It’s been 5 months since the release of Lana Del Rey’s latest effort, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd”. After months of observation, I finally decided to write about the album, and elaborate on how Lana Del Rey managed to redeem her status as an artist with this exceptional body of work.
Background: Process of the record.
On October the 22nd, Lana Del Rey had a livestream which her father Rob England Grant took part in, this livestream was mostly about her earlier record “Blue Banisters”, however, Lana was mentioning a song which could be an important reference in the future. She mentioned Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me”, which she eventually incorporated on the title track of the album. This was the first sign of an upcoming record. The title track was eventually released on December the 7th, later the album was available for pre-orders (physical releases as well as the digital versions).
Del Rey also created a secretive Instagram account with the same name as the album title, this was another sign that a record was being prepared, but she hasn’t used the account during the era or before the release of the album. The account has only been used for commercial purposes so far.
With the pre-orders being available, and most of the album’s credits being visible, we saw the return of producers with whom Lana has worked before.
The album is mainly produced by her previous collaborator, Jack Antonoff, who has contributed to her other efforts like the infamous “Norman Fucking Rockwell!”, and “Chemtrails Over The Country Club”, also other prominent producers such as Zach Dawes, Drew Erickson, and Mike Hermosa, who has a mysterious affiliation with Lana Del Rey.
With these credits and the number of different producers, the anticipation for Lana’s record became immensely high, and fan were intrigued to know what the album would sound like and what the narrative throughout the record was going to be. These details will be uncovered in the next few paragraphs of this article.
Context of the album
The name of the album is already making a statement on its own, when you really dissect the underlying meaning of the title, she’s asking a question to her audience, the question being “Is there a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?” At first you might think, why would this be important and why should anyone acknowledge this tunnel? The answer is, the tunnel initially had a purpose, if you saw the images of the tunnel before, you can immediately notice a significant difference.
The tunnel was gorgeous, colourful, and gave people a rapid and safe way to go to the beach. Unfortunately, this tunnel has been abandoned, forgotten, and left behind.
This what the title track is mainly about, the fear of being left behind, frightened to become insignificant, and irrelevant.
The song could be interpreted in multiple ways, but the takeaway is that Lana doesn’t want to be forgotten by her audience, and she hopes that she is leaving an impression behind in the test of time. It doesn’t just end there, diverse tracks on the album continue with this storyline, in a bold and daring way that she has never done before.
This album explores a lot of different storylines, the changes are also noticeable in terms of the sound of the album, it’s chaotic, adventurous, daring, sexy at times, but also extremely devastating.
It could sound a bit wild and incohesive due to the fluctuating sounds of the album, but this up and down sound resembles the mental state that Lana happens to be in, a state of confusion, worry, devastation.
A moment of relief, acceptance, and an unapologetic side towards the end of the album, which contains looser tracks about failed romances, questionable relationships, and even a little message to the haters at the end with “Taco Truck x VB” which samples one of her most iconic songs “Venice Bitch” of her unforgettable record “Norman Fucking Rockwell”.
The wildest, and most experimental moment of the record.
Another song that truly illustrates how adventurous this record is has to be one of the singles called “A&W”, an acronym for “American Whore” and a subtle reference to “A&W – American Root Beer”, Lana chose this title for two reasons, both of these exude the classic Americana references that Lana has made before, and it’s an essential part of her brand. However, this song is not as predictable as a classic Lana record.
It starts with a haunting guitar, which only becomes more violent throughout the song. The song opens with the line “I haven’t done a cartwheel since I was 9, haven’t seen my mother in a long time.” This is a clear sign that she’s talking about her childhood and her strained relationship with her mother, but also goes further and talks about America’s issues with sexual assault and the perception of women, like Lana herself.
The song continues to have a dark and haunting sound, until it transitions around the time mark of 3:45, the guitar ends, and the song slowly transitions into a trap song, in this section of the song, the narrative takes a drastic turn.
