Aging like the finest of wines, Lana Del Rey’s third major label album Honeymoon is officially ten years old. Released on September 18th, 2015, Honeymoon plays out not as merely music but as a film noir in your mind. Its compact storytelling and moving soundscape makes Honeymoon one of Lana’s best — in fact, it’s likely still her favourite, lending its title to her Instagram username @honeymoon to this day.
Quickly following up the art-rock of 2014’s Ultraviolence, Honeymoon called back to the baroque pop and trip-hop of Lana’s debut Born To Die, but this time mixing in prominent elements of jazz, soul and blues. This record’s unique orchestral style makes it highly cinematic. It’s likely influenced by Del Rey’s frequent contributions to film soundtracks at the time, including ‘Young and Beautiful’ for The Great Gatsby, as well as tracks for Big Eyes, Maleficent and her own short film Tropico. Plus, Honeymoon cut ‘24’ was originally written for the James Bond film Spectre, which fans quickly recognised by its evocative lyricism and sonic palette.
Thus, with a production team featuring creatives like Rick Nowels and Kieron Menzies, Honeymoon became a film noir of an album. It’s dreamy and haunting, showing off Del Rey’s vocal prowess more than ever through whispered layers and lazy melodies, contrasted against soaring falsetto highs. Listeners should play the record in order to appreciate its purposeful transitions, as