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Lana Del Rey · S6 E6
Hope Is a Dangerous Thing
The Sylvia Plath line, the confessional side of NFR!, and a voice note at 4am
January 2019. Lana Del Rey releases a six-minute piano ballad originally titled "Sylvia Plath" that she spent three years writing, and it turns out to be the very first thing she and Jack Antonoff ever recorded together.
"Blue Banisters" (Lana Del Rey, 2021). The confessional impulse that "hope is a dangerous thing" started didn't stop with NFR!. On "Blue Banisters," Lana writes about her family, her friends, and the life she's built away from the spotlight. Two songs, two albums apart, both proving that the person behind the persona is the most interesting character she's ever written.
“Recorded no click, mostly live. First recording session.”
— Jack Antonoff on 'hope is a dangerous thing,' Twitter, 2019
The Plath Line
The song's most striking lyric is "I'm a poet and a priestess and I'm on my knees, that's just the way I feel about Sylvia Plath." For Lana to place herself in the lineage of confessional women writers who suffered for their art is both brave and vulnerable. She's not comparing herself to Plath. She's admitting she understands the feeling.
Sources
Pitchfork
Atwood Magazine
Far Out Magazine
TAP TO REVEAL: What was this song's original title?
Blue Banisters, Lana Del Rey (2021)
"Blue Banisters" opens with a piano that sounds like it was recorded in a living room, and Lana's voice arrives with almost no processing. The song builds slowly, adding guitar and subtle percussion, but the vocal stays exposed throughout. Listen for how she lingers on the words "my sisters and my brothers" with a warmth she rarely allows herself on record. The same instinct that made "hope is a dangerous thing" a one-take piano recording lives here: strip everything away and trust the voice.
Sources
Pitchfork
Jack Antonoff Twitter
Elizabeth Grant at a Piano
"hope is a dangerous thing" closes NFR! with the most vulnerable moment of Lana's career. After six albums of personas, vintage filters, and cinematic production, she ends the album that critics called the best of 2019 with nothing but herself. No character, no costume, no Hollywood mythology. Just Elizabeth Woolridge Grant at a piano, telling you exactly who she is.
Sources
The Guardian
NME
hope: The Details
Love Song, Lana Del Rey
From Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019). If "hope is a dangerous thing" is Lana alone with her pain, "Love Song" is Lana alone with someone else's warmth. Co-written with Antonoff, it's the simplest love song she's ever recorded: no mythology, no vintage imagery, just gratitude that someone stayed. The perfect counterweight to an album closer that's all about being afraid.
Love Song, Lana Del Rey (2019)
"We could go back to New York, loving you was really hard" she sings, and the lyrics are so direct they almost feel like text messages. After the literary weight of the album closer, this song proves that Lana's most powerful writing is sometimes her simplest.
Sylvia Plath's most famous novel, referenced across Lana's work, is called:
NFR! proved Lana could write songs that critics compared to literature. Now she decides to write actual literature. Next: a poetry collection called Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, spoken-word recordings, and the moment the literary world doesn't know what to do with a pop star.
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