It also sees her calling in a reference to Joni Mitchell and her 1971 song “California,” which seems to serve as a direct inspiration. “California” doubles down on Del Rey’s fixation on the state (see: her mention of the “Santa Ana,” famously strong winds that whip through California).
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(“Cuts on his face cause he fought too hard… I watched the guys getting high as they fight for the things that they hold dear / to forget the the things they fear,” she observes.) Del Rey envisions a fictional, familial future for herself “I’ve got a kid and two cats in the yard / The California sun and the movie stars…”) with Joe, but the song really contemplates the slippery nature of a relationship she clings to. Slow-burning but with a jazzy kick, “How to disappear” spins a tale of Del Rey’s love for a man - named, in this instance, Joe - that also serves as a commentary on traditional American masculinity. As for the title and first line about “cinnamon in my teeth”? Cinnamon also featured in 2012’s “Radio,” - “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon / like a f-cking dream I’m living in” - suggesting the kind of complex, wild-ride romances she’s know for writing about. “If you hold me without hurting me, you’ll be the first who ever did,” she sings, her voice an angelic falsetto even as she describes emotional devastation. Del Rey has subdued her rebel side in favor of partnership.Ī slow march of a song, “Cinnamon Girl” details a conflicted relationship. “Is it safe to just be who we are?” she wonders over a minimal piano and strings background. The only visuals she draws are of a car: “In the backseat, I’m your baby / we go fast, we go so fast we don’t move… so spill my clothes on the floor of your new car.” This isn’t the first time she’s doubled down on auto iconography ( “Born to Die,” anyone?) but now there’s a sweetness instead of a recklessness in her attitude. The song is exactly as the title tells it: a tender, intimate love ballad. On “Love Song,” Del Rey leans into sincerity. That commitment adds new twists to the otherwise straightforward storytelling of “Doin’ Time,” inserting Del Rey into the song’s layered history. She sticks to the original lyrics, name-checking Sublime singer Bradley Nowell, and drummer Marshall “Ras MG” Goodman, and maintaining the gendered pronouns in the bridge about an “evil” girlfriend.
Her cover of the 1996 Sublime song (which samples Gershwin’s 1930s “Summertime”) is breezy and swinging, turning the track into an atmospheric, bossa-nova-inflected mood.
In place of the kind of move-yourself-to-dance abandon so commonly associated with the festival, the singer-songwriter offered a more cerebral, retro-leaning suite of tunes that showcased her slow-burn bangers such as “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans.A whole generation may grow up with Del Rey’s version of “Doin’ Time” as their classic.
On Sunday, Del Rey – in a pastel-hued mini-dress - delivered a vampy, downbeat set that managed to delight the Coachella masses absent the kind of highly revved 140 beats-per-minute cavalcades that define so many EDM acts at the festival these days. But stateside, the chanteuse is still licking the wounds she endured for failing to project a Katy Perry or Rihanna level of on-stage energy on “SNL” – never mind that Del Rey, 27, has always been closer in scope to Mazzy Star than Miley Cyrus, despite the millennial comparisons. In her second, back-to-back weekend performance in a prime-time slot at North America’s preeminent summer musical event, Del Rey quietly achieved a measure of redemption – a sort of payback for her critically maligned 2012 “Saturday Night Live” set that unfairly defined her as One Who Refused to Dance before a national audience.ĭel Rey (nee Elizabeth Grant) is a massively popular stadium-rocking act in Europe thanks to the chart-topping success of her oontz-laced remix of “Summertime Sadness” by Cedric Gervais. The Manhattan-reared trip-hop diva had a more elaborate game plan than any iPhone interaction with ecstatic fans could ever indicate.