Country : United States Label : Interscope Genres and styles : Classic Pop / Electronic / Instrumental Hip Hop / Pop Year : 2023

Lana Del Rey – Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd

· by Alain Brunet

A decade earlier, the emerging Lana Del Rey was the prey of many haters in the so-called reference media. The American from Lake Placid was criticized for her voice, for her soft childhood and adolescence, for her plastic surgeries, for her oversised ambition, for prefabricating a falsely dark and tragic persona, for her botox-inflated opportunism, and worse.

Her counter-performance on a late night talk show had certainly contributed to this descent into hell of the official critics, we know the rest: we are in 2023 and Lana Del Rey has long since proven her great talent. Her voice is now considered magnificent, the vastness of her songwriting universe and her prolificity are re-acknowledged with each new album release.

This is her ninth album in 13 years of recording activity and this album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, keeps everything interesting.

The darkness of his debut, this nostalgic quest for a dead and buried America, is replaced by a more open-minded approach. Portraits often dark and cynical but wiser, less glued to its immediate issues, emotional hyperlucidity, acute sense of observation, search for beauty despite the burden of the task.

Through love, friendship, family, social or even mystical webs, Lana del Rey tries to extract meaning and wisdom through poetic feeling. More and more wisdom, therefore, and this at the expense of the disarray and the very real distress of the beginning.

Musically, the singer’s universe continues to expand, as can be seen in the second rap “movement” of the song A&W, a heartfelt text about sexual abuse. Ditto on Peppers, another rap song that doesn’t distort the 37-year-old’s bill in any way. The album is produced by the main character, joined by Mike Hermosa, Jack Antonoff, Drew Erickson, Zach Dawes and Benji, and we don’t count the collaborations of Tommy Genesis, Father John Misty, Riopy, Jon Batiste, Bleachers, SYML.

The blue-gray ballads, the lavish string arrangements of the classic pop of the 40s, 50s or 60s, the folk songs with piano or acoustic guitar, in short, everything we know about Lana Del Rey is enriched with new textural sound elements coming from electronic lutherie or experimental music, all of this with instrumental interludes in the manner of a hip-hop album or neoclassical attempts that are perfectly acceptable since they serve song forms without instrumental pretensions.

Lana Del Rey’s touch is now known, but the vein is still rich. This album is neither a bomb nor a big wow but it is part of the very rich corpus of this tragic beauty.

Latest 360 Content

Nuits d’Afrique | Shatta Initiation with Blaiz Fayah

Nuits d’Afrique | Shatta Initiation with Blaiz Fayah

Nuits d’Afrique | La Chiva Gantiva Launches the Festival with a Bang

Nuits d’Afrique | La Chiva Gantiva Launches the Festival with a Bang

Festival de Lanaudière | Live tour de force by Christian Tetzlaff: the JS Bach Complete Sonatas and Partitas

Festival de Lanaudière | Live tour de force by Christian Tetzlaff: the JS Bach Complete Sonatas and Partitas

Sextile – yes, please.

Sextile – yes, please.

Nuits d’Afrique | KillaBeatMaker, Afro Columbian Electronic Groove

Nuits d’Afrique | KillaBeatMaker, Afro Columbian Electronic Groove

Puffer – Street Hassle

Puffer – Street Hassle

Nuits d’Afrique 2025: ALL About The Program

Nuits d’Afrique 2025: ALL About The Program

Festival de Lanaudière | Collectif9 : contemporary music through groove and folk

Festival de Lanaudière | Collectif9 : contemporary music through groove and folk

Sam Dickinson – Gemini Duets

Sam Dickinson – Gemini Duets

Monkey House – Crashbox

Monkey House – Crashbox

Mark Molnar – EXO

Mark Molnar – EXO

Nuits d’Afrique | SARĀB, Syrian-Lebanese Songs Sizzled With Metal and Jazz-Rock

Nuits d’Afrique | SARĀB, Syrian-Lebanese Songs Sizzled With Metal and Jazz-Rock

Tyr Jami – Morphic Subduction

Tyr Jami – Morphic Subduction

Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin, Markku Ounaskari – Arcanum

Arve Henriksen, Trygve Seim, Anders Jormin, Markku Ounaskari – Arcanum

Steve Holt Jazz Impact Quintet – Impact

Steve Holt Jazz Impact Quintet – Impact

Isabelle Faust/Les Siècles; François-Xavier Roth – Ligeti : Concertos

Isabelle Faust/Les Siècles; François-Xavier Roth – Ligeti : Concertos

Blackwater Holylight – If You Only Knew

Blackwater Holylight – If You Only Knew

M83 – A Necessary Escape (Dakar Chronicles Original Soundtrack)

M83 – A Necessary Escape (Dakar Chronicles Original Soundtrack)

Festival de Lanaudière | The Coronation of Poppea, the triumph of Octavia and the mastery of Alarcon

Festival de Lanaudière | The Coronation of Poppea, the triumph of Octavia and the mastery of Alarcon

FIJM | Sun Ra Arkestra Still in the Physical World But…

FIJM | Sun Ra Arkestra Still in the Physical World But…

FIJM | Esperanza Spalding Between Two Chairs on the Place des Festivals

FIJM | Esperanza Spalding Between Two Chairs on the Place des Festivals

FIJM | Saxophonist and vocalist Camille Thurman, New Montreal Hidden Treasure

FIJM | Saxophonist and vocalist Camille Thurman, New Montreal Hidden Treasure

Festival de Lanaudière | Bruckner and Payare: Cathedral builders

Festival de Lanaudière | Bruckner and Payare: Cathedral builders

Subscribe to our newsletter