AOTY 2023

Lust for Life

Lana Del Rey - Lust for Life
Critic Score
Based on 40 reviews
2017 Ratings: #447 / 933
User Score
2017 Ratings: #419
Liked by 281 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

90
The 405

On Lana Del Rey’s fourth outing Lust For Life, our heroin demonstrates wit, strength and sorrow over its mammoth 71 minutes. Her ability to magnify minute emotional devastation to the giddying scales of her own performance and persona is bewildering.

90
Crack Magazine

Where once Lana Del Rey’s world was a small as the circumference of the muscular arms that encircled her, now it’s as big as the fears that rattle us all – and it’s this widening of her vision that makes Lust for Life her most compelling LP yet.

85
Earmilk

Instead of amplifying her own retro counterculture, with Lust for Life she's excelled in embracing and reflecting the current one we live in, something that has enabled her to create her best offering to date.

85
Northern Transmissions
At 16 tracks long, some may wonder what the album holds, but its sheer length ends up playing to its advantage. Mixing vintage pop with hip hop and poison, Del Rey is at her usual best. While the album takes a few tracks to hit its stride, the majority of the record more than makes up for its slow start.
83
Paste
There are a thousand things that set Del Rey’s fourth album apart from the rest of her contemporaries. Accompanied by what sounds like an orchestra played entirely by ghosts, her use of electronic trappings never feel overwhelming or fake. Instead, their sparse beauty elevates her haunting vocals.
80
Drowned in Sound

Lust for Life represents the thawing of the ice queen we thought we knew, and the strange death of her American dream. The warmth and humility revealed beneath are all the more thrilling for how well they were kept under lock and key. Human after all.

80
The Irish Times

Lust for Life is joyous but in a Lana Del Rey way. She takes you down into the suffocating darkness with her but provides a glimmer of light, so subtle but so bright that it's all encompassing.

80
The Young Folks
The deep meaning and symbolism behind every word brings life to the songs and brings up topics we can all relate to on some level.
80
Highsnobiety

Part love story and part political parable, it’s her most complex, linear and ambitious record to date; one that demands to be listened to from swaying start to folky finish.

80
The Observer

The ageless 32-year-old arrived at a languid sound, a detached authorial voice and a set of obsessions on her 2012 debut Born to Die, and her fourth album remains true to them all.

80
Prefix

Although the reinvention teased before release never materializes, Lust for Life is still a return to form which should cement Del Rey’s status as the queen of femme fatale pop.

80
The Telegraph

Lust For Life lets a bit of light into the darkness of Del Rey’s moody past works, hinting at emotional recovery without drastically altering her sensuous musical palette.

80
The Independent

Lust For Life is more of an elaboration on her favourite subjects rather than a repetition, in fact, it’s her most expansive album to date.

80
God Is in the TV

It feels like Lust For Life is the album where she’s letting her guard down. It could well be her best and most vital statement yet.

80
The Guardian
This album features some of the most sophisticated production and shifting of moods from her four-album career.
80
The Line of Best Fit
Throughout this accomplished, assured new record, Lana manages to repeatedly freeze time and capture those fleeting cinematic moments that make us who we are, while reminding us of who we could be.
80
Sputnikmusic

Even if Lust For Life isn’t a game changer, it fulfills the potential of a sound that she has been slowly perfecting since she first entered the scene. The album, like Lana Del Rey, has earned the right not to be overlooked.

80
DIY
Witty, complex, and endlessly intriguing, ‘Lust For Life’ is a painstakingly woven record from start to finish, with very few gripes.
80
NME
'Lust For Life’ deals with themes that’ll be familiar to Lana devotees; faded Hollywood glamour, skewed Americana and terrible love. But this time around, Lana is even more grandiose than usual, with lush, sweeping orchestration draped elegantly over each of the album’s 16 tracks.
77
Pitchfork

Since the drastically superior Paradise Edition reissue of Born to Die, Del Rey has neither swayed nor settled. Instead, doubling down on her palette of inky blues and blacks, the singer-songwriter has delivered a trio of dark, dense, radio-agnostic albums that stand wholly apart from any of her pop music peers.

75
Pretty Much Amazing

If the signature style of America’s 21-century chanteuse isn’t your cup of tea, then steer clear of her fourth album Lust for Life. But if you count yourself among Del Rey’s disciples, get excited. Lust for Life is a whole lotta Lana.

75
A.V. Club

Lust For Life espouses the strengths of simplicity and modernity: Its beats are subtle hip-hop twitches or electro-pop swells, with percussion redolent of faraway fireworks booms or mellifluous melodic washes.

70
PopMatters

Lust for Life postures itself above all as Lana Del Rey’s most optimistic, political, and globally conscious record to date. Much in the same way that Katy Perry has begun making so-called “purposeful pop”, here Del Rey questions her role as a musician in ushering in a better world.

70
musicOMH
With some more judicious editing, a good album could have been an outstanding one, but even so, this is still superior, well-crafted noir-pop that maintains Del Rey’s impressive career to date.
70
AllMusic

Compared to her previous albums, especially its somnolent 2015 predecessor, Honeymoon, Lust for Life is positively ebullient in tone, if not in tempo.

70
Tiny Mix Tapes

I never expected that Lana Del Rey’s voice would be one of reassurance. Lust For Life is still her, the Best God Bless American Girl, but with her inner well-being coming together just as the United States affective sphere is coming apart, her fixed position feels more a lantern now than a siren.

70
Under the Radar

Since Lizzy Grant emerged as Lana Del Rey back in 2012, she's been donning the trope of the Hollywood starlet with a darkness surrounding her. On Lust For Life, to some degree that gloom has lifted: it's perhaps for the first time we're really seeing the Lizzy behind the Lana.

70
Slant Magazine

Lust for Life, Lana Del Rey's most ambitious album to date, is a sprawling contemplation of her aesthetic and its various dissonances.

70
Rolling Stone

Shying away from the big riffs of 2013's Ultraviolence and the glossy noise of 2015's Honeymoon, Lust for Life is almost like a fan service album, solidifying the idea of Del Rey as a trapped-in-space pop star of yore who happened to touch down in Los Angeles in the era of streaming music and sponsored afterparties.

67
Consequence of Sound

No matter how deserving Lana is of accreditation, and how close she is to true vindication, less than half of the tunes on Lust for Life are worthy of Born to Die, Paradise, Ultraviolence, or Honeymoon, despite the handful of very promising singles that would make you think otherwise.

60
The Sydney Morning Herald
It's a long, languid trip at 16 tracks across 72 minutes of dewy atmosphere and doe-eyed doom.
60
The Arts Desk

Lust for Life is more of what came before, but likeable in small doses.

60
Evening Standard
It’s just about enough to keep her interesting, despite the unchanging funeral march pacing.
60
Spectrum Culture

Lana Del Rey’s Lust for Life may well be the funniest piece of post-ironic conceptualist performance art project you’re likely to hear this year.

60
The Needle Drop

While Lust for Life might be Lana Del Rey's weakest attempt at reconciling her old school and new school influences, it's also the first time I've come away from one of her albums with more highlights than lowlights.

60
No Ripcord

Lust For Life may be a scattered, confusing record, but it's a beautiful ride—one worth repeated listens, even if Lana's intentions—like her enunciation—aren't always clear.

60
American Songwriter

The optimism of Lust For Life is a pleasant surprise, though the album is still painted in the same shades as Del Rey’s previous releases. At times it’s some of her best material, but it seems like a record best experienced in pieces than as a proper whole.

40
Albumism
Lust for Life is a dreary, joyless ride into familiar lyrical territory.
40
GIGsoup
Lana’s music has the potential to capture a mood-heavy hopelessness that stems from real emotions or else to move on to something more hopeful, but unfortunately, here it lacks the impact or focus to truly make it work. Her approach has often been coined as style-over-substance, but her latest, lifeless record seems to lack both.
BonoLightier
56

Listening to this album after "Melodrama" is the same as watching Britney Spears perform at last year's VMAS right after Beyoncé's incredible performance.

alansambista
85

Lana Del Rey is excited about life on her new album and with that horny, she delivered an incredible material. Lust for Life has wonderful productions like 13 Beaches, good compositions like Get Free, wonderful collaborations like in Beautiful People Beautiful Problems with Stevie Nicks and a song that touched my soul called Groupie Love.

Best: Groupie Love, 13 Beaches, Get Free, Love, Heroin, In My Feelings, God Bless America
Worst: Coachella, Summer Bummer

It isn't the perfect material but ... read more

surlace
68

girl really got carti and stevie nicks on the same album

Stfu
58

My least favorite album of hers
Its had some good songs but i didn't like most of it

JulianC0ol
50

lana del rey is undoubtedly one of the best singers ive ever heard. top 5 singers fors ure
i understand why they put the effects on her vocals they did to change the tone to sound special. a weird vintage feeling, but her natural voice has too naturally good of a timbre, i just prefer norman fucking roswell over this so much.
this album gets boring sometimes. lanas voice is matched by the instrumental on nfr. nfr compositions also never get me bored by always introducing new instruments n ... read more

bloxbusters
62

really lana

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Added on: March 29, 2017