Love

The lead single from *Lust for Life* is Lana Del Rey at her most uncharacteristically generous — a song that blesses rather than mourns. The production is enormous and deliberately retro: Wall-of-Sound drums with tons of tape saturation, a slow doo-wop chord cycle, tremolo guitar, and a chorus that opens into wide multitracked harmonies with actual sonic *space* rather than her usual claustrophobia. Her voice sits low and breathy in the verses, then floats up into that fragile, girlish head tone on "you get ready, you get all dressed up," carrying a tenderness that isn't ironic. The lyric addresses young people directly — kids in cars, dreaming, talking about the past like it belongs to them — and tells them the world is theirs and it doesn't matter that they don't know anything yet, because they're in love. Coming from an artist whose whole catalog had been built on doomed romance and Americana decay, the shift toward cosmic reassurance (the video puts her literally among the stars) marked a real turn. Music for driving nowhere in particular with people you'll lose touch with.