It’s already been 10 years since Lana Del Rey dropped Ultraviolence? What a “Cruel World” we’re living in… Even a decade later, Ultraviolence continues to be the blueprint for alternative music that nobody can manage to even come close to replicating. Ultraviolence has been, and always will be, an iconic album. The endless Tumblr and Instagram posts with black-and-white filters, cigarettes, and Lana Del Rey lyrics will forever hang on in the internet hall of fame. Lana’s aesthetic for this album is something so uncomfortably comforting that you almost can’t describe. Her lyrics are beautiful and twisted with soft, sad, and haunting vocals. The instrumentals are reminiscent of psychedelic and blues rock but they have their own Lana special touch to them.
The themes in this album are pretty brutal, ranging from domestic violence to alcoholism to drug use to adultery. Somehow Lana makes these heavy topics into such elegant songs. She portrays the femme fatale persona perfectly in Ultraviolence. Del Rey goes against the themes most popular at the time of empowerment, keeping her button-pushing status high at all times.
Since it’s been ten years and we’re still talking about and listening to this album, it’s only fair that we take a look at some of the most controversial and timeless lyrics that still give me chills sometimes (not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing). “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” is one of the most, if not the most, controversial Lana lines in her discography. The title track “Ultraviolence” has been subject to tons of scrutiny over the years due to its seeming romanticization of domestic violence and abuse. I don’t think that anyone other than Miss Lizzy Grant herself could get away putting such an absurd line in a song and still maintaining her worst-than-cult following. Another one I love is, “Don’t say you need me when, You leave and you leave again, I’m stronger than all my men, Except for you”. This line in “Pretty When You Cry” is so vulnerable and real to me.
I don’t quite think I’ve ever met anyone that just “likes” LDR. They either don’t like her or they know her mother’s maiden name and social security number. They’re usually insufferable about her and will find a way to mention her in every conversation (me). This woman’s music practically raised me throughout the 2010’s until now and I think that says all it needs to say about who I am as a person now. The same goes for many fans who listened to LDR during their peak developmental years. If you didn’t have the poster from the Born to Die vinyl in your bedroom next to the fairy lights and photo collage what were you even doing?
Ultraviolence and Lana Del Rey as an artist truly shaped the aesthetics of the 2010s more than we even realize and nothing will be able to make me feel like this era of Lana did. This album is one of the few staples of the 2010s that I can confidently look back on and say that it was just as good as we thought it was at the time. Unlike a lot of other things I enjoyed during that time, I can actually listen to this album today and not cringe at my younger self for being so enthralled with it.
Emma Brown is a sophomore Documentary Studies major whose Pinterest search history exclusively includes “coquette”. They can be reached at [email protected].