“As goes California, goes the country.” This perennial American phrase continues to hold relevance in an age of rapidly changing demographics and social values, isolation, and, as the New York Times’ Ross Douthat put it in a recent column, despair. Even as its nearly divine promises ring increasingly hollow, the Golden State nevertheless maintains a particular allure to those around the world, just as it did for its first European settlers in the 16th century.
Pop artist Lana Del Ray’s latest, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, attempts to analyze what the promise of California means in this era of despair. Does the state with some of the nation’s most fertile land, dramatic sights, creative energy, abundant wealth, and beautiful people remain America’s Eden?
“So I moved to California, but it’s just a state of mind,” Del Rey confesses in “Fuck it I love you.” It’s one of the strongest on a record that spans nearly 70 minutes and features tracks ranging from psychedelic rock to languorous ballads to idyllic odes to a new American sound book of sorts. Del Rey’s cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time” might even make music snobs reconsider their dismissal of the 1990s Long Beach-based reggae-rock outfit.
In an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this year, Del Rey addressed the record’s title: “It was kind of an exclamation mark: so this is the American dream, right now. This is where we’re at — Norman f—–g Rockwell. We’re going to go to Mars, and Trump is president, all right … But it’s not a cynical thing, really. To me, it’s hopeful, to see everything as a little bit funnier. The chaos of the culture is interesting, and I’m hopeful that there’s room for there to be some movement and excitement within it.”
As much as Rockwell was lampooned at the time for his work being too saccharine, many of his paintings featured biting social commentary. His 1964 “The Problem We All Live With” featured a young black Ruby Bridges dodging tomatoes as she is escorted by federal marshals to a recently desegregated New Orleans school.
Most of Rockwell’s art was publicly consumed on behalf of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal agenda. His paintings, such as “Four Freedoms,” were always aspirational, never meant to reflect the present reality for all his countrymen.
That kind of idealism — where man and woman complement each other, where stardom is still just as glamorous as it was in the 1950s, and where California still offers boundless opportunity — is what draws Del Rey back to her newly adopted state, the limelight, or men who, “Act like a kid even though [they] stand 6-foot-2.”
“Why wait for the best when I could have you?” she asks in the album’s eponymous opening track.
Del Rey has no problem surrendering herself to things, be they drugs, the mythos of California, or men. In “How to disappear,” she confidently admits her attraction to the hyper-masculine energy of a lover named “Joe,” who has “cuts on his face ‘cause he fought too hard” and “moves mountains and pounds them to ground again.” After all, she explains, “I love that man like nobody can.”
In the piano ballad “California,” Del Rey describes a lover who has wisened up and fled the state. But he need not worry: she’ll be waiting for him with all “his favorite liquor off the top shelf.” If the ethos of female pop music is “I don’t need no man,” then Del Rey is here to tell you that you’re a fool.
Of course, in an age of female musicians whose brands almost entirely revolve around empowerment and being a “girl boss,” Del Rey’s expression of femininity has unsurprisingly brought criticism. In 2014, she told Fader, “Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, God. I’m just not really that interested.” She’s more interested in “the future.”
And yet it’s her memories and those of California’s past that helps Del Rey maintain her sanity and hope for the future in our chaotic present. “‘Life on Mars’ isn’t just a song” anymore, she croons on “The greatest,” which doesn’t bring much comfort when “L.A. is in flames” and former friend “Kanye West is blond and gone.” That’s all okay, though, when you’re living in the same place “where the Beach Boys would go.” “The culture is lit, and if this is it, I had a ball.”
If there’s one place to be disillusioned, it’s still California. On “The Next Best American Record,” Del Ray reminisces about listening to The Eagles and Led Zeppelin with a former lover in Malibu, driving through the 405, and consciously collecting experiences for, yes, “writing the next best American record.” And she did.
Joseph Simonson is a Washington Examiner campaign reporter.
