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Lana Del Rey’s ‘Honeymoon’ Sounds Like a Long Lost Film Ballad

Lana Del Rey is just as much of a diva when teasing bits of her third full-length as she is when she’s singing on it. The first official single to come off of Honeymoon is the album’s title track. With it comes a video. It begins with some fuzz before capturing Del Rey on camera in a summertime dress overlooking the highway from a plant-covered perch. We see a car pull up, stop, and turn, presumably to get where she is. When she turns back to the camera and gives it one of her iconic pouty stares, things are cut. The screen turns to grey TV fuzz. Then up come the lyrics. Yet as good as Lana Del Rey is with her album teasing, it’s the actual songwriting that has us wanting more.

“Honeymoon” is a gorgeous six-minute ballad complete with slow strings and timed gaps. By the time she gets to the chorus, it’s back to cinematic sweeps that sounds like old film score work. With every sighed repetition of “our honeymoon,” a layered harmony comes on top of it, giving the warm tones of isolated vocals in a church. Individual violin melodies interject beside it, coloring in the scene behind her. “Honeymoon” finally sees her part with the low-swinging hip-hop flirting she had on her past work, instead picking up her velvet tone to create her most spacious and sparing track. This is what Del Rey needed to do to up her credibility.

Born to Die saw Del Rey flaunting sad pop like a teenager who was grounded. Then came Ultraviolence, a record of matured pop that had a melancholy center, dark and brooding with untamed pain. “Honeymoon” isn’t afraid to take its time with silent sighs, suggesting her third album will find the realm of truly heavy, forlorn work.

Give it a listen above and picture all the vintage films it could pair with, complete with black and white grain.

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