Rating: 9/10

Lana Del Rey has a stunning voice, has made countless beautiful tracks, but in the past when I’ve listened to her albums, it gets a little bit stale after a while – hearing track after track of her heavenly vocals sing about her favourite topics: love, heartbreak, American patriotism and cars. Obviously these topics all still feature heavily in the lyrics to her fifth studio album ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell (NFR)’, but it feels as though Lana has finally made a near perfect album. The fourteen track project is impressive throughout and the perfect soundtrack for the end of summer.

The standout track ‘Fuck it I love you‘ is everything you want in a Lana Del Rey song. It begins with Lana’s smooth vocals over a simple acoustic backing, Lana’s flow then speeds up for the pre-chorus, and then in the main chorus more upbeat surf-pop style drums are introduced which help to create a real 70s summery vibe. The track is truly beautiful, with the minimal production working perfectly as Lana’s voice carries the song.

Most of NFR’s production is done by Jack Antonoff, who is really smashing it at the moment, fresh off of producing Taylor Swift‘s latest release. The production is quite minimalistic and it works perfectly; ‘How to disappear‘ has a simple, but effective violin and guitar-based instrumental, ‘The Next Best American Record‘ is a brilliant acoustic ballad and the album’s opener, the self-titled track ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell‘ has a truly beautiful piano instrumental.

‘Doin’ Time‘ is perhaps an outlier on the project, as it’s one of the few tracks not produced by Antonoff and is actually a cover of a track made famous by Californian ska-band Sublime. Lana stated that she recorded the track for an upcoming documentary about the band, but felt that it matched the vibe of her project so included. It’s a bit more upbeat than the rest of the album, but she is right that it fits perfectly with the atmosphere created over the course of the album.

There are some unconventional tracks on the album, with the most notable being the third track, ‘Venice Bitch‘. The song is nine and a half minutes long and features two different guitar solos, but it surprisingly really works well and I loved the beautifully sung post-chorus part. Lana knew that it was unconventional to have this long of a track so soon into the album, but she said in an interview, “end of summer some people just wanna drive around for 10 minutes and get lost in electric guitar” and she’s not wrong. It’s an expertly crafted psychedelic musical trip that sets up the album perfectly.

This album easily has some of Lana’s most emotive tracks to date, with the aptly titled ‘Love song‘ being a truly beautiful moment. The great piano, strings and guitar aren’t even the best part of the song, with the incredible voice of Lana carrying the track; each verse ending with a spoken sentence and the backing vocals on the chorus feeling so raw and personal.

My only critiques of this album would be that I would have quite liked another more upbeat track like ‘Doin’ Time‘ or ‘Fuck it I love you‘ in the second half of the album, but that’s only a small thing. Also the lack of capitalisation in the song titles of this project annoys me, especially on the lengthy title of the album’s closer, ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it.’

Lana has already announced that she’ll be releasing another album, ‘White Hot Forever‘ next year and I can’t wait. NFR has already solidified her status as one of the legendary singers of this pop generation, and definitely put her in good standing for a Grammy nomination soon.