Album Review: Lana Del Rey - Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?
Elizabeth Grant asks a question—well, she will, eventually, go on to ask a number of additional questions, but within the album’s title, and within the titular track—which had been released as the first single, upon the album’s announcement near the end of 2022—she poses a question, seemingly asked out of genuine interest and curiosity, more than anything else.
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard?
She doesn’t give us time, really, to provide an answer.
I had, when I had initially begun writing this, thought maybe she didn’t want an answer, but at the time, I wasn’t certain why that was the case—perhaps her asking is more rhetorical, or intended to be a statement, rather than a genuine question with the intent of eliciting a response of some kind.
But it is, really, not so much a question, rhetorical or genuine, or even really a statement, but an extension of a metaphor—both surprising in how it's used, and a little bit of a stretch.
I often, specifically within the last couple of years, find myself in a place where I am asked to reconcile, if I am able to, or as it is more commonly described, separate the artist from the art they make.
There are a number of people who are much better at this than I am—and the degrees with which we can, or are willing, to make concessions varies. What this ability, or inability, ultimately says about me, or about the people who are more capable of making it—I am not entirely certain. If anything, at least for me, or about me, it is more than likely an admission of the fact that I am not entirely capable of compartmentalizing—regardless of what I am trying to cram into said compartments, and that I, perhaps, carry ethics, or morals, from aspects of my personal life over into what I opt to listen to, what I read, or what I choose to watch.
Near the end of 2020, and into the first part of 2021, I found it becoming increasingly more difficult to reconcile, or to separate the art from the artist, when the artist in question was Elizabeth Grant—the artist more commonly known as Lana Del Rey.
Maybe you did as well.
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Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard?
The fine print, on the album’s cover, arranged around its sprawling title and the name of Grant’s adopted persona, indicates that Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is her ninth studio album, and upon reading that, I initially wondered what I had missed, at some point, going back and forth through her output—or if I had miscounted somehow.
Regardless of how polarizing you, or I, might find Grant’s canonical work as Lana Del Rey over the last decade-plus—regardless of if you can reconcile with the more controversial aspects of her public persona within the previous few years—if you can separate the art from the artist, as it were—if anything, objectively have to admit that Grant has been wildly prolific.
That alone is admirable.
Beginning with her major label debut in 2012, Born to Die, she more or less released a new full-length every other year—issuing Ultraviolence and Honeymoon back to back in 2014 and 2015, respectively, followed by Lust for Life in 2017, then her iconic Norman Fucking Rockwell in 2019, going on to then release two albums in 2021—Chemtrails Over The Country Club and Blue Bannisters—but that’s only seven, with Did You Know, dubbed her ninth.
The missing album from the list, or at least the album I had not taken into consideration, is her independently released debut full-length, Lana Del Ray—that’s “Ray” with an A and not “Rey” with an E—recorded in 2007 and 2008 when Grant was in the very early stages of her career and was still, at times, going by the name Lizzy Grant.
The cover art for this LP features a very, very young-looking Grant—her hair short and blonde, with the words “Lana Del Ray, a.k.a. Lizzy Grant” overlayed to her right.
It’s an album that I think, at this point, she rarely, if ever, acknowledges the existence of—Lana Del Ray was never officially released on vinyl or CD, though throughout its storied history, it has been heavily bootlegged on European pressings.
Per Grant’s alleged request, according to the album’s producer, Lana Del Ray was pulled from platforms like iTunes or Amazon shortly after its original release, and to my knowledge, was not available through streaming services last any point.
It has seemingly, or as best as it can be, been erased from existence.
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is, as it states very plainly on the cover, the ninth studio album from Elizabeth Grant—and as it sprawls across 16 tracks and clocks in at over 77 minutes, musically it is not exactly a culmination of everything that Grant has been working toward since the earliest days of her career. No. It’s more like an amalgamation—pulling together the glitchy, pulsating trap arranging that she favored on Lust for Life, the swooning, slow motion, string-ladened orchestrations of Honeymoon, and the piano or acoustic guitar-focused organic and thoughtful compositions from Norman Fucking Rockwell.
And, in this almagamous form, it doesn’t mean that Did You Know is always going to work—there are times when it doesn’t, frankly, or is just too puzzling or asks entirely too much of us as a listener—regardless, though, of if Grant and her stable of collaborators are successful or not in the execution of a song, or a specific moment in a song, in this almagamous form, what it means is that Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is an album that is always surprising—and even in its most perplexing or polarizing moments, it is still utterly compelling, simply because you, as the listener, just do not know what to expect next.
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I would say that, at this point, I have a complicated relationship with the music of Elizabeth Grant—one that is maybe not as complicated as other listeners who have been following her career for longer than I have, and one that is perhaps more complicated than other, much more casual listeners who are only familiar with a few singles here and there.
Despite being aware of Grant, and the music she released under the moniker Lana Del Rey, since she auspiciously arrived with the single “Video Games,” in 2011, my real access point was four years ago, after the release of Norman Fucking Rockwell—an album that, at the time, came as quite a surprise to me.
