FEATURE:
Shades of Cool
Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence at Ten
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PERHAPS one of or Lana Del Rey’s…
PHOTO CREDIT: Geordie Wood
more underrated albums, I am looking ahead to the tenth anniversary of Ultraviolence. That turns ten on 13th June. I think that it is a brilliant album that warrants more love and focus. I shall come to some positive reviews of it. In terms of Del Rey’s career, Ultraviolence arrived a year before Honeymoon. Different albums in terms of their tone and subjects, the album covers are also starkly different. Whereas Honeymoon is in colour and gives impressions of Del Rey in the 1950s/1960s down by the beach, Ultraviolence is a black-and-white portrait where Del Rey looks like pensive and thoughtful. Maybe many assume that Ultraviolence is quite inaccessible or darker. It is a beautiful album with a few of Lana Del Rey’s best songs. It reached number one in the U.S. and U.K. Singles like Shades of Cool and West Coat make it a modern classic. The reviews were positive, though there were a couple that were a bit more mixed. Ten years after its release, Ultraviolence still holds this strange pull and power. If some think Ultraviolence was a point where Lana Del Rey was repeating herself and there was a sense of predictability, others feel her third studio album was too dark. Maybe glamorising domestic violence or not dealing with it in a proper way. I think some of the reviews do not find the beauty, cinema and potency in Ultraviolence. I feel retrospective reviews would be different. I would advise people to check out interviews from 2014. Rolling Stone, FADER and NPR all featured her. I am going to start with a 2019 retrospective from Medium:
“I shared my body and my mind with you. That’s all over now.”
That’s how Lana Del Rey opens her sophomore release Ultraviolence back in 2014. This bold declaration is also her first statement since her 2012 release Born To Die. In those two years, Ms. Del Rey had established herself as an eccentric enigma, whose affinity for rich, old men, cocaine, and hopeless romanticism broke pop’s meticulous formula for success. Her submissiveness contrasted sharply to the empowerment-based music that most women in pop chose to do at the time. She became a countercultural icon in the entertainment industry. She also became the poster child for controversial pop stars of the 21st century.
It’s rare for any artist, let alone a woman of pop, soaked in such an absurd amount of controversy and infamy, to release an equally polarising and bold sophomore follow-up. However, once again, Lana Del Rey proves that she’s anything but predictable. Her enigmatic personality, combined with a now refined sense of character and production, fuelled this album to become her best-selling LP yet. It also immortalized it as one of the most memorable moments in music for 2014. Everyone may not have liked Ultraviolence, but everyone most certainly had an opinion.
Ultraviolence is interesting, in that it’s an album where one can discern the very real and tangible control she exudes regarding the narrative. There are three songs that showcase this the best.
Cruel World, in my opinion, is one of the best non-singles of her discography. In her words, it’s a song that sets the basis for the rest of the record. Her particularly strong vocal performance and uniquely chaotic yet melancholic string-based production set the scene, not for Ultraviolence the album, but rather, for Ultraviolence — The Movie. The raw emotion and anger she exudes contrasts wildly to the ‘damsel-in-distress’ persona of Born To Die. Lyrically, it’s one of those rare times where her character actually manages to end a bad relationship. Sure it still borrows many of Born To Die’s themes, including prostitutes, drugs, God, and money, to name a few. However, this time, she is in control.
Money, Power, Glory is one of the more flashy tracks on the album. A sarcastic interpretation of the holy trinity, the song is a 4 minute and 30-seconds long snarky response to all the critics and journalists who dragged her in op-eds and articles during her Born To Die era. Lana sums it up herself best, saying,
“I felt like all that anybody was going to allow me was maybe, if I was lucky, was money, and power, in the form of infamy, rather than fame.”
The media repeatedly showcased Lana as superficial, materialistic, and privileged. Rather than fight fire with fire, Lana chose to embrace the narrative the world had given her. If that was all that she was going to be given, might as well make the most of it. Once again, Lana embraces and takes over the reins of a narrative that was actively hostile to her. She is in control.
