Buckle in for a track-by-track appreciation of Lana Del Rey’s newest album, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd. The album contains 16 tracks, including “interludes” by Judah Smith and Jon Batiste (the former is Del Rey’s pastor, so that should be interesting), and I’ll write a post about each of them.
The one exception is the title track, which I’ve already included on the blog, but I’ll cover that one in today’s post.
This is the first Big Time Rush song featured on the blog in more than a decade. The previous entry also came on a Random Weekend.
At the time I praised the Nickelodeon TV show, which was a big hit with my kids (then 10 and 7). The show lasted only a few years but my now 20 and 17 year old daughters are still suckers for the band in a sweetly nostalgic way.
‘Baby Seat’ is a track from Barenaked Ladies’ 2000 album Maroon, their fifth record and the last to go platinum. The band had a pretty rapid decline following five straight hits between ’92 and ’00. They were a 90s act, through and through.
‘Baby Seat’ has an interesting lyric. The first verse and chorus seem to be about a woman who abandoned her child and hoped to sail through life without taking responsibility. Pretty straightforward.
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.
After a steady diet of an album every other year, Lana Del Rey surprised everyone by dropping a second record just six months after Chemtrails over the Country Club. The pair of folk rock releases drew a neat parallel to Taylor Swift’s folklore/evermore duo the previous year.
Blue Bannisters came out in October of 2021 with very little fanfare and almost no promotion by Del Rey herself. She says she designed the album as a response to criticism aimed at her over the years, and as a glimpse at the troubled human being behind the pop star.
The result is the most gorgeous therapy session you’ll ever hear.
Meet Me In Montauk 