Surprising, of course, because of how it carried itself musically—almost an entirely collaborative effort in terms of writing and production between Grant and Jack Antonoff, NFR is both ambitious in its scope, and razor-sharp in its wit and how it tackles those ambitions regarding its arranging and instrumentation. At times gentle or contemplative, at times ferocious and chaotic, even when it runs a little long and stumbled near the finish line, it was a marvel of an album that I still return to quite often, which, like my initial listen, is quite a surprise.
More surprising, though, than the album’s tone, or atmosphere, was Grant’s lyricism—specifically, how impactful it was for me, as a listener, and as a listener who is not exactly who you would think to be within her usual audience. It is, of course, songwriting, or lyric writing that is impressive in just how stark, vivid, and honest it can be in its candor, but—and I have told this story a number of times before so I feel like now is perhaps not the time to tell it yet again, but within those stark and vivid portraits, the most surprising thing was how much of myself I saw reflected back at me.
And I think that, moving forward from Norman Fucking Rockwell, one of the large issues I have had with Grant’s output, outside of whatever personal difficulties I may or may not experience with making concessions or reconciling with her persona in the year following the album’s release, is that even when I approached its follow up, the cumbersomely titled Chemtrails Over The Country Club, with a cautious optimism, I found the longer I spent with it, the more I found I was frustrated with how uneven, and seemingly cobbled together it was structurally, and that I was, perhaps undeservingly, disappointed in the fact that it did not resonate on a personal/emotional level the way its predecessor had.
I am usually the kind of listener who wants to see, and hear, artists take risks and further develop themselves with each album—but the truth, at least with Grant, at this point in her career, was that I simply wanted her to make Norman Fucking Rockwell Part 2—which is something I think that she isn’t incapable of doing, but is perhaps not entirely interested in, nor is it something that she owes us, as fans, or me, as someone outside of her demographic who was so moved, and humbled by her observations about the difficulties of men and love and where they intersect.
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is, also, not Norman Fucking Rockwell Part 2, nor did I expect it to be, even though it finds her, on a number of tracks, reuniting with Antonoff as producer and co-writer, but it is an album that does try, and at times comes very close, to matching it—not so much lyrically, but musically, or in the scope of its enormous ambitions, it finds Grant working within a much more daring and at times fearless place than she had in both efforts from 2021.
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And in sitting with There’s A Tunnel, there is a part of me that wants to extend it as much grace as I am able to—because there are those moments where it is quite daring, and surprising, and as a whole, it is quite enormous in its scope. However, within that ambition, even with the grace I want to offer, and the patience the album ultimately asks you to have as you listen, structurally, it runs the risk of completely falling apart at times, in part, because of its length, but mostly because the momentum comes to a screeching halt as it hits its seemingly drawn-out second act.
That is not to say there are not moments of interest in this portion of the album—a song like “Kintsugi,” for example, while among the most tender of all the tender, smoldering, glacially paced ballads on There’s A Tunnel, it is a place where Grant lets some of her persona, or caricature, of Lana Del Rey, fall slightly, and it finds her writing from a rather personal, or private, place.
Grant, as a lyricist, has not shied away from just rattling off the names of people in her life within her writing—her sister has often made appearances in the past and certainly does here as well. But there is a kind of institutional information required to know whom Grant is referring to when she utters the name “Chuck” or “Chucky”—often, there are names of people (presumably friends or family?) who become characters quickly passing through the narrative, like in “Fingertips,” where she references someone named Caroline, who seemingly has recently given birth.
“Will the baby be all right?,” Grant asks with a sense of urgency in her voice, before turning the thought inward. “Will I have one of mine? Can I handle it even if I do?”
And since the inclusion of real people—friends or family—in her writing, as characters, is a device she has used throughout her previous efforts, its appearance here is not a surprise—it is more what it reveals about Grant herself, as a person, that is surprising.
The album opens with the soulful, almost spiritual in nature, and fittingly titled “The Grants,” which, among other figures from her life, references her niece, her late grandmother, with whom she was apparently very close, and an uncle who died in a rock climbing accident while in the Rocky Mountains. Then later, on “Kintsugi,” Grant turns things even more inward and personal—“There’s a certain point that a body can’t come back from,” she sings somberly but tenderly in the poignant opening line, then driving the theme of the song home a little further in a line she returns to throughout out its slow, swaying six-minute running time: “Daddy, I miss them.”
These songs sequined within the very middle of There’s A Tunnel—“Kintsugi,” “Fingertips,” and playful and dramatic, but still a little stagnant “Paris, Texas,” are not unlistenable, or bad per se—they are just so deliberately paced that the feeling of the album, overall, begins to drag, only beginning to build itself back up slightly with the cumbersomely titled “Grandfather, Please Stand On The Shoulders of My Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing,” which, despite how that just rolls off the tongue with ease, begins in a quiet place with just the piano, again, along with some interesting production effects on Grant’s vocals, before the song absolutely soars to stunning, beautiful, and honestly unexpected heights—making a moment on the album that is surprisingly brimming with hope.