Along with her supposed thirst for money, her sensual stage persona also branded her as a sugar daddy seeker. The media and the public alike couldn’t help but speculate the various wild and sensational sexual favors she must have had to do given her meteoric rise to fame. Once again, in typical Del Rey fashion, we get one her best femme fatale performances yet with track 9, F**cked My Way Up To The Top.
Now, there is a caveat. Lana hasn’t exactly denied the validity of the title explicitly. In an interview, she mentioned,
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
Now, technically speaking, it is false, given that said favors didn’t actually get her anywhere. That is, of course, assuming that this is true, which, given her black comedy-esque casualness when talking about it, likely means that it’s not.
Ultraviolence tells the story of a visibly abusive relationship between the singer and a man named ‘Jim’. Lana opens the song with the ways in which the female protagonist is described by ‘Jim’. ‘Deadly Nightshade’ and ‘blessed with beauty and rage’ are terms assigned to femme Fatales. Women whose external beauty and softness hid a powerful entity within. She is clearly alluding to the women in the aforementioned songs like Cruel World, where their force of will controls their fate. However, this woman is different.
At the end of the pre-chorus, we are given one of the more publicized lines of the album, where she sings,
Jim told me that, he hit me and it felt like a kiss
Some may call this the glorification of domestic violence. Some may call it a darker shade of eloquence and grace. Many believe ‘Jim’ to be a reference to Jim Beam, a brand of alcohol and making the song out to be about losing to alcoholism. Regardless, it puts her in a position with no power, despite those previous descriptions of hers. In a way, Ultraviolence is the climax of her Born To Die persona. Her blind romanticism, unsubstantiated hope, and insensitivity to obvious red flags harkens back to her 2012 classic and gives her listeners a taste of the past. This and its more digestible sequel Pretty When You Cry, in short, positioned a powerful woman in a powerless position.
Of course, these two themes aren't the only ones on the album. One of the best songs on the album (and the lead single), West Coast, is a casual beat that revolves around an innovative and psychedelic production and fleeting emotions of casual flirtation and romanticism. Brooklyn Baby is a rather upbeat, optimistic detour to the east coast, where Del Rey pays tribute to all things Brooklyn, from Beat Poetry to Lou Reed. There’s Old Money, which sees Lana return to do what she does best, break hearts. The haunting piano melody, which she borrows from the original score of Romeo and Juliet, remains a favorite among romantics. The Other Woman, her first of two covers of Nina Simone, provides a poignant ending to the standard version of the album, which sees the woman of this movie end the narrative with a return to her former power. Both vulnerable and sarcastic simultaneously, you get the feeling that no one could’ve done this cover better than her. I’ll also give a shoutout to Black Beauty, the only worthwhile track on the deluxe version and a track whose omission from the standard version will forever remain a deep mystery to me.
Ultraviolence, along with Honeymoon, remain her least recognized works of art. Despite being one of the best selling LPs of the year, few awards ever bothered nominating it, let alone winning.
However, in its own institutional way, Ultraviolence remains an album that never needed awards season vindication to succeed. This is in part due to the fact that Ultraviolence’s job was never to sell well, at least from an artistic perspective. I couldn’t help but see the parallels between this and Taylor Swift’s Reputation.
They’re wildly contrasting in terms of lyricism and production, no doubt. Yet they both share one thing. They were born out of the flames of infamy that scorched their creators. They were crafted meticulously to silence them forever. When Born To Die was released, many believed that Lana would just be another one-hit-wonder. A failed studio fabrication that yielded no return on investment. With Ultraviolence, she not only proved that the queen of alternative was here to stay, but that she was also a conniving beauty. A snow-covered volcano”.
I will finish with a couple of reviews. Although there were some three-star takes and those that pointed at flaws, there were those more positive. I do think that Ultraviolence is a dark album, though that is not a negative. It is fascinating and immersive. A departure from 2012’s Born to Die. This is what CLASH wrote in their review of the brilliant and underrated Ultraviolence:
“Lana Del Rey has always looked to ageless superstars as idols: to Marilyn Monroe, to Elvis, to players in a Great American Adventure that she was born too late to participate in. The cover to her third album ‘Ultraviolence’ goes so far as to reflect, albeit perhaps coincidentally, this era: black and white, the colour has to come from the performance, not the film it’s captured on.
