Lana Del Rey is someone I’ve cited as my favorite singer since I was fourteen years old. At twenty-three, that has not changed at all. In fact, when I first heard about the news about her new album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, I knew I had to take the chance to write about it. So here I am. Let’s delve into this album.
Following the release of her previous album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, I began to wonder how she was going to add up to that album. How was her followup going to be because honestly, I could go on about how stellar that album was. And did she prove that she could bring in an equally stellar followup? Yes, she most certainly did.
If there’s one thing that is very admirable about Lana, it’s the fact that she tells these exquisite stories through her songs. Each song can chronicle something about love or something deep and dark and she brought just that to this album.
Chemtrails Over The Country Club makes you feel like you are listening to a storybook. Each story in those tracks only gets better as the album progresses. She writes these fantastic songs that could potentially be a perfect storybook of any kind. Her style of songwriting is just as perfect for that.
She continues to bring in that same flair she first brought to us in 2012 when she first released Born To Die and it continues to be as admirable as it was nine years ago. Every album of hers gets better and better and it makes it hard to resist.
From songs like Dark But Just A Game to Yosemite to Wild At Heart to her collaboration with Zella Day and Weyes Blood, where they cover For Free by Joni Mitchell on the album’s final track - a track that all three women covered back in 2019 at one of Lana’s shows - Each song is exquisite in its own right.
Overall, this album may be her ultimate masterpiece to date. While every other album she has made is a masterpiece in its own way, I think this one really takes the cake.
Lana, you have done it again.
Recommended Tracks:
Yosemite
Dark But Just A Game
For Free