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Lana Del Rey · S6 E4
The Greatest
California is burning, the culture is shifting, and Lana writes a eulogy for everything
2019. California is on fire, the culture wars are everywhere, and Lana Del Rey writes a song that starts with "I miss Long Beach" and ends with the lights going out on an entire era. Jack Antonoff calls it his favorite thing they've ever made.
"Let Me Love You Like a Woman" (Lana Del Rey, 2020). The lead single from Chemtrails Over the Country Club, released during a year when everything Lana sang about on "The Greatest" actually came true. The world did end, the culture did shift, and here she is on the other side, still singing about love.
“The culture is lit and I had a ball. If this is it, I'm signing off.”
— Lana Del Rey, "The Greatest" lyrics, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019)
The Eulogy
"The Greatest" doesn't sound like a protest song or a political statement. It sounds like someone sitting on a porch watching the world end and deciding the only response is to describe it beautifully. Lana lists everything that's disappearing: Long Beach, Kanye's old music, the feeling of being alive in a culture that used to make sense. Jack Antonoff described the track as sounding like "a death march to the end of culture."
Sources
Mix with the Masters
NME
Pitchfork
Let Me Love You Like a Woman, Lana Del Rey (2020)
The lead single from Chemtrails Over the Country Club arrives in October 2020, in the middle of a pandemic that proved "The Greatest" was prophetic. The production is warm and close, all acoustic guitar and soft piano, as if Lana is whispering into the room next door. Listen for how stripped-back the arrangement is compared to even NFR!: no synth layers, no psychedelic guitars, just a voice and a song. This is what comes after the eulogy: not silence, but something quieter.
Sources
Pitchfork
Stereogum
TAP TO REVEAL: What does 'The Greatest' have in common with 'Video Games'?
The Fires
NFR! was written and recorded during a period when California was burning. The Woolsey Fire in November 2018 destroyed nearly 100,000 acres in Malibu and Ventura County, where Lana lives. You can hear the smoke in these songs: the apocalyptic imagery, the sense that paradise is temporary, the way "The Greatest" feels like a farewell letter to a state.
Sources
Rolling Stone
The Guardian
The Greatest: The Details
How to Disappear, Lana Del Rey
From Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019). The title says it all. Where "The Greatest" watches California disappear, "How to Disappear" is about wanting to disappear yourself. Lana sings about watching boys, laying in the grass, and fading from public life. It's the quietest track on NFR! and the one that sounds most like a woman who's done performing.
How to Disappear, Lana Del Rey (2019)
"I'm headed straight for the hills" she sings, and the lyrics read like an exit strategy disguised as a love song. After the acclaim of NFR!, these words feel prophetic: Lana would spend the next years pulling further and further from public life.
Which California wildfire was raging during the writing and recording of NFR!?
NFR! is a masterpiece, but it still has one more surprise: a Sublime cover that sounds nothing like the original and becomes one of the biggest songs of Lana's career. Next: "Doin' Time," a 1996 ska-punk classic turned into something nobody expected.
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