Lana Del Rey is large – she contains multitudes, and the way she balances and embodies them on her fifth album is nothing short of stunning.
The woman we call Lana Del Rey has always been a fantasy, an avatar, a mirror reflecting back what America wishes to see through her art. It’s just never been as deliberate, succinct, and downright enjoyable as now.
The 2019 version of Lana Del Rey, drifting through L.A. looking for love and meaning, is as awash in nostalgia as ever, but she’s more tongue-in-cheek and self-aware now.
The long-awaited Norman Fucking Rockwell is even more massive and majestic than everyone hoped it would be. Lana turns her fifth and finest album into a tour of sordid American dreams, going deep cover in all our nation’s most twisted fantasies of glamour and danger.
While much of her older material revelled in its own inconsolable sadness and detached numbness, the lush sonics and intimate narratives of NFR! draw out hope from beneath desolate scenes.
Norman Fucking Rockwell! feels like an album built to resist time – one of those songwriters’ records that could have been made whenever: Graceland, Blue, Tapestry.
Norman Fucking Rockwell is Lana Del Rey unfiltered, full of beauty, emotion, heartbreak, and devastation.
Norman Fucking Rockwell! is nothing if not entertaining in that most Hollywood of ways. Hype or no, art or artifice, it’s nonetheless well worth the experience.
With Norman Fucking Rockwell ... she’s made an album with the unfettered focus and scope worthy of her lofty repute.
Although on first listen it may appear inaccessible and tedious to some listeners due to its Californian themes and static aura, it marks itself as one of Lana’s most cohesive and constitutional albums.
Lana Del Rey improves as a songwriter by leaps and bounds on NFR.
She shows herself to be developing into one of America’s finest singer/songwriters, with both biting as well as humourous tongue-in-cheek commentaries, about the state of political and cultural chaos in the U.S.
Most of Norman Fucking Rockwell exists in some timeless, catgut-strewn place where 3am bar pianos and washes of keyboards serve as the tear-stained mat under Del Rey’s glass slipper of a voice.
By this point, she’s probably preaching to the converted, and won’t attract anyone previously immune to the Del Rey charm – yet this is probably her finest record since Born To Die.
This shows her refining that approach, adding a few new brush strokes here and there, but still providing a unique and fascinating tableau as a whole.
The album is sultry and soporific, sitting somewhere between the minimalist trip-hop of Del Rey’s early days, and the scuzzy desert rock she has toyed with over the years.
Del Rey’s Instagram filter-tinted malaise is her calling card, but on this album she jettisons any sonic sluggishness in favor of crisp, unadorned instrumentation: wistful piano, light horns and string accents, sighing guitar.
Unlike Del Rey’s past work, Norman Fucking Rockwell sees the singer walk the fine line between tragedy and comedy.
This is her best album yet, and great moments abound amidst the fat.
Ultimately, Norman F----- Rockwell! reveals Del Rey to be something of a one trick pony, and the question for listeners is just how much they enjoy that trick.
Listening to Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an alternately beguiling and frustrating experience.
Lana's nostalgia isn't located in place but in sentiment. She searches for a safe space in her memories, a place where love can exist unchallenged by societal pressures. In Lana's world, everything is drenched in sepia and bathed in soft lighting. While Lana has consistently been herself, Norman Fuggin Rockwell finds her overindulging in her stylized tendencies. The music is looser, the instrumentation more expansive, and production more confident. By exaggerating her most romantic ... read more
After two albums that were not bad, but very saturated and mediocre, Lana Del Rey returns with a sophisticated and mature pop album. Her singing has never been better and the production is very engaging and layered. It doesn't have the immediate hits that Born To Die and Ultraviolence had, but Norman Fucking Rockwell is, across all 14 tracks, a consistent and very progressive album for Lana's musical aesthetics. Whoever tagged this as "psychedelic rock" and "folk rock" is ... read more
HI LANA DEL REY I AM YOU CHINESE FAN I LOVE YOU AND THIS IS AMAZING AND I DONT USE ANY PUNCTUATION😍❤️😚🤗🥰😘😽😊😻💋💕💖💝💘❣️🎈🎁😻
So to the actual review:
About a month ago, I listened to Del Rey's debut, Born To Die, and I instantly fell in love with her music. Her vocals were just so good, and the album had minimal filler. I decided after to listen to her sophomore effort, Ultraviolence. Though I found it as a step down from her amazing debut, it ... read more
'Norman fucking Rockwell' by Lana Del Rey is pop excellency. I'm devastated that it took me this long to get around to actually listening to the album, but holy.. It's so good. Having listened to both 'Chemtrails Over The Countryclub' and 'Blue Banisters' prior to NFR, I can finally understand the perspectives of Lana fans, and can affirm that this is her best album (that I've listened to). This is a masterpiece and this is so Lana Del Rey doing Lana Del Rey, I just love it and I have no words. ... read more
This album is sooo important to the alternative/pop genre. I have to say that I appreciate this album way more as I grow older. Simply a masterpiece.
Bangers: Norman fucking Rockwell, Mariners Apartment Complex, Venice Bitch, Fuck it i love you, Doin' Time, Love song, Happiness is a butterfly, hope is a dangerous thing...
Eh: The Next Best American Record
1 | Norman Fucking Rockwell 4:08 | 95 |
2 | Mariners Apartment Complex 4:07 | 95 |
3 | Venice Bitch 9:37 | 96 |
4 | Fuck It I Love You 3:38 | 92 |
5 | Doin' Time 3:22 | 90 |
6 | Love Song 3:49 | 92 |
7 | Cinnamon Girl 5:00 | 94 |
8 | How to disappear 3:48 | 90 |
9 | California 5:05 | 89 |
10 | The Next Best American Record 5:49 | 85 |
11 | The Greatest 5:00 | 94 |
12 | Bartender 4:23 | 86 |
13 | Happiness Is A Butterfly 4:32 | 94 |
14 | hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it 5:24 | 92 |
#1 | / | Fresh Air: Ken Tucker |
#1 | / | Gorilla vs. Bear |
#1 | / | Idolator |
#1 | / | OOR |
#1 | / | Pitchfork |
#1 | / | Q Magazine |
#1 | / | Slant Magazine |
#1 | / | Stereogum |
#1 | / | The Guardian |
#1 | / | The Music |