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The use of real people or personal experiences and memories in her songwriting does, when she wants it to, give Grant the opportunity to break the fourth wall, as it were, in her lyricism. Sometimes, a song is written, and it is insular enough, or contained enough, that it doesn’t rely on the self-aware knowledge or admission that it is, in fact, a song, to move from the beginning to the end of its narrative.
There are different ways in which one can begin to pull back the kind of willing suspension of disbelief we have to have with pop music, and Grant, at least in a few places throughout There’s A Tunnel, allows her writing to become both self-aware and self-referential, ending in mixed results of how these devices are executed.
I get that it can be done, and has been done, in the past—especially with Grant (e.g., using the phrase “Venice Bitch” on “Mariners Apartment Complex,” the second track on Norman Fucking Rockwell, then using the phrase “Venice Bitch” as the title to the track that immediately follows) it is, I think, an attempt at building a world within the album, or if not world building, then trying to weave things together just a little bit tighter.
Here, there is an expression, or at least a variation on an expression, that she uses in two places, assisting in tightening up the album’s themes, and making it all seem a little more manageable and slightly less sprawling. On “Kintsugi,” in the song’s simmering chorus, she continues to sing the line, “That’s how the light gets in”; “Let The Light In,” then, is the title of a song later on as There’s A Tunnel enters its third and final act—a song that also includes a literal wink to the listener, and a callback to “Love Song,” one of the emotionally stirring standouts from Norman Fucking Rockwell.
Sonically, in a sense, “Let The Light In” is a slight callback to NFR as well—or as close as Grant gets w/r/t the apparent Laurel Canyon sound and influence of that collection of tunes. Here, “Let” is just a little twangy and a little folksy—based around sharply and glisteningly engineered acoustic guitar strums and crisp percussion, there is nothing else as acoustic-oriented, and folk adjacent on There’s A Tunnel, so it doesn’t necessarily feel “out of place,” but it does seem like it would maybe belong better within the context of a different album, or an album rooted a little more firmly in this aesthetic.
“Let The Light In” is one of the myriad songs on the album that includes a guest spot—here, she’s joined by Josh Tillman, who, much like Grant herself, has adopted the stage persona of Father John Misty. And here, he seems a little miscast and underused—turning up only to assist her on the chorus, and singing in a range that does not really make his guest appearance unique.
And often, within the fourth wall breaking in songwriting, to whatever extent it is being done, there is a playfulness that comes along with it, or a sense of humor—humor, in music, which is famously something I am still working on the acceptance of in many regards. And there has been this playfulness, or humor—at times cutting, at times plainspoken, throughout Grant’s work in the past—it is very present in different pockets of Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, but its presence here doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, or a thing that always lands with the listener.
“Margaret,” credited as featuring Bleachers, which is ultimately just Jack Antonoff, who has his hands in a number of songs on this record, is one of the places where the humor, or whimsy, doesn’t work as well as Grant and Antonoff thought it might. The song’s instrumentation and arranging leans heavily into Antonoff’s trademark of strings, wind instruments, a rollicking, twinkling pianos, and gently brushed percussion underneath it all, creating an honestly gorgeous swooning kind of sensation—both delicate and folksy, with echos of some of NFR’s latter half rippling through it—so it is at least interesting to listen to how all of those layers swirl and tumble together, however, Antonoff, in his vocal contributions, sounds like he is doing his best Bruce Springsteen impersonation at times, and Grant’s lyricism, as earnest as the delivery can be within the first half of the song, takes a cloying, extremely self-aware turn within its latter half that is quite puzzling to hear.
“So if you don’t know, don’t give up,” Grant assures us as the music is pulled down to a hush. “‘Cause you never know what the new day might bring—maybe tomorrow you’ll know…I mean, join the party,” she laughs. “And by the way, the party’s December 18.”
The mention of this party, itself, seems like an in-joke that we are supposed to get, or are just on the cusp of understanding, but the song quickly moves along—figuratively and literally waltzing its way to a slow fade of a conclusion while we, the listener—or at least I, was left scratching my head, certain I was missing something, even as Grant continues repeating the line, “When you know, you know.”
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I often, specifically within the last couple of years, find myself in a place where I am asked to reconcile, if I am able to, or as it is more commonly described, separate the artist from the art they make.
There are a number of people who are much better at this than I am—and the degrees with which we can, or are willing, to make concessions varies. What this ability, or inability, ultimately says about me, or about the people who are more capable of making it—I am not entirely certain. If anything, at least for me, or about me, it is more than likely an admission of the fact that I am not entirely capable of compartmentalizing—regardless of what I am trying to cram into said compartments, and that I, perhaps, carry ethics, or morals, from aspects of my personal life over into what I opt to listen to, what I read, or what I choose to watch.
You could argue, and the success of that argument, honestly, I am not certain, but you could argue, that up until 2020, the only real controversies surrounding Elizabeth Grant’s persona of Lana Del Rey were more criticisms than anything else—criticisms of the persona, specifically, and what she may or may not have been glamorizing within her effect and lyricism.