She is talking about a person, “Jimmy”, an alter ego she has referenced before in other songs. It’s less serious and puts an emphasis on this carefree feeling with lines like “Your mom called, I told her, you’re fucking up big time!”. It’s unexpected and refreshing, and definitely one of the highlights of the album.
Abandonment, family trauma, and devastating occurrences.
Just for clarification, this is not the first Del Rey record to tackle these topics, but it’s definitely the first record where she’s exploring these vulnerable subjects the most. On her other record, “Blue Banisters” Lana tried to explore these topics as well, but with a different approach.
The album was centred around her controversies that have occurred around that time, and how she negotiated with the backlash and the hatred she has received. And some songs were about her family since she wanted to “write her own story” as she has claimed herself.
The biggest distinction is that Blue Banisters felt a little less thought out and felt like an incomplete diary at times. However, with “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” she displayed pages of her diary that no one has discovered or digested before.
Some tracks were so sentimental and almost outrageously open, as if we are technically not entitled to hear them. The opener of the album, “The Grants” is just a light introduction to this subject matter.
It’s a compelling gospel influenced track about taking everything with you after you’ve passed. She sings about all the precious experiences and moments she has had with her loved ones, “My sister’s first-born child, I’m going to take that too with me, my grandmother’s first smile, I’m going to take that too with me.”
She is singing these chilling and heart aching lines with the help of Whitney Houston’s back-up singers. As the album proceeds, the tracks are only getting more darker and more confessional.
The soul stabbing ballad “Kintsugi” has a bittersweet tone to it, since she’s singing about a heart that has been broken and destructed so many times, that you will turn into “gold” once you’ve healed from all the trauma and the pain. And Kintsugi, is a Japanese art to repair broken pottery with gold, which symbolizes Del Rey’s healing broken heart and soul. After Kintsugi, the track Fingertips follows.
This might be her most challenging song, especially in the lyrical department. She’s “tracking back” all the traumatic experiences that she has endured as a child, and as a young teenage girl, and even at the time that she became famous. This track must be Del Rey’s most outspoken song yet, everything about this track is undeniably devastating, from her uncle’s suicide, from her own attempt at the beach as a teenager, and how her mother has deserted her in diverse ways.
It truly sounds like a song that the audience was not supposed to hear, and now I can fully understand why this song took so long to compose. Not only because of the beautiful but tragic sounding orchestra, but the song is incredibly wordy and elaborate, it’s not unconventional for one of America’s best songwriters to come up with something like this.
The topic of the album is predominantly the history of her family, her relationship with her mother and her parents in general, but it also contains a couple carefree songs and moments throughout the record, I will elaborate on this after the next paragraph.
How it redeemed her career, and her status as an artist.
Initially, the controversies of Del Rey were mentioned, mainly the “Question for the Culture” statement, which has affected Del Rey’s image and reputation for an abundant amount of time. It took her a long time to regain the appreciation and recognition that she has received as for now.
Her other projects “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” and “Blue Banisters” were released in the mist of these occurrences, both were not doing as well commercially, but still managed to get critical acclaim. Lana’s public image was severely altered, and this has caused multiple disadvantages for her.
However, after she took a social media hiatus for approximately a year, she managed to shift her image again, the public was starting to regain their love for Lana Del Rey, and most of her records have seen an improvement in streams.
The public was already predicting her upcoming release, especially after a couple prominent collaborations, like Snow on The Beach with Taylor Swift, which has pushed Lana back into the public eye. After those collaborations, and the following release of her upcoming album, she was seeing success that she hasn’t seen in a while.
Her album is doing promising numbers (streaming and sales wise) and Ocean Blvd even became one of her biggest debuts on Spotify.
Even her unreleased songs were circulating around TikTok and those got recognition like never before, overall, Lana was receiving lots of love and attention.
Her temporarily break has helped her to back down from all the other issues, and to just focus on what matters, which is the music. With the love that her unreleased tracks were receiving, she also released the notorious “Yes to Heaven” to streaming services, which only improved her success even more.
