“I’m a different kind of woman,” Lana Del Rey states plainly on “Sweet,” adding a few seconds later, “If you wanna go where nobody knows, that’s where you’ll find me.” The singer-songwriter has spent her career proving the former statement — taking a personalized approach to pop craft, forever valuing honesty and innovation — but Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, her mammoth and often luminous ninth full-length, indeed exists at a wholly unique intersection in modern music, as the artist’s most singular statement to date.
Del Rey’s voice has always been unmistakable, but no other artist could have come close to showcasing this 77-minute set of ideas, sometimes mysterious and occasionally shambolic, but always exciting and brimming with integrity. The adventurous spirit of this album flirts with a gleeful recklessness: Del Rey has explored her thoughts on sex, devotion, family and American decay in the past, but never with so many unexpected guests, songs mashed into each other and restless detours. In an era of the music industry that rewards TikTok-ready hooks, Del Rey has sprinted in the opposite direction: the songs here proudly stretch out, dismissing verse-chorus structures so that Del Rey can travel across another bridge or three.
Yet Del Rey’s pen holds Ocean Blvd together. Writing primarily with Jack Antonoff, Mike Hermosa and Drew Erickson, Del Rey conjures images that continue to haunt her and presents lyrics that jangle around the listener’s brain. From the boarded-up past of the title track to the post-grief forward motion of “Kintsugi” to the giddy friendship of “Margaret,” Del Rey roams across topics and deftly handles them all. For an album that clearly challenges its creator, Ocean Blvd once again concludes that Del Rey is different, in the best way possible.
While all of Lana Del Rey’s new album is worth digging into, we already have some early favorites after several listens. Here is our preliminary track rankings for Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd:
Placing a fiery, four-and-a-half minute spoken-word interlude from megachurch pastor Judah Smith in a prime spot on the album track list is certainly an audacious choice from Del Rey — and while the sermon grazes the central themes of the songs around it, the interlude is a chance taken that doesn’t work within the presentation of the album.
“Jon Batiste Interlude,” which arrives right after the We Are album of the year Grammy winner’s harmonizing at the end of “Candy Necklace,” functions as a playful extension of that track, with Batiste whooping it up and then crooning with Del Rey as the piano twinkling comes into focus. The interlude creates a voyeuristic atmosphere — you feel the two artists’ bond in the studio — but doesn’t offer much as a standalone track.
The “VB” in the title stands for “Venice Bitch,” and instead of merely nodding to one of her most iconic songs, Del Rey fully revisits the Norman F–king Rockwell! song in the second half of this two-part epilogue, as if she’s remixed the song “Taco Truck” with her former self as the guest artist. “Taco Truck x VB” can’t outrun the looming shadow of one of Del Rey’s most towering achievements, but that’s not its intention anyway: the song encapsulates the album’s ramshackle beauty by demonstrating how Del Rey’s past informs her present, like an endless loop that will never stop spinning.
Candy necklaces: sugary and addictive, but the opposite of nutritious! They serve as the metaphor for a poisonous relationship on “Candy Necklace,” where Del Rey floats into a falsetto on the pre-chorus before deploying a hypnotic singsong hook. “Candy Necklace” doesn’t resonate quite as strongly following the blistering first quarter of the album, although it’s worth sticking around for the swirling outro, where Jon Batiste’s murmur joins Del Rey’s own.
Father John Misty shows up to support Del Rey’s lead vocals on the lilting country track “Let The Light In,” and while fans of the kindred-spirit songwriter may be disappointed that he doesn’t have more of a spotlight here, his voice is utilized perfectly in the context of the song — assisting her chorus, forming a sense of comfort around the words “Ooh, turn your light on / Look at us, you and I, back at it again.” Sometimes, a guest spot can be great for its lack of showiness.
Following the gospel flourishes that arrive earlier in the track list, Del Rey approaches “Kintsugi” like a hymn, her voice billowing unadorned above a piano as she prods at her grief. “That’s how the light gets in,” she chants, using the titular Japanese art of repairing broken pottery and leaving the cracks on display as a hopeful method of transforming sorrow into a strengthening feeling.
Del Rey upends expectations as soon as the Auto-tune arrives on “Fishtail,” abruptly putting an end to the hushed vocals and abetted by programmed beats. The production choice crystallizes the song’s message of misread perception — Del Rey repeats, “You wanted me sadder,” but defiantly tells the partner trying to bring her down that “I’m not that smart, but I’ve got things to say” — and also just works as an upshift, positively startling the listener during one of the album’s quieter passages.