A point I continued returning to in my review of Norman Fucking Rockwell, and the seemingly internalized misogyny that Grant at times cannot help but depict in her writing, is that she never claimed to be a feminist icon, and as inherently American, she is in her multitudinous nature and the complexities and contradictions she holds as a person, and a persona, there is something troubling, or unsettling, about the often disaffected, “sad girl” aesthetic that is portrayed.
While I was immersing myself in Norman Fucking Rockwell, and while I was writing about it, outside of these valid criticisms about the example she might be setting for other women, the only real “controversy” I was aware of was the very public and somewhat new relationship she had entered into with whom I described, at the time, as a hunky cop—Sean Larkin, star of the A&E Documentary series Live PD, among other copaganda. Following their short-lived romance and split, Larkin was allegedly the inspiration behind the Chemtrails Over The Country Club song “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” and was the impetus for Grant’s decision to put up a single billboard to announce the release of There’s A Tunnel—in, of all places, Tulsa, Oklahoma—where Larkin is originally from.
When Grant was pressed during her courtship with Larkin about issues relating to social justice and continued police brutality, and the need for reform, her response was canned and weak, quoted somewhere as saying that Larkin “saw both sides” of the discourse.
And enough time has passed now that some might not even recall that this occurred, or some, if they recall it, do not remember the exact details, or what the controversy was even w/r/t, but seemingly unprompted, Grant shared some frustrations via social media in the spring of 2020, just prior to the onset of the pandemic, and while the beginning this update was initially to announce a new album she had intended to release that September (it never arrived), her message took a strange turn.
Grant expressed anger, or disdain, at critics who took issue with her effect, or aesthetic, and those who claimed her lyricism glamorized abusive relationships—she then went on to express even more anger, or disdain, for a handful of artists, all female, all of whom she called out by name, and all of whom could be found regularly on the Top 40 charts, and in believing she was making some kind of warranted, or well-articulated comparison to the double standards within the music “industry,” she stated these women have “number one songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating, etc.” going to add that she had grown weary of the idea she was glamorizing abusive when she is simply a “glamorous person singing about the realities of what we are all now seeing are very prevalent emotionally abusive relationships all over the world.”
The internet was very quick to draw attention to the fact that all of the artists she referenced were people of color.
Grant’s response, and then a later, much worse response to criticism on the internet, steered her head first into “I don’t want to sound racist, but,” territory in terms of her seemingly thoughtless and utterly harmful candor.
Defending herself in this first instance, she said that it “says so much more about you”—you, as in “all of you haters,” than it said about her to make it into a statement that was about race.
Near the end of 2020, a most tumultuous year for everyone, Grant released the first single from Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the slow-burning ballad, “Let Me Love You Like A Woman,” and near the beginning of 2021, announced that the album was due out in March—and upon sharing the album’s cover art (a black and white photo of Grant at a table, surrounded by ten other women) she, again seemingly unprompted, and totally unnecessarily, returned to the discourse surrounding her statements on women and race—“As it happens, when it comes to my amazing friends and this cover, yes, there are people of color on this record’s picture and that’s all I’ll say about that but thank you.”
“We are all a beautiful mix of everything—some more than others which is visible and celebrated in everything I do,” she continued. “In 11 years of working I have always been extremely inclusive without even trying to. So before you make comments again about a WOC/POC issue, I’m not the one storming capital, I’m literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table….”
It was within this same statement on social media, and I do wish I could remember the context surrounding this very specific quote, but Grant also felt compelled to say, “My best friends are rappers and my boyfriends have been rappers.”
I often, specifically within the last couple of years, find myself in a place where I am asked to reconcile, if I am able to, or as it is more commonly described, separate the artist from the art they make.
It’s never easy—to defend, apologize, reconcile, compartmentalize.
Sometimes it’s exhausting.
Sometimes it seems impossible.
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Elizabeth Grant asks a question—well, she will, eventually, go on to ask a number of additional questions, but within the album’s title, and within the titular track, she poses a question, seemingly asked out of genuine interest and curiosity, more than anything else.
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard?
She doesn’t give us time, really, to provide an answer.
When I had initially begun writing this, I had thought maybe she didn’t want an answer, but at the time, I wasn’t certain why that was the case—perhaps her asking is more rhetorical, or intended to be a statement, rather than a genuine question with the intent of eliciting a response of some kind.
But it is, really, not so much a question, rhetorical or genuine, or even really a statement, but an extension of a metaphor—both surprising in how it's used, and a little bit of a stretch.
“Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” at least initially, sounds like the kind of thing that we have heard from Grant before—a distant, hazy feeling smolder, eerily similar to “Let Me Love You Like A Woman.” And there is both a sense of familiarity, or maybe comfort in hearing Grant, again, operating from this place, musically speaking, but also a sense of frustration in that you’ve heard it all before, and would, perhaps, like Grant and her collaborators to push the sound of this album into different territory.
