Known for her consistent ‘sexy beat, depressing lyrics’, Lana Del Rey is the face of the revival of old Hollywood beauty, style, and music. With nine studio albums and forty-one singles, she is the blueprint for the iconic “sad girl persona” as seen most prominently on her third album; Ultraviolence.
Del Rey sets the tone of the album starting with the cover. A melancholic depiction of a dreary world, manifested through a black and white portrait of her iconic puppy eyes and sultry pose. The title is equally as rich in melancholy, “I like that luxe sound of the word ‘ultra’ and the mean sound of the word ‘violence’ together. I like that two worlds can live in one,” she explains in an interview with Complex during the release of the album.
Each song on the album has its own individual contribution to making Ultraviolence the most appropriate soundtrack to the lives of every girl embodying the so called “sad girl persona,” as discussed by Vogue. With 14 songs in total, the album features lyrics that are hard hitting and beautifully depressing.
To be “beautifully depressing” is the aim of many young girls of this generation and generations to come. The “sad girl persona” is described as “crystallisations of the sad structure of feeling seen in the larger popular culture”, and Del Rey is able to bring that to life through her music and aesthetics.
Lana Del Rey makes depression, abuse, pill popping, drug dealing and age gap relationships look somewhat appealing to her audience. How? The magical dynamic of lyrics and beat. The album features songs such as Sad Girl, and Ultraviolence which both include lyrics alluding to the lifestyle she promotes. “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”, one of the most controversial lines in her whole discography, due to the nature of it. Taking inspiration from The Crystals’ song “He Hit Me”, recorded in 1962, this line fits perfectly with the romanticisation of abusive relationships commonly touched upon throughout the intense album.
Professional “sad girls” described how Del Rey music makes them, “It isn’t wallowing – that’s not quite the same thing – but when I listen to her music it is like swimming in a pool of melancholic reflections, probably somewhere in LA. In other words, the sun may be beating down, but the water feels like death when it makes contact with your retro bathing suit,” writes Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in her Vogue article on the sad girl persona and Lana’s influence on it. Retro, LA, death, melancholy. All important words when tying Del Rey’s discography to the aesthetic she portrays.