One of her most daring, and unapologetic efforts yet.
With nine distinct studio album, the last one, Ocean Blvd, must be one of her most daring and wildest albums to date. Her earlier were not necessarily bland or lacklustre, but they were revolving around aesthetics and a world that she has crafted on her own, or as Lana calls it “World Building”. This album is not about an aesthetic, or a world, but the true occurrences in her life, not only as “Lana Del Rey” but as herself, Elizabeth Wooldridge Grant.
It takes an audacious songwriter to write about this personal trauma, diminishing experiences with men, love, and sex, and about the passings of family members. Individual experiences aside, Lana also managed to make the album fun and amusing, with a mixture of trap and slightly R&B influenced tracks like the dreamy and sultry “Fishtail”.
The album is an exploration of her history, of her personality, as her identity as a woman, and the hopes and aspirations she has aside of being an infamous singer. Because of the experimentation and the different topics, the album could be “inconsistent”, in an odd way, it works out to be a strong, compelling body of work.
This project will stand the test of time in Del Rey’s discography, and it will be appreciated for a longer period, this impressive peace of art will not be forgotten, unlike the tunnel under Ocean Blvd
Concluding thoughts/individual opinions of the album:
As said before, it took me a while to understand the full meaning of the album and what it was trying to convey. Regardless, overall, I only started to appreciate the album and each track much more than I did on my first listen. During my first listen, I was a bit overwhelmed by the experimentation of the album.
It goes from ballads to trap, to soft rock, to pop sounding records. This was a lot to digest during the first listen. After a while, the album became so fascinating to me, and tracks that didn’t intrigue me before, have managed to get my attention.
A couple examples are tracks like Sweet, Paris, Texas, and Candy Necklace. Sweet was a bit mellow during my first listen, but even though the song was simplistic in a lyrical sense, the gorgeous Disney like instrumentation gave me chills, and I even got me a bit sentimental. The context of the song is so beautiful and heart-warming. It paints a picture of a simple, yet strong relationship, the kind of relationship I envision myself to be in. Paris, Texas is another dreamy track that I didn’t really get before, but after the second listen, it became one of the highlights of the album.
Candy Necklace is a dark song that reminds me of Ultraviolence, the piano transforms into a guitar in the end of the song and in the middle of the record. At first, it was a bit underwhelming in my opinion. After three attempts, the production became a bit more prominent for me, since there were so many subtle instruments throughout the song, which gave it a full sound.
Other highlights for me was the soft rock ballad with an unexpected twist, “Grandfather Please Stand On the Shoulder Of My Father – While He’s Deep Sea Fishing”, the fun summer anthem “Peppers”, and the perfect collaboration that we’ve wanted for a while, “Let The Light In” featuring Father John Misty.
Finally, is the spectacular song that is “A&W”, which might be the most important song and the heart of the record, the track is a taste of how crazy, and diverse the album is, and already is a career highlight in Lana Del Rey’s discography. If anyone would go on a Lana Del Rey discovery tour, I would recommend this song first. It truly displays how talented and how versatile Del Rey can be.
In conclusion, this is a Lana record that has everything for her fans. You can find songs that resemble the sound of her earlier records, like her often dismissed “AKA Lana Del Ray” debut album, as well as sounds from Lust for Life, NFR, and even Ultraviolence to a certain extent. The record has something to offer for every listener, and that makes Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd such a fascinating album, despite the inconsistently.
I don’t have a lot of critiques, the only thing I would like to see in the future is for Lana to continue with the experimentation and hit people with an album that is truly unconventional. Other than that, the record is excellent and deserves to be heard, which is why I would encourage music lovers to listen to the record, even when they’re not dedicated Lana Del Rey fans.
It’s a complicated album that you might not understand from your first judgment, but after a while, every song’s personality is just starting to come out. It will be a highlight overall.