Lana Del Ray This week premiered her new single West Coast, from her soon-to-be-released album Ultraviolence.
She debuted the song at the music festival Coachella, reports the New York Daily News, calling it “hypnotic”. Mashable says Lana Del Rey was the most-mentioned artist on Twitter at Coachella during the first weekend.
Down on the West Coast, they got a sayin'... http://t.co/2IPnJYIK6x pic.twitter.com/VXFboxGU8h
— Lana Del Rey (@LanaDelRey) April 10, 2014
“Just try not to get it stuck in your head. (You'll lose.)”, says Elle. “Simple, almost non-existent guitar riffs run muted under her well-loved velvety cooing. Nothing about West Coast is groundbreaking. It's exactly as entrancing as her biggest hit, Summertime Sadness”, sayssheknows.com. They add “What could seem tired and overplayed from anyone else seems like a breath of fresh air from Del Rey, perhaps because we've waited so long for it...”
Rolling Stone says the song shows off two different, moody sides of the 27-year-old.
Beginning with a syncopated drum fill and slow, skanking rhythm, she sings about supposed West Coast sayings ("If you're not drinking, then you're not playing") in the song, but that it's OK because, "You've got the music in you," as different guitar textures add elements of pop and soft rock. But then a surf-guitar line transitions the song into a saccharine-sweet slow-tempo, "Ooh baby, ooh baby" love song. The connecting thread is a slow pulse of distortion that ebbs and flows like the beach water in the video, as Del Rey spins in circles and cuddles up to a long-haired, leather-jacketed rocker.
Tracing the ‘genealogy’ of the song, Grantland says “the song deviates from the winning formula Del Rey invented and then burnished with Born to Die and its Paradise edition, without fully shedding her old skin.” Citing The Beatles, The Turtles, Sonic Youth, Ritchie Valens, The Doors and Stevie Nicks, Mollie Lambert finds herself even more excited for the album to drop.
It took me a really long time to get into the Doors, because they sometimes made me feel embarrassed to my very soul core, mostly because of Jim Morrison. And to be honest, so does Lana Del Rey sometimes. But I came to understand that there is power in making someone feel that way. Jim and Lana both tap into a part of my brain I don’t always like to access, because it makes me feel so vulnerable and weird.
