim and Grammy nominations, this is what Lana is actually feeling. The vindication is real, but so is the fear that it won't last.
Happiness Is a Butterfly, Lana Del Rey (2019)
"I said don't be a jerk, don't call me a taxi" she sings, mixing the mundane and the devastating in a single breath. The lyrics capture the specific loneliness of being surrounded by praise and still not feeling safe.
NFR! was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2020 Grammys. Who won?
The critics have spoken and the vindication is complete. But Lana isn't celebrating. Next: California is burning, the culture is dying, and "The Greatest" becomes the most beautiful eulogy she's ever written.
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