Don’t let the title fool you: ‘Ultraviolence’ doesn’t dream to provoke like its A Clockwork Orange inspiration might suggest. It doesn’t prickle, or poke. Throughout, what comes through clearest is a coherency defined by the distinct reluctance to do much to unsettle a trajectory that’s taken Del Rey from complete unknown through blog-hyped ‘newcomer’ to legitimate pop superstar.
Songs, predominantly produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, ally themselves with expected conventions: strings sweep in, drums march with funereal weight, and Lana sings like she’s calling to the stars themselves. To those in the dirt who went too soon, those whose legacy feeds so palpably into this artist’s oeuvre; and those above us, dying slow the other side of so many light years. In this respect, ‘Ultraviolence’ marks real progression: never has Del Rey sounded so compellingly crystalline on a set of recordings.
Thematically, though, tracks can appear content to splash in the shallows. ‘Money Power Glory’, ‘F*cked My Way To The Top’: these songs of meeting aspirations via never-mind-the-nefariousness means might be conceived with a wicked tongue in cheek, with a detached role-playing perspective. But such is Lana’s gravitas that the listener immediately connects the dots between song and singer, excluding the possibility of transplanted players and relative characteristics.
But when Lana’s singing about what we all need, beyond money, power and glory, she’s amongst the best the 21st century has to call its own. ‘Old Money’ is a love song that completely floors anyone who might feel that pop can’t carry emotion like it used to, high-shined as it’s become by technology. Here, pianos chime and violins peak, while Lana’s vocal is drawn in choir dimensions, echoing with real effectiveness across the barrier separating sit-at-home audience from studio-residing artist. To be in the room must have been electrifying.
The bruises of relationships beaten down to dust take no time in blossoming: the title cut, coming in at track two of 11, speaks of hits that feel like kisses, be those of the fist-dealt or pharmaceutical variety. The song plays, too, on her coast-to-coast migration, from east to west: “We could go back to New York,” she sings, like that’d make everything, anything, the slightest bit better. ‘Cruel World’ states, “I’m so happy, now that you’re gone,” but sounds as much like its maker feels rather the opposite; and ‘Shades Of Cool’ examines a partner who can’t be trusted, just a Mad Men sync away from contemporary cultural greatness.
The very best songs are probably those that have previewed this collection, not least amongst them ‘West Coast’. In the album context it takes on greater significance, a fulcrum at track five that balances the whole into leaving a better impression than it otherwise might. The track’s all drama and damaged dreams, fractured friendships and a deep-set heartache. It also displays a rarely witnessed ability to switch tact mid-song, to alter the arrangement so that it plays almost like a mini-suite.
‘Cruel World’ does this, too. The album’s opener is Lana’s favourite, the track’s “juxtaposition of two worlds” summing up her “personal circumstances of everything going easily, and then being f*cked up”. So she tells us here.
A cover closes proceedings. ‘The Other Woman’, penned by the late Jessie Mae Robinson, is more epilogue than credits accompaniment, a gentle kiss goodbye once the bluster’s died to silence. It’s slight and beautiful, relating to Lana’s personal themes but actually doing what her own songs can’t: it successfully casts Lana as the removed observer rather than the direct experiencer. It’s a role that suits her well, too, as she sounds so much freer here than on several of the preceding tracks.
What there’s not is a number that will arrest the attention like ‘Video Games’ did – but then, Lana had the element of surprise on her side. The sometimes haphazard diversity of previous album ‘Born To Die’ has gone, too, at the expense of including a great but mismatched song like the more hip-hop-inflected, A$AP Rocky-starring ‘National Anthem’ (far and away this writer’s favourite from its parent record). To some, this will make for a collection that suits its monochromatic cover: several shades of the same themes, neatly hung together but lacking lasting resonance.