As the first single release from the album, it is not so much a misnomer, but its slow-burning, lusty tension is not indicative of where she ultimately takes things with the album as a whole.
During my initial listens of “There’s A Tunnel,” I was more or less nonplussed by it until I was able to give it the time and space it needs, and could understand the exhaustive desperation it was written from, and how that is juxtaposed with the instrumentation that remains in a place of restraint until the very last moment when it needs to pull itself up and swell.
It wasn’t until I really heard a specific, and surprising (though maybe not surprising to Grant’s listeners) lyric in the chorus, that the song, or and the aesthetic it is steeped in, both made slightly more sense, but also made me feel (at the time) a little more optimistic about the tone the album might take.
“Fuck me to death,” Grant asks—not even a demand, but more like a resignation. “Love me until I love myself.”
From the moment it begins, there is an unprecedented sense of stirring drama in the song’s arranging—the strings are warm and lush sounding, and the low piano chords ring out powerfully, as Grant exhales very, very slowly before singing the titular phrase as the opening line.
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?
You see, the tunnel, itself, hidden away, is a metaphor—clever, sure, and a little niche, but also a little heavy-handed in how she reveals this imagery and then draws the comparison to herself.
“Mosaic ceilings, paintings on the walls,” she coos. “I can’t help but feel somewhat like my body marred my soul—handmade beauty sealed up by two man-made walls.”
The juxtaposition is theatrical, yes, as is the music that slowly rises to a controlled cacophony underneath her—reaching beautiful, rather moving heights, but as much as this album, and my thoughts about it, are ultimately about the difficulties separating the artist and the art that they make, a song like “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?,” even with as subtly infectious and impressively orchestrated as it is, it is tough to know how much of the sadness, or melancholy, that courses through Grant’s musings are the person, or the persona—“When’s it gonna be my turn?,” she pleads before the chorus arrives; then, near the song’s conclusion, an ask more out of desperation than anything else—“Don’t forget me.”
Something I know about myself, or at least recognize, in how I write about music, is I often say both that I am “remiss” to admit to something, or that I “hesitate,” or “stop short,” and that an expression I use regularly is that an album is “front-loaded”—meaning that the best, or most successful material is all stacked within the front half of a record, making the experience of listening to the second half a little less interesting.
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? is one of these albums—I hesitate because, perhaps, you, as a listener and fan of the music Elizabeth Grant releases under the moniker Lana Del Rey—well, you might like the smoldering torch songs that are sequenced in the middle portion of this collection, and not find them as much of a dirge as I do.
For as stirring and grand as the album’s titular track is, its opening track, “The Grants,” is equally, if not more so, stirring and grand in how much soul it has—though that soulfulness gives me the slightest of pause. Swaying to the deliberate rhythm of a church spiritual, “The Grants” opens with its chorus being sung by Melodye Perry, Pattie Howard, and Shikena Jones, all of whom are Black women, and all of whom were featured in the film 20 Feet From Stardom—a documentary about the lives of backup singers. And so regardless of how much soul, or how spiritual Grant feels compelled to get as the album opens—it slowly ascends to rafter-shaking levels as it reaches its conclusion—I do question Grant’s possible appropriation of a traditionally Black sound, and Black voices, given her perhaps contentious history with how she speaks, and might think, about race.
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So the thing about Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?, is that even when it falters, or drags, or raises questions that no answer is provided to—both literal questions as well as figurative—even when it reaches its most polarizing or perplexing moments, it is compelling, because throughout, as the listener, you just do not know what to expect next.
And nothing really prepares you for when Grant steers things into the most bizarre and, therefore, most fascinating (regardless of how subjectively good or bad the song is) places.
Released as the album’s second single, “A&W,” or more colloquially known amongst her fans as “American Whore,” is the the first moment like this of many as the album slowly unfolds.
One could argue that there are myriad things Grant does “best” as a performer, or an artist—slow and sad being, perhaps, the most apparent, and after the success of Norman Fucking Rockwell, I would argue that, surprisingly, something Grant is able to carry extremely well is a song that needs a lot of time to sprawl and build itself up—something that in the world it builds for itself, begins working through very specific moments.
And maybe this is something that she only does well when working with Jack Antonoff—I am thinking about how, at over seven minutes long, the NFR track “Venice Bitch” is split up into three very deliberate sections, and at no point does it ever feel like has overstayed its welcome; as it continues to shift, it remains utterly compelling and full of surprises.
Grant re-teams with Antonoff on “American Whore,” which, like “Venice Bitch,” reaches over seven minutes in length, and it does truly need every second of the song to reach its full, strange, and wonderful potential.
Musically, there is something terribly ominous that swirls around “American Whore,” especially during its first half—the rickety, cavernous piano, and quickly, sharply fingered guitar strings create a sense of unease that lifts slightly, and the subtle dissonance may find resolve, in the moments before reaching the brief chorus, but that slight lift and hint of resolution quickly disappear as Antonoff’s arranging plunges itself back down into a shadowy, stark, almost menacing atmosphere.
