2014 was the year I suddenly understood Lana Del Rey. I had observed her from afar, largely through the prism of controversy (the ridiculed SNL performance, attacks over her “invented” persona), but I’d never taken the time to listen to her music.

When her new album, Ultraviolence, was released to lavish critical acclaim, I figured it was time to dive in. And what I discovered — both on that record and her debut, Born to Die — is a complex, challenging performer with razor-sharp artistic instincts.

Ultraviolence has a Bond-theme elegance, eroticism and romanticism from start to finish. It’s a moody masterpiece.

And I love how Del Rey embraces the criticisms leveled at her. Today’s SOTD throws all the misogynist, slut-shaming insults she’s absorbed back into her haters’ faces not by promising to shake it off, but by ironically owning up to it.

Reading the YouTube comments on this clip, it’s clear that most of her half-witted critics don’t get the joke.

The track is also a shot at an unnamed artist who Del Rey says criticized her publicly and then copied her style. The safe money is on Lorde as her intended target — Lorde ripped Del Rey’s first album as superficial (missing the irony herself) and then released an album that sounds very much like Born to Die.