Instead of pulling frequent producer and co-writer Jack Antonoff, performing here as the leader of Bleachers, into her thematic universe for the duet “Margaret,” the song instead centers on Antonoff’s romance with (and upcoming marriage to) actress Margaret Qualley, going so far as to happily announce a wedding date. “Margaret” offers a glimpse of the intimacy between close friends and collaborators — Del Rey sounds genuinely thrilled to sing “When you know, you know,” about her pal finding his partner — and Antonoff’s voice, deep and a little wobbly, makes for a lovely foil.
While Tommy Genesis presents a catchy-as-hell chorus built around an Angelina Jolie simile, Del Rey shouts out the Red Hot Chili Peppers — another California institution, which provide the song title here — goes for a midnight drive, dismisses a COVID scare and dances sans clothes for her neighbors. “I threw caution to the wind,” she sings, and “Peppers” certainly shrugs off any structural or lyrical hazards to instead barrel toward a mischievous charm, right down to the interlude where the two artists suggest mashing up their songs together into this final product.
Part of the reason why “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.” made such an effective lead single for the album of the same name is because it is, simply, Classic Lana, in its sweeping grandeur, idiosyncratic lyrics and musings on faded American beauty. If you listen more closely, however, the nuance in Del Rey’s vocal performance sets the song apart from similar explorations — expertly navigating between resignation and yearning, accepting fate and likewise thrashing against it.
“Sweet” may open with Del Rey hiking in Griffith Park, awash in memories and regrets, but the track sounds primed to stun across town at the Hollywood Bowl, its melancholy piano and string arrangements the pristine soundtrack for a lightly chilly evening overlooking a town of movie magic. As the song bends toward romance, Lana delivers one of the most effectively simple lines on the album: “I’ve got things to do, like nothing at all,” she blurts out, “I wanna do them with you.”
Upon first listen, the sprawl of “Fingertips” is overwhelming: at nearly six minutes and without a chorus in sight, the song is positioned as an extended diary entry, leaping across thoughts and themes while the production lingers in the background. Those themes reveal themselves more clearly after repeat visits to “Fingertips,” however, with allusions to motherhood, psychiatric drugs and unexpected loss deepening when the listener is given time to catch up to Del Rey’s wordplay; on first or tenth encounter, the song stands as one of the album’s most ambitious moments, but the latter makes “Fingertips” one of its most rewarding.
The album’s most dramatic “now for something completely different” change-up arrives when Del Rey follows the stream-of-consciousness “Fingertips” with “Paris, Texas,” a relatively short and traditionally structured pop song full of breathy exclamations and graceful piano. Within the middle third of the album — after some of the more experimental turns in Del Rey’s songwriting — “Paris, Texas” arrives as an exhalation, but even removed from the track list, the track shimmers with California sunlight (Venice gets name-checked as her “home” here) and a cool simplicity.
While plenty of moments on the album opt for subtle production flourishes, “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” boasts a climax with a sumptuous cacophony of electric guitar, keys, synth and even a little saxophone; Del Rey, meanwhile, tries to use her voice to quell the noise and grasp for a sign from above. The lines about the perceived machine behind Del Rey’s success (“I know they think that it took thousands of people / To put me together again, like an experiment / Some big men, behind the scenes / Sewing Frankenstein black dreams into my songs / But they’re wrong”) are some of the most incisive, and memorable, on the album.
The gospel harmonies on “The Grants” are purposeful: titled after Del Rey’s family name, the opener takes its listener to church with reflections on the afterlife and booming piano that could rattle pews. Yet Del Rey is focused more on legacy than religion here: “I’m doing the hard stuff, I’m doing my time / I’m doing it for us, for our family line,” she asserts, a thoughtful way of framing both emotional and professional work as a means of honoring the blood that precede and follow us.
The seven-minute length isn’t particularly daring for Del Rey: anyone who’s ever vibed out to “Venice Bitch” understands that she can let a song coast beyond standard run times and retain a sense of awe. Yet “A&W” (which stands for “American Whore”) stands as one of most spectacularly brave songs in her discography, a two-sided plunge into sex, drugs and Americana, full of stark declarations about how young women are perceived, and dismissed, in modern society. The first half locks into a haunting finger-picked arrangement, but when “A&W” switches into a dark, minimalist electronic groove — the potential for emotional devastation fully realized — the song transcends its shell, turning an ambitious concept into one of Del Rey’s best songs to date.