But of course, to others ‘Ultraviolence’ will stand as the first Lana Del Rey album that really embraces its format, which aims for definitive statement status and only falls short through its self-imposed restrictions. It encapsulates much that the press, that her public, feel Lana is about – from the Hollywood nostalgia to the gentle snipes at those who’d prefer to write about her looks than her art. (“They judge me like a picture book,” she sings on ‘Brooklyn Baby’, surely a dig at some journalists’ past coverage.)
For all its lows-inspired highs, ‘Ultraviolence’ is not quite the complete picture. But should a true director’s cut of this beguiling artist come at the next time of asking, she’ll realise a timelessness that so many of her influences had to die for.
7/10”.
I will end with a review from AllMusic. It is interesting that the cover for Ultraviolence is in black-and-white. Compare that to the albums it is sandwiched between – Born to Die and Honeymoon – and you get something standout. Perhaps an emotional representation of darkness and loss. Trying to give the impression of an old film. Maybe signalling a departure from her earlier albums, Ultraviolence does warrant new ears. It is a modern classic in my view:
“The maelstrom of hype surrounding self-modeled Hollywood pop star Lana Del Rey's 2012 breakthrough album, Born to Die, found critics, listeners, and pop culture aficionados divided about her detached, hyper-stylized approach to every aspect of her music and public persona. What managed to get overlooked by many was that Born to Die made such a polarizing impression because it actually offered something that didn't sound like anything else. Del Rey's sultry, overstated orchestral pop recast her as some sort of vaguely imagined chanteuse for a generation raised on Adderall and the Internet, with heavy doses of Twin Peaks atmosphere adding a creepy sheen to intentionally vapid (and undeniably catchy) radio hits. Follow-up album Ultraviolence shifts gears considerably, building a thick, slow-moving atmosphere with its languid songs and opulent arrangements. Gone are the big beats and glossy production that resulted in tracks like "Summertime Sadness." Instead, Ultraviolence begins with the protracted, rolling melancholia of "Cruel World," nearly seven minutes of what feels like a sad, reverb-drenched daydream. The song sets the stage for the rest of the album, which simmers with a haunted, yearning feeling but never boils over. Even the most pop-friendly moments here are steeped in patient, jazz-inflected moodiness, as with the sad-eyed longing of "Shades of Cool" or the unexpected tempo changes that connect the slinky verses of single "West Coast" to their syrupy, swaying choruses. Production from the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach might have something to do with the metered restraint that permeates the album, with songs like "Sad Girl" carrying some of the slow-burning touches of greasy blues-rock Auerbach is known for.
A few puzzling moments break up the continuity of the album. The somewhat hooky elements of "Brooklyn Baby" can't quite rise above its disjointed song structure and cringeable lyrics that could be taken either as mockery of the hipster lifestyle or self-parody. "Money Power Glory" steps briefly out of the overall dreamscape of the album, sounding like a tossed-off outtake from the Born to Die sessions. Despite these mild missteps, Ultraviolence thrives for the most part in its density, meant clearly to be absorbed as an entire experience, with even its weaker pieces contributing to a mood that's consumptive, sexy, and as eerie as big-budget pop music gets. Del Rey's loudest detractors criticized her music as a hollow, cliché-ridden product designed by the music industry and lacking the type of substance that makes real pop stars pop. Ultraviolence asserts that as a songwriter, she has complete control of her craft, deciding on songs far less flashy or immediate but still uniquely captivating. As these songs shift her sound into more mature and nuanced places, it becomes clear that every deadpan affectation, lispy lyric, and overblown allusion to desperate living has been a knowing move in the creation of the strange, beguiling character -- and sonic experience -- we know as Lana Del Rey”.
There is actually one more feature I will bring in before wrapping it. It was published last year. It is true that Ultraviolence was Lana Del Rey’s darkest release to that point. There is such richness to be found through the album. I would encourage people to listen to it. It is one of my top five Lana Del Rey albums for sure:
“Perfect for a James Bond film”
Shot in stark black-and-white, the album cover was a Polaroid photo taken by Neil Krug, showing Lana blank-faced, standing in her driveway and dressed in a casual white T-shirt. As Krug told Complex, “The cover needed to feel like the last frame of a 60s Polanski film, where the audience has been properly traumatized, and this is the last thing they see before the credits roll.” It was a perfect match for the music: every song on Ultraviolence is slow to midtempo, flowing seamlessly into the next with a sad, melancholic feel.