And it is that sense of menace, in part, at least during the first movement of the song, that makes it work as well as it does—it sets a compelling stage that Grant is able to take, and, more importantly, fill with ease. There are several moments throughout There’s A Tunnel, specifically as the album careens into its final third, that are confrontational or incendiary, in one way or another—and on “American Whore,” that attitude is its most razor sharp and focused.
Four years ago, I never said that Grant was a feminist iconic—she, herself, didn’t identify as one either, and has been reluctant to do so in the years that have passed. Lyrically, though, “American Whore” finds her unpacking the notion of being alive and being a woman in the year 2023, ruminating on it through the additional lens of being a celebrity.
Grant’s observations spiral into a fever dream—urgent, at times manic, she reflects and ruminates, and tries to reconcile with the contradictions and complexities of her lived experience.
“I mean, look at me,” she demands with a breathy, frantic voice in the opening verse. “Look at the length of my hair, and my face, the shape of my body. Do you really think I give a damn what I do after years of just hearing them talking?”
The first movement of the song, lyrically, continues to push into bleaker territory the further Grant takes it. “Call him up—‘Come into my bedroom,’” she confesses. “Ended up, we fuck on the hotel floor. It’s not about having someone to love me anymore. This is the experience of being an American Whore.”
And it is not the first place, really, on There’s A Tunnel where Grant breaks the fourth wall and writes from a self-aware perspective (there are many across the album), but this is among the most poignant because it asks a question, but Grant is simply unable, or unwilling to provide the answer. “I’m a princess—I’m divisive,” she declares. “Ask me why, why, why I’m like this. Maybe I’m just kind of like this…I don’t know. Maybe I’m just like this.”
Toward the end of the song’s first movement, Grant's self-reflections become even more vivid (and quite graphic) in their flinching honesty: “If I told you I was raped do you think that anybody would think I didn’t ask for it?,” she states. “I didn’t ask for it—I won’t testify. I already fucked up my story.” Then, just a line or two later, “Did you know a singer can still be looking like a sidepiece at 33?”
On the Genius page for “A&W,” the lyrics are split up into “part one” of the song, and “part two,” and I guess you could argue that, yes, there are for sure two parts to the way the lyrics unfold within the song’s ever-shifting structure. However, much like “Venice Bitch,” and how it spiraled effortlessly through three distinct parts, I would argue that “American Whore” is also sectioned into thirds—with there being a brief, mostly instrumental reprieve between the first, more organic-sounding portion, and the dizzying, pulsating electro-infused latter half.
Interpolating the swooning instrumental melody from “Norman Fucking Rockwell” at one point into its unpredictable and writhing energy, Grant, and Antonoff steer “American Whore” into a glitchy, horny, trap-inspired slink, where Grant coos her own interpretation of the 1959 song “Shimmy Shimmy KO KO Bop,” oscillating between depicting the kind of abusive and destructive relationships she bucked against the notion of glamorizing, then punctuating the end of each section with the strange, funny, and honestly a little threatening, “Your mom called—I told her you’re fucking up big time.”
*
“I used to think my preaching was mostly about you. And you’re not gonna like this, but I’m going to tell you the truth—my preaching is mostly about me.”
The jaw-dropping conclusion to “American Whore” is the first moment on Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? that is indicative of the direction Grant will eventually take things—she saves the truly weird, unhinged stuff for the end, but following the skittering bombastic concluding to the song, and the final time she shouts, “You’re fucking up big time,” the album slides into the first of two interludes, both sequenced within the early part of the album.
Three years ago, in the wake of one PR controversy but before the next, Grant released a collection of poetry—Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass—available as a hardback book, as well as an audio version that, as one would anticipate, features Grant reading her work. However, underneath her recitations, you could hear the quiet, instrumental music performed by Jack Antonoff—musically, it was adjacent to the kind of arranging he had provided to their first collaborative effort, Norman Fucking Rockwell.
The inclusion of his instrumental compositions is fine, really. I mean, it’s unobtrusive. That’s the point. But I find I want to describe it as “masturbatory free jazz that fails to climax,” and Antonoff returns to this kind of arranging the “Judah Smith Interlude” here.
Who the fuck is Judah Smith?
I am uncertain how many people listening to There’s A Tunnel would know, off-hand, who he is by name alone. But it doesn’t take very far at all into this piece (over four minutes in its running time) for you to surmise that Smith is a very charismatic, enthusiastic preacher.
Even in a cursory glance through the results that come up when you search Smith’s name online, you can tell he is a controversial figure—the lead pastor for something called Churchome, an evangelical megachurch based in the pacific northwest, in the past, he has been quite outspoken against the gay community, among other things. An article from a Christian media outlet, Relevant, claims Grant “attends the church” and had permission to use a cell phone recording of the sermon for the album.
Underneath the sermon, as the audio is manipulated as much as it can be through slight echos and other subtle effects, Antonoff’s instrumentation shuffles along quietly underneath with no real direction—and the inclusion of four minutes of Smith’s sermon itself is among the album’s most puzzling but also most fascinating moments, because Grant provides no real answer as to why, or even what we are supposed to take away from it.
