Reviews

Album Review – Features in Lana Del Rey’s Lust For Life

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23 July 2017

By Bronwen

I have never been a fan of Lana Del Rey, mostly because I’ve never taken the time to listen to her, but thanks to MTV’s constant promo of her track ‘Lust for Life’ which featured The Weeknd, I’ve been waiting impatiently for her album so that I could hear more. The song ‘Lust for Life’ pretty much sets the tone for the album, but then again, Lana has a very distinct style that she never strays away from. From what I’d heard of Lana Del Rey, I know that she’s usually quite dark and gothic and doesn’t usually sing about the cheerful things in life. But I can confirm for anyone that hasn’t yet listened to Lust for Life that this isn’t exactly an upbeat album, but she does seem to have perked up a little bit and found an actual ‘lust for life’. She sings a lot about the beauty of people and places.

One thing I seemed not to have realised until I was reading the track list is that Lana worked with the legendary Stevie Nicks on ‘Beautiful Problems, Beautiful People’ – a track that is oddly placed near the end, despite being quite an impressive feature from an iconic singer.

Throughout the whole album, Lana Del Rey has a way of getting the best out of anyone that features in her music. A$AP Rocky is almost unrecognisable on the two tracks he features in and if you didn’t know before listening that he was in it, you might not be able to guess who it was. In ‘Summer Bummer’ and ‘Groupie Love’, A$AP gives his verse much more tenderly than he does on other features and it works wonderfully. An aggressive or intense rap verse would ruin the sultry and soothing mood of her music.

One feature that just seemed a bit bizarre was the collab with Sean Ono Lennon, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. Perhaps this is an unfair criticism of Sean, but for me, he sounds too similar to his father and doesn’t really seem to have his own separate style to offer.

Aside from ‘Tomorrow Never Came’, I adored Lust for Life – it is the only album I’ve ever listened to where the songs mostly get progressively better. On quite a few occasions, I would think “no, this one is the best on the album,” and quickly change my mind as soon as I heard the next track.

I’m not sure if I’ve been influenced by how much I listened to the song featuring The Weeknd before the album was released, but I feel like I enjoyed this album so much because it was quite similar in tone to The Weeknd’s album Beauty Behind the Madness. Both albums are dark and chilled but still feel very much like R&B.

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