A soft rock track centered around an electric guitar and wobbly synth, “West Coast” was the first sign of Lana’s new direction. Released two months ahead of Ultraviolence, in April 2014, it was, Lana told Radio.com, “inspired by Eagles and The Beach Boys”, while her “mind and roots were in jazz” – reference points which can all be felt in the song. With an unusual structure that relied on two different tempos (slowing down drastically for the chorus, which gave the track a laidback, ethereal feel), “West Coast” found Lana ignoring the conventional rules of songwriting, moving away from the sort of arrangements and lengths that would guarantee radio play.
Unique among the songs on Ultraviolence, “Shades Of Cool,” co-written with her regular writing partner, Rick Nowels, found Lana singing in a higher register than usual. Hailed by Rolling Stone’s Caryn Ganz as being “perfect for a James Bond film directed by Quentin Tarantino,” the song received a suitably cinematic video treatment courtesy of director Jake Nava. When Lana steps out of a brightly lit swimming pool as the guitar solo peaks, the turquoise of the pool and the red of her lips are so saturated as to create a beautiful symbiosis of music and art.
“Two minutes later, he died”
Taken from a slang term in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, Lana picked the album’s title because, as she told BBC News, “I like that luxe sound of the word ‘ultra’ and the mean sound of the word ‘violence’ together.” Further exploring such juxtapositions on the album’s title track, Lana included a reference to The Crystals’ Phil Spector-produced song “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” in the original lyrics, though she later stopped singing that line live, telling the BBC, “I don’t feel comfortable with that lyric anymore.”
The fourth single from the album, “Brooklyn Baby,” was intended to be a collaboration with Lou Reed, but the former Velvet Underground frontman died before it could come to fruition – though Lana had traveled to New York to meet the singer. “I took the red eye, touched down at 7am… and two minutes later, he died,” she told The Guardian. The finished track still referenced him, however, in the lyric, “Well my boyfriend’s in a band/He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed.”
“Whatever people think of you becomes a facet of your psyche”
“Hands down” Lana’s favorite song from the album, as she told radio station 96.5 TIC, was “Cruel World,” a six-minute slow-burner built on wah-wah guitars and reverbed vocals, and which was recorded in one take with her guitarist Blake Stranathan. Elsewhere, however, “F__ked My Way Up To The Top” best summarises her usual approach. Though never released as a single, the song remains important for understanding Lana’s lyrical content.
Her songs often speak of passionate but dysfunctional relationships with older men, and of being the other woman. With “F__ked My Way Up To The Top” she admitted to an autobiographical theme the likes of which feature on many of her records, telling The Fader: “I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.”
“F__cked My Way Up To The Top,” however, is ironic: it’s Lana taking power out of the public’s hands by claiming to be everything they may have said she is. Speaking to Complex, she said, “I know what you think of me, and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.” Other songs on the album, such as “Money, Power, Glory,” follow this same theme, with Lana embodying a public persona, enacting the Carl Jung theory that, as she told The New York Times, “what other people think of you becomes a small facet of your psyche, whether you want it to or not.”
In replacing the hip-hop drums and vocal samples that dominated Born To Die with laidback basslines and dreamy guitar riffs, Ultraviolence emerged as a more stripped-back, simpler album than its predecessor. Exceptionally produced dream-pop at its finest, there isn’t one individual standout song on its 11 tracks – rather, Ultraviolence is an atmospheric work designed to be listened to in its entirety, engulfing you in its beautifully dark, cinematic mood”.
On 13th June, it will be ten years since Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence was released. If some critics were not completely on board in 2014, I think that there have been reviews since that have been a bit kinder. I wonder whether anything special will happen for the tenth anniversary. It deserves some new inspection and features. An intoxicating and powerful album, you put it on and are soon…
LOST in its grip.