Lana Del Rey’s favourite album to record
From the very beginning, Lana Del Rey’s albums have been expansive sonic opuses. From the hip-hop influences on her debut through to the huge, cinematic orchestral moments that colour her most recent record, none of her releases are ever small scale. That is apart from one that stands out from all the rest, not only as a very different type of album but as the one Del Rey herself said was her favourite to make.
An artist’s own favourite from their discography can be awarded for lots of reasons. Maybe it was made with exactly the right amount of creative freedom, allowing them to feel completely proud of their creation. Or it could have been especially challenging but rewarding to create. Perhaps it was made with a producer with whom they had a particularly good collaborative relationship. Del Rey certainly seems to have that with Jack Antonoff, who she’s worked with many times now. Most people think they’ve worked together on three albums; Norman Fucking Rockwell, Chemtrails Over The Country Club and Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. But actually, it’s four.
In 2020, the duo reunited again to make Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass, Del Rey’s first spoken word album, reading the poems from her debut poetry collection of the same name. Out of all her albums, each beloved and critically acclaimed, she picks out this left-field choice as the one she enjoyed making the most.
It’s a strange choice. Despite being known and beloved in part for her stunning vocals, Del Rey doesn’t sing a note here. There is music still as it was composed and crafted by Antonoff alongside the musician, but it’s not the big, swelling anthems her fans are used to. Instead, it’s merely soundscapes built to nest her speaking voice, reciting her poetry. It stands as a project so different to the rest of her discography that it’s rarely recognised as part of it and remains largely unknown to people outside of her core fan base.
But that’s exactly why Del Rey seems to like it so much. As a different type of release and one that only her true fans would engage with, it felt like a revelatory and personal project, allowing her dearest followers into her life further. “It’s interesting to know, if you like an artist, someone’s innermost thoughts,” she said. Considering her poetry to be spiralling introspective monologues that cut paths through her deepest psyche, she sees the album as a way for her audience to know her better. “The way they speak through their thought process is a really cool way to get to know them,” she added.
Just as how the album feels crafted for her most loyal fans, it’s also a release that makes total sense to them. For anyone looking in who might only know Del Rey through her biggest hits like ‘Video Games’ or ‘A&W’, it might feel odd for an indie pop star to sidestep into something like this. But really, the musician has always felt more like a writer or an artist on the broadest level rather than simply a singer.
Even back on her debut album, she was quoting John Milton, Tennessee Williams and Walt Whitman, routinely citing literary icons as her biggest influences when it came to her lyricism. Throughout her discography, she borrows inspiration from poets like Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg and T.S Elliot, proving herself to be an incredibly well-read and intellectually minded star. So the fact that she writes her own poetry or sees her lyricism as more like poems than songs comes as no surprise.
It also feels like a beautiful connection between Del Rey and one of her idols, Leonard Cohen. Upon his passing, she said he was the “only person I ever really felt spoke my language”. Crafting her own poetry in the same slow way that he did, claiming it took a long time to write in comparison to her other releases, her love for Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass feels representative of her broader love for poetry and artists that engage with poetry.