Smith spends a bulk of this excerpt discussing the idea of being a “man in love, not a man in lust”—themes that, of course, Grant has written about over the decade-plus of her career, but it is one of the last things he says, before the interlude ends, that I think is the key not to understanding why it is here on the record, and certainly not the key to understanding Grant’s persona as Lana Del Rey, but to maybe understanding a little bit more about the album itself.
Smith says, “I used to think my preaching was mostly about you. And you’re not gonna like this, but I’m going to tell you the truth—my preaching is mostly about me.”
*
If the pacing, or structure, of Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? feels like molasses rolling up a hill during the halfway point, regardless of how successfully put together or subjectively “good” the final three songs on the album are, Grant taps back into the bizarre, unsettling energy she had a grip on within the last movement of “A&W.”
She eases into it slightly on the muffled, claustrophobic opening to “Fishtail,” which features another very personal and poignant lyric that repeats during the song—“You wanted me sadder.” Grant’s voice is layered on top of itself at least three times, with gentle instrumentation glistening underneath her until about a minute in, when a jittery, bass-heavy drum programming kicks in, and Grant pulls “Fishtail” into an unexpected, slow-motion, lusty slither.
Something similar, at least in the attempts to bridge the gap between production and arranging styles, occurs on what is probably the most polarizing song on the album—“Peppers,” with the titular peppers referring to the long-running and terribly obnoxious band, as Grant quickly breathes out the lyrics, at the start of the first verse, “Me and my boyfriend listen to the Chili Peppers. We write hit songs without trying like all the time, all the time.”
Then later, probably the album’s worst lyric—“My boyfriend tested positive for COVID—it don’t matter,” she shrugs. “We’ve been kissing, so whatever he has, I have, I can’t cry.”
Lyrically, and thematically, “Peppers” is a real low point, or at least a difficult song, in the context of the album, but even when it takes an unexpected segue into a surf rock riff and rhythm for a few measures, it is, much like “Fishtail” before it, musically compelling because of the way Antonoff’s production works by using a chopped up sample (infectious in its execution) from a song by the rapper Tommy Genesis, and somehow, manages to make it work by moving it around within his usual, favored instrumentation with Grant (slightly dissonant sounding guitar string plucks, rolling and clattering percussion, a thick, rumbling bass line, etc.)
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? concludes after well over an hour, with “Taco Truck x VB,” and once the album’s track titles were announced, it did not take long at all for the internet to correctly discern that the “VB” here is a reference to “Venice Bitch.”
Antonoff—he has a hand in, like, well over 75% of the album’s production and arranging, has a penchant, at times, for, outside of the aforementioned masturbatory free jazz, what I had referred to as “guitar wankery.” It’s the best way I can articulate the kind of tone, and loose sort of solo playing coming from an electric guitar—it’s something you can hear in Antonoff’s work on Clairo’s Sling, and it is something that you can hear as “Taco Truck” slowly begins.
The song itself, at least this first part of it, is fine—the aesthetic continues to shift with each verse, moving a little faster with each turn, to the point where it is a little difficult to keep up with how quickly the changes come from the sleepy way it begins, and the faster, and sultrier it grows while Grant sings a borderline questionable phrase like, “Read my gold chain, says ‘Lanita,’” or “Spin it ’til you will it into white cream, baby. Print it into black and white pages—don’t faze me. Before you talk, let me stop what you’re saying—I know that you hate me,” which seemingly is Grant taking shots at those who have been critical of her, and her persona, in the past.
Following a short instrumental reprieve, a muffled piece of dialogue spoken by Antonoff’s fiancé, actress Margaret Qualley, musically, “Taco Truck” gives way for “VB,” as the tone becomes quite dark, and low, buzzy synthesizers surround the listener, with Grant singing part of the “Venice Bitch” chorus—“Signing off bang bang, kiss kiss.”
In the version that found its way onto Norman Fucking Rockwell, “Venice Bitch,” at least part of it, is gentle and swooning, before it spirals into noisy, hypnotic psychedelia—none of those elements are to be found here, as a brash keyboard melody sounds off occasionally like a warning, startling the listener, and moody, sparse, skittering drum programming bounces around underneath Grant’s relentless and layered delivery of the lyrics.
*
My friend Alyssa often uses the expression “redemption arc” in talking about someone—and yes, indeed, there are redemption arcs for fictional characters, but here she is talking about it within the context of a real person—and their attempts, however successful or futile, to do something to get back into the favorable graces of an audience.
In using the expression, she punctuates it by wondering if the person, in question, is deserving of such an arc—is that something we, as the audience, want to see them end up with.
Elizabeth Grant is not seeking redemption of any kind on Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?—because she does not believe she needs to be redeemed. Remember, this is not about me, or you.
It’s about her.
