Lana Del Rey Releases Music Video For “Norman F*cking Rockwell” & Announces A Spoken Word Album
“I just loved the idea that thoughts are meant to be shared and that they are priceless in some way.”
Lana Del Rey is back with her latest music video from her sixth studio album, Norman Fucking Rockwell!—and she announced a spoken word album will arrive on Jan. 4.
The 14-minute visual strings together a medley of three different album cuts: the title track, “Bartender,” and “Happiness is a butterfly.” During the runtime, Del Rey—who’s dating a cop named Sean Larkin—throws donuts at two policemen and plays with butterflies. The vintage aesthetic comes courtesy of director Chuck Grant, LDR’s younger sister—and one shot echoes the cover of NFR!’s pink vinyl version at Urban Outfitters.
The singer-songwriter spoke about the title track in an interview with Vanity Fair. “It was kind of an exclamation mark: so this is the American dream, right now,” she said. “This is where we’re at—Norman fucking Rockwell. We’re going to go to Mars, and Trump is president, all right. Me and Jack, we just joke around constantly about all the random headlines we might see that week, so it’s a slight cultural reference. 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.”
In an Instagram post, LDR also announced a spoken word album will arrive next month.
“My book Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is taking a lot longer to hand-bind than I thought,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m gonna put up a spoken word album, if you can call it that, on the fourth of Jan. And in thinking about doing that, I had had a thought for a while about how I knew I wanted the album to be around a dollar because I just loved the idea that thoughts are meant to be shared and that they are priceless in some way.”
As a “reparative act,” she wants the proceeds to go toward Native American organizations around the country, “whether it was for preserving their rights or trying to help keep their land intact.“ She explained that while she was connecting to her own family lineage, she was “encouraged to also try and connect to the country’s lineage.” She says this happened a while ago, and it “informed the next album I had been working on.”
Watch the music video above, and read all the lyrics to “Norman Fucking Rockwell” on Genius now.
