Today’s post wraps up my deep dive on Lana Del Rey but I hope my readers are ready for more. Next week I’m moving on to her newest release, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which dropped today.

For both logistical reasons and because I’m very excited about the album, I will be giving the record the ‘full tracklist’ treatment, dissecting its songs in order on the blog over the next few weeks.

This wasn’t like my usual deep dives, which are designed to familiarize me with artists for whom I have many blindspots. I’m quite familiar with Del Rey’s full discography. But I still found it rewarding to dig a little deeper into each of her releases and consider them in context.

I find it fascinating that a woman whose career started as a punchline after her much-derided SNL performance has, in a little more than a decade, become one of the most heralded artists of our time. In the past couple of years, Del Rey has been called “the greatest American songwriter of the 21st century” by Rolling Stone UK and “one of America’s greatest living songwriters” by Pitchfork.

She also commands respect from fellow artists, with Bruce Springsteen calling her “simply one of the best songwriters in the country” and Taylor Swift declaring her “one of the best musical artists ever.” That’s a long way from being called a pretty face propped up by a record label.

My final post in all of these deep dives includes a ranking of all the albums I covered. This one was harder than most. I had no problem settling on my first and last place albums (Norman Fucking Rockwell and the unreleased debut album, respectively) but the rest of the list was a beast. I could shuffle those six spots in random order and pretty much any one would work.

The order I landed on reflects how these albums hit me on my most recent revisits, and I found myself giving more weight to 2021’s one-two punch. I really like the inner peace and inner strength Del Rey exhibits on those records, qualities that pour out of every note and every lyric.

The ranking:

#1. Norman Fucking Rockwell
#2. Chemtrails Over the Country Club
#3. Blue Bannisters
#4. Ultraviolence
#5. Honeymoon
#6. Lust For Life
#7. Born To Die
#8. Lana Del Ray aka Lizzy Grant