#76

#76. Lana Del Rey - West Coast (#32, 2014)

12th of 2014

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It's so tough to do the follow up album. It's just about the most crucial step in an artist's career because it's the moment for many to decide whether or not they're in for the long haul or if the one album is enough for them. Sometimes it can come down to the enthusiasm you've nurtured along the way. Just having amassed enough ride or die fans can help encourage more to keep up with it. Maybe a lot of them won't, but you can break even if you have enough on your side.

Lana Del Rey had a bit of a gradual step towards this which may have helped her. By the end of 2012, she released an extended version of "Born to Die", which rather than just be a quick deluxe edition momentum booster, was genuinely substantial with 9 more tracks. Nearly all of these tracks have blue names on Wikipedia ("Blue Velvet" is a cover, but her version is pretty well known in its own right next to Bobby Vinton's big hit). As an added bonus, she got to spend 2013 as an odd hitmaker, getting dance remixes, and even initially proving without it via "Young and Beautiful" (#841). Given that she largely operated as a cult figure before this, having a genuine hit or two opened up her audience immensely, perfectly timed for the follow up.

I'm inclined to say that she remained a cult figure, but she never really stumbled after this point either. Not really making more crossover hits, but she had such a loyal fanbase that she repeatedly scored #1 albums in Australia without much surprise. Ironically it was her highly beloved 5th album, "Normal F**king Rockwell" that broke the streak. From this point on though, she's gotten so much more respect across the board that I feel it's fuelled a career renaissance for her. She's still not really getting crossover hits, but continues to boast enormous streaming numbers for an artist some might think never really stuck the landing in the first place. While someone might say 'What do you mean "Ultraviolence" has multiple songs with over a billion streams?', another side of the coin will be 'What do you mean "Ultraviolence" didn't have any hits at the time?'.

It's one of those cases where I might suspect it was just the wrong choice of single in hindsight and another might have fared better. The only problem is that "West Coast" has survived the sheer randomness of it all and is still the album's most popular song, so maybe there wasn't a better choice. I found it very interesting at the time because it's not at all something that screams a hit, but then that's a strange thing to consider when you're operating in Lana Del Rey's lane. I don't know what people are actually looking out for here. I suppose "Brooklyn Baby" is a reasonable proxy for what was already on "Born To Die", but that wasn't realised soon enough for me to talk about it.

All we have here is "West Coast" and in hindsight I'm a little surprised how popular it ended up being at the time. Maybe there was just too much desire for new Lana Del Rey that it gave her the leeway, but then you look at the Hottest 100 results and it's right up there at #32. By comparison, the title track to "Born to Die" only got to #34. I think there's a lot to like about "West Coast", I'm just surprised how universal it was. It's a song whose biggest identifiers are incredibly prominent drums and a tempo change on the chorus with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I love the change up so much, I think it's one of the best choruses she's ever written, and it stands out more when there's basically nothing else that sounds like it, even on the song itself. She even starts singing in Spanish for a moment which just communicates to me that she's in full 'Could read the dictionary' mode and I'd be okay with it. It's a hypnotic song I suppose.