Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

She has finally learnt to write a song: Lana Del Rey’s new album reviewed

Ocean Blvd comes close to claiming possession of the word ‘beautiful’

issue 08 April 2023

Grade: A–

No, Lana, I didn’t, thank you – all cleared up. The most extravagantly talented of that lachrymose, self-harming genre, miserycore, returns with an album described by critics as ‘heavy’, as if we might have expected Mungo Jerry or the Venga Boys. The difference between Del Rey and the rest of those dispossessed chicks warbling bleakly in their bedrooms about all manner of woe is that Lana has a degree of self-awareness and, Christ be praised, even humour.

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