Sign In to rate and review
CRITIC REVIEWS
100
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.
100
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.
100
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.
100
What this album most definitely is, is a carefully created and curated piece of musical history. An album that speaks to those eager to listen and yes, an album comprised of many dimensions and layers.
10mo
94
Where her elegant wordplay once made her the Patron Saint of Internet Feelings, she now sounds like 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.
91
After nearly a year of releasing bewitching singles, the chanteuse’s sixth album features some of her most indelible lyrics and melodies to date while blending the songs into an allusive, romantic, gimlet-eyed mural of contemporary America.
90
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.
90
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.
90
Her unique point of view is so relatable and throughout the running time of this masterful record we are allowed a glimpse into her world or perhaps just what it is she chooses to share about herself.
90
Despite the image, the aesthetic, the precise references having undeniably made Lana an icon, this album proves that with just a pitch black room, a microphone and piano she’d have everything she needs to stand at the forefront of a whole era in music.
90
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.
90
Del Rey and her noble Norman Rockwell-ian fantasies have moved past their original dreaminess and onto something harder and more real. Brava.
90
Norman Fucking Rockwell is Lana Del Rey unfiltered, full of beauty, emotion, heartbreak, and devastation.
90
Think of it as an hour-long car ride peeling down the highway with classic rock blaring out of the radio and no real destination in mind other than where your impulsive nature might take you.
90
Del Rey twists the past and present together to create a new definition of herself and American pop culture in our chaotic present, balancing nostalgia and reality in her signature dreamy way.
10mo
85
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.
82
The pop star has graduated from queen of bygone California beach vibes to a new title: President of Our American Feelings
80
With Norman Fucking Rockwell ... she’s made an album with the unfettered focus and scope worthy of her lofty repute.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
Lana Del Rey improves as a songwriter by leaps and bounds on NFR.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
Del Rey expertly dips in and out of the past, somehow creating something new every time.
8mo
80
A thematically rich record, heavy on mood and elegantly written in a way that positions Del Rey between Eve Babitz and Carole King.
4mo
75
Del Rey digs deep into the atmospherics; her perpetually wounded drawl hovers above swooning strings and swirling synths, which rise up in extended codas and on power-ballad-worthy guitar solos.
75
Unlike Del Rey’s past work, Norman Fucking Rockwell sees the singer walk the fine line between tragedy and comedy.
75
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.
68
This is her best album yet, and great moments abound amidst the fat.
60
Listening to Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an alternately beguiling and frustrating experience.
60
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.
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
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
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
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
I've been hyped for this all fucking year and it's finally here. Was it worth the wait? Yes, yes it was. End of review.
OK real review, this album is really good, I really really like it. It's really everything I want from a Lana album. It starts off really strong with the title track (I think I see a theme here) which is quite a powerful piano ballad with of course Lana's signature sweet vocals. The lyricism here is good, it's nothing utterly amazing but it works well for this album.
Lana ... read more
OK real review, this album is really good, I really really like it. It's really everything I want from a Lana album. It starts off really strong with the title track (I think I see a theme here) which is quite a powerful piano ballad with of course Lana's signature sweet vocals. The lyricism here is good, it's nothing utterly amazing but it works well for this album.
Lana ... read more
First of all, it's wonderful seeing a swarm of stan bots join the site, flame people, and then disappear forever. Like why bother, Rob's going to take them all down anyways.
Regarding the actual music, Lana puts together a solid project with Norman Fucking Rockwell. This is definitely an album to let stew in the background or to meditate on after work. The mood of the album is impeccable and overwhelming at times. However, I do not see this record to be a momentous one in her career or one ... read more
Regarding the actual music, Lana puts together a solid project with Norman Fucking Rockwell. This is definitely an album to let stew in the background or to meditate on after work. The mood of the album is impeccable and overwhelming at times. However, I do not see this record to be a momentous one in her career or one ... read more
Purchasing Norman Fucking Rockwell! from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?
Contributions By
Tsareena, owenthinks, MusicXXY, Novell_sx, SamLF, Maxinelliott, philthy, Geoffdelrey, parent, steveeee, patton, Laganjart, anztec, churchyard, Leo Aguilar, domvic, MarkyCBecome a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement
Year End Lists
| #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 |
More Lists
Track List
- Norman Fucking Rockwell
- Mariners Apartment Complex
- Venice Bitch
- Fuck it I love you
- Doin' Time
- Love Song
- Cinnamon Girl
- How To Disappear
- California
- The Next Best American Record
- The greatest
- Bartender
- Happiness is a butterfly
- Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me - but I have it
Sign in to comment
Advertisement
Added on: September 18, 2018