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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
NOW Magazine

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
NME

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
Highsnobiety

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
Albumism
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.
94
Pitchfork
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
Consequence of Sound
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
Northern Transmissions
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
Crack Magazine

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
FLOOD Magazine
Del Rey and her noble Norman Rockwell-ian fantasies have moved past their original dreaminess and onto something harder and more real. Brava.
90
Rolling Stone

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
The Young Folks
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.
90
DIY
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
No Ripcord
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
AllMusic

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
PopMatters

Norman Fucking Rockwell is Lana Del Rey unfiltered, full of beauty, emotion, heartbreak, and devastation.

85
Spectrum Culture

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
Paste
The pop star has graduated from queen of bygone California beach vibes to a new title: President of Our American Feelings
80
Spill Magazine

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
The Sydney Morning Herald
Del Rey expertly dips in and out of the past, somehow creating something new every time.
80
The Observer

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
The Needle Drop

Lana Del Rey improves as a songwriter by leaps and bounds on NFR.

80
Uncut
A thematically rich record, heavy on mood and elegantly written in a way that positions Del Rey between Eve Babitz and Carole King.
80
The Independent

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
Clash

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
Slant Magazine

With Norman Fucking Rockwell ... she’s made an album with the unfettered focus and scope worthy of her lofty repute.

80
American Songwriter

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
musicOMH

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.

75
Entertainment Weekly
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
The Line of Best Fit

Unlike Del Rey’s past work, Norman Fucking Rockwell sees the singer walk the fine line between tragedy and comedy.

75
A.V. Club

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
Sputnikmusic

This is her best album yet, and great moments abound amidst the fat.

60
The Telegraph

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.

60
The Guardian

Listening to Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an alternately beguiling and frustrating experience.

musicmagpie55
95

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

exception
76

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

ImpalaLT
100

I am not a goddamn man child.

Back in the day, I used to be a Lana Del Rey hater, probably because of music YouTubers like Anthony Fantano and ARTV. I used to dickride them both, and then I started forming my own opinions. I don’t really rely on those people anymore.

Ranting out of the way, I think it’s safe to say that Lana Del Rey’s music as a whole is growing on me at a pretty exponential rate, especially this stunning masterpiece that is this album. Lana Del Rey had ... read more

TIW
92

Kind of her Best Album

100

This is my favourite album of all time. I actually cannot say a bad word about it, and even the songs I like less are still incredible.

Favourites:
How To Disappear
Venice Bitch
Mariner's Apartment Complex
Doin' Time
Cinnamon Girl
Norman Fucking Rockwell!
The Greatest
HIADTFAWLMTH-BIHI

JoeTeletubby
76

Nice voice

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Added on: September 18, 2018