When Lana Del Rey dropped Born to Die – The Paradise Edition in 2012, I fell in love with her mellow, brooding, and deeply melancholic music.
To my mum’s displeasure, I would sit alone in my room and listen to ‘Born to Die’ on repeat. In case you aren’t aware, those lyrics are DARK. So dark my mum thought I was an angsty teen who needed professional help.
Anyway, moving on from that…
Yesterday, old mate Lana released a new song titled ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it.’
Was I excited? You bloody bet.
On first listen, the track— which is set to appear in her forthcoming LP Norman F***ing Rockwell—didn’t grab me. However, knowing myself, and knowing how much I adore Lana’s music, I knew I needed to give it a second chance.
So, when I got home, I listened to it through my speakers. You bet my mum low key freaked out that I was having a meltdown because I did what I always do when I listen to her music… cry.
“Mads, are you okay down there?” she yelled. “I hear you’re playing Lana again.”
Low key embarrassing, but do you know why I’m not ashamed to admit I sobbed alone in my room for almost an hour? Because I think that’s what she wants from us. She wants us to feel sad, but not in some creepy schadenfreude way. She is trying to prove that if you take away the fame, the fortune, and the 12.6 million Instagram followers, she’s just like the rest us. We’re all trying to navigate our way through this thing we call life. And that’s why she’s relatable AF.
‘Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it’ delivers some painfully honest confessions, as Lana compares herself to the troubled poet Sylvia Plath — who famously gassed herself by shoving her head in an oven. Don’t get any ideas, Lana.
“I’ve been tearing around in my f***ing nightgown 24/7/ Sylvia Plath/ Writing in blood on my walls/ ‘Cause the ink in my pen don’t work in my notepad/ Don’t ask if I’m happy, you know that I’m not, But at best I can say I’m not sad.”
Whispering over dramatic piano cords, Lana candidly touches on religion, family, isolation and death. It’s a minimalistic track, but it’s clear she’s put thought into her newest single.
She respects her audience and attempts to reassure us by delivering what we are all desperate to hear— that life is hard for people from all walks of life. And no matter how big your house is, or how much money you have in the bank, we’re all going to die, and our graves will be the same size.
FACTS.
In this song, Lana proves the importance and value of vulnerability. To me, that’s a rare thing to come by in a world that favours lyrics like “You’re such a f***ing hoe, I love it.”
Lana’s upcoming sixth LP follows her on from her 2017 record, Lust For Life. She is expected to release her new album in mid-2019. You can stream the song on Spotify.
In the meantime, I’ll be here sitting with my summertime sadness and crying over “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it.”
Ha, see what I did there?!
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