Lana Del Rey releases seven-minute epic single "A&W"
Happy Valentine’s Day to all lovers, hopeless romantics, and sad girls and boys alike. Whether you’re caught in Cupid’s arrow or not, you can count on Lana Del Rey to bring you a valentine.
Today, the singer-songwriter dropped the second single off her upcoming album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (out March 24). After releasing the title track in January, she’s shared “A&W,” which couldn’t be more different than the lead single.
Co-written and co-produced with her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, “A&W” is a seven-minute odyssey that finds the narrator detailing her childhood and everything that led to her descent into sex addiction and toxic relationships, or as LDR sings, “This is the experience of being an American whore.” In the greatest Lana fashion, there’s potentially a reference to the 2015 indie drama The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is about a young woman similar to the character in the song, repetition of her singing, “Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop,” and self-mythologizing, as mentions a man named Jimmy, or a name used frequently in her early work. There’s an apathy to her delivery at times as she sings of loveless relationships, and yet it’s still full of feeling — especially as the song warps into a sexy trip-hop beat. All in all, it’s yet another seedy-yet-gorgeous American epic from the artist.
Listen to “A&W” below.
