Lana Del Rey’s “Honeymoon”: Review Revue

Carl Williott | July 15, 2015 7:38 am
Lana's Sad "Honeymoon": Listen
Hear the orchestral title track off Lana Del Rey's next album.

After weeks of teases with the lyric sheet and clips of the video, Lana Del Rey on Tuesday (July 14) finally released “Honeymoon,” a nihilistic love song that serves as her third album’s title track. As is usually the case with Lana, sadness and love are the main drivers of the song. In our initial writeup, we said “it follows the same trail the singer has been going along with since Ultraviolence: a sweeping orchestra, weepy vocals that are reminiscent of a smoky ’40s chanteuse and an overall theme of melancholic love.”

But gone are Ultraviolence‘s desert rock edges — in fact, there’s nothing at all suggesting this is a modern arrangement. It’s the type of thing that would be performed in the background during a black-and-white noir scene, or maybe in IFC’s parody of that whole thing, The Spoils Before Dying.

Below, let’s see what the rest of the internet had to offer in the way of “Honeymoon” hot takes.

:: MTV said the “old-movie-echoing track” puts “Lana back into the character of a grown-up Lolita, lost in love/hate with a man both sexy and depraved.”

:: Our pals at Stereogum called it “a slow, ravishing, stretched-out thing, with LDR crooning and even scatting over heavy, luxurious strings — a torch song that sounds like it’s made out of clouds.”

:: The cheerleaders at Billboard think Lana “is kicking off her Honeymoon era with a bang,” arguing the song is “grander and more ambitious than anything the singer-songwriter has released thus far.”

:: Rolling Stone summed it up by saying “The cinematic song largely follows Ultraviolence‘s nostalgic themes of tortured romance.”

:: Pointing out the “creeping piano chords” and lyrics, EW agrees that it’s “in keeping with Del Rey’s melancholy, lovelorn style.”

:: Slate also fell into the “more of the same” crowd, saying the song “isn’t too great a departure from Del Rey’s previous work.”

:: But Time highlights the departure from her last album in sound, if not content: “She also alludes to his ‘history of violence’ and the ‘guns that blaze around him’ — clearly, you can take Lana out of the Ultraviolence, but you can’t take the Ultraviolence out of Lana.”

:: The Wall Street Journal felt it was a definite change of pace from her prior stuff, noting “the arrangement this time is noticeably jazzier, suggesting that her upcoming work could deviate from the ‘60s pop sound she’s favored in the past.”

:: The Verge called it “six minutes of meandering bliss,” and “a torturously slow bit of blue-hued soul that languishes in the kind of patient sorrow Lana Del Rey does best.”

What’s your first impression of LDR’s new song? Let us know your thoughts below, or by hitting us up on Twitter and Facebook.