Regardless of Grant’s ultimate wishes for an album as sprawling and strange as this is, I did initially want it to serve as a personal redemption, or an opportunity for me to reconcile a little with my complicated feelings about Elizabeth Grant as a person, and a persona and the music she releases under the name Lana Del Rey, because in the wake of her off-putting and callous statements in both 2020 and the following year, it was hard to respond with, “Yes, but the tunes are good,” as a defense that would hold any weight.
It left a bad taste in my mouth that would, rather soon after its release1, prevent me from returning to Chemtrails Over The Country Club, cause me to have little if any interest2 in its quickly turned-around follow-up, Blue Banisters, and make it difficult to regularly return to her other canonical works that I, up until that point, listened to a number of with some frequency.
I approached the announcement of There’s A Tunnel with cautious optimism, honestly, because I did enjoy the singles released in advance—even with as much pause as the appropriation of gospel music in “The Grants” gives me, it is still emotionally stirring and quite gorgeous. I had hopes—not for a sequel to NFR, but for an album to be operating on a similar level of sharp intelligence and thoughtfulness.
I had hopes. But Grant told us that hope was a dangerous thing to have.
I was cautiously optimistic. But now I am just cautious.
I often, specifically within the last couple of years, find myself in a place where I am asked to reconcile, if I am able to, or as it is more commonly described, separate the artist from the art they make.
There are a number of people who are much better at this than I am—and the degrees with which we can, or are willing, to make concessions varies. I think about a conversation I had with a singer and songwriter where they told me they had no problem listening to Van Morrison, still, in the year 2022—famously problematic in the wake of the pandemic, and could listen to Van Morrison back to back with John Prine—who passed away early on in the pandemic after complications from COVID.
This singer and songwriter told me they had no problem listening to Ryan Adams—a notorious sexual predator who has spent the last two years in search of an undeserving redemption arc of some kind.
There are people who, and I am uncertain why, still feel comfortable listening to Mark Kozelek.
There are people who can, somehow, make concessions and listen to Kanye West.
I hesitate to downplay how harmful Grant’s racially motivated rhetoric was, because it was certainly not harmless—but she is not a sexual predator or anti semitic, to my knowledge.
You compartmentalize as you are able.
You make concessions.
You say, “Yes, but the tunes are good,” and you hope that, in the future, there are no additional, out-of-pocket statements, teetering dangerously into racist territory, that you are unable to defend.
In the song “Fingertips,” Grant sings, “They said there’s irony in the music—it’s a tragedy. I see nothing Greek in it.” And her argument all along, especially in pushing back against criticism in a review of Norman Fucking Rockwell that tried to make a distinction between Elizabeth Grant the person and Lana Del Rey the persona, or the caricature, is that there is no distinction to be made—this is her.
There is no irony in the music. There apparently never was.
I am uncertain to the extent I believe that to be true, but the music, and the caricature, and the persona—none of it is about me.
It’s about Elizabeth Grant. It’s about Lana Del Rey.
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard?
Did you?
Elizabeth Grant asks a question. Well. She will eventually go on to ask a number of additional questions, but within the album's title, and its titular track, she poses a question that she does not give us time to respond to, and, instead, pulls us into the extension of a metaphor.
It’s a bit of a stretch. But I admire it.
Grant begs not to be forgotten in the album’s title track, and truthfully, how could we. But in the act of being unforgotten—what is it that we are remembering her for?
I hesitate to, one more time, beleaguer the comparisons between Norman Fucking Rockwell, and the last three albums Grant has released, but it is a high water mark for her in terms of artistry and concept. I don’t doubt that she is capable of reaching that kind of near-flawless collection of songs again, but it will undoubtedly take a while. Prior to that, she was an inherently restless artist in her sound, and how she wanted to be perceived, and she has continued with this restlessness in terms of the elements that she is trying to wrap her arms around and stuff into something that, in the end, resembles anything cohesive.
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd? is enormous in its scope, and like the metaphor within the title track, it can be a stretch, but the sheer ambition and chaotic nature of it from beginning to end remains admirable and compelling—even when it drags within the middle portion, even when it slams into a bizarre, puzzling final third, it is an album worth the time and more than the time, it is worth discussing.
Grant begs not to be forgotten, and with however long, you might have spent with her at this point, how could we?
In the act of being unforgotten, though, what is it that we are opting to remember her for?
1- There were, honestly, a number of things working against Grant and the time that Chemtrails was released—at least, a number of things working against her, and it, w/r/t my enjoyment of the album. The first was that there was a death in the family around this time and I was not doing well; additionally a year into the pandemic, there were a lot of issues and difficult changes happening within where I was working, and had been working, for a number of years. Second, after sitting with the album for the review that I wrote, any time I tried returning to it, I quickly realized how boring and slow the second side of it was, and was eventually just not compelled to return to the first side either. And then third, you know, the whole racism thing.
2- Blue Bannisters was originally going to be titled something else entirely (Grant does this a lot, where she teases the release of an album with a completely different title and it never materializes or changes) that was slated for a July 2021 release—it never happened. I was also incredibly nonplussed by the three singles she had released well in advance of the album arrival in the autumn.
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