Venice Norman

With the creation of her Lana Del Rey persona, singer/songwriter Lizzy Grant stitched together the iconography of a fading American dream with soaring but melancholic pop songwriting, becoming an icon unto herself in the process…

Norman Fucking Rockwell! is the sixth studio album and fifth major-label record by American singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey. It was released on August 30, 2019, by Polydor and Interscope Records. The album was primarily produced by Del Rey and Jack Antonoff, with additional contributions from Zach Dawes, Andrew Watt and longtime Del Rey collaborator Rick Nowels. Musically, Norman Fucking Rockwell! features a soft rock sound consisting of psych-rock jams and piano ballads, and features references to various classic rock artists.

Part of the fun of listening to Lana Del Rey’s ethereal lullabies is the sly sense of humour that brings them back down to earth. Tucked inside her dreamscapes about Hollywood and the Hamptons are reminders—and celebrations—of just how empty these places can be. Here, on her sixth album, she fixes her gaze on another place primed for exploration: the art world. Winking and vivid, Norman F*****g Rockwell! is a conceptual riff on the rules that govern integrity and authenticity from an artist who has made a career out of breaking them.

With the creation of her Lana Del Rey persona, singer/songwriter Lizzy Grant stitched together the iconography of a fading American dream with soaring but melancholic pop songwriting, becoming an icon unto herself in the process. Her distinctive approach blurred sadness and longing just as it did past and present, drawing on the influence of classic American pop while integrating modernized touches like trap beats and millennial cultural references. With sixth album Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey expands her vision with the most daring and vulnerable work of her catalog. One of the first noticeable shifts is how subtle the album's sound is.