Lana Del Rey embraces the aesthetics of old-school B-movies in her music video for “Doin’ Time,” ahead of Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s release.
Her latest single is a cover of Sublime’s 1997 hit, which itself is a loose cover of George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” as the opening line interpolates the 1935 classic:
Summertime, and the livin’s easy
While Del Rey’s pensive version is largely stripped of the original’s reggae underpinnings, she retains the pronouns of the Sublime-penned lyrics:
Me and my girl, we got this relationship
I love her so bad, but she treats me like shit
On lockdown, like a penitentiary
She spreads her lovin' all over
And when she gets home, there’s none left for me
LDR’s “Doin’ Time” offers a much different view of California iconography than the Long Beach band. Reminiscent of 1958 cult classic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the sun-soaked music video follows a supersized LDR as she picks out palm trees like weeds, drinks from a water tower like a mug, and dances in the ocean at Venice Beach.
The antiquated visual turns out to be a movie playing at a drive-in, where a bewigged Del Rey is flanked by a love interest–who ends up cheating on her in another girl’s car. That is, until the the 50-foot woman steps out of the screen like something out of The Purple Rose of Cairo, getting revenge on the cheater.
In LDR’s cover story for Billboard, Interscope chairman/CEO John Janick spoke about how “Doin’ Time” made it onto the upcoming album. “We were involved in executive-producing the [recent] Sublime documentary because their catalog is through Interscope, and Lana was talking about how big a fan she was,” he said. “So she ended up doing that cover, which turned out amazing. But then she felt like it fit the aesthetic of the album.”
The “Young and Beautiful” singer recently released a double music video for her tracks, “Fuck It I Love You” and “The Greatest.” Norman Fucking Rockwell! is set to be released on Aug. 30.
Watch the music video above, and read all the lyrics to “Doin’ Time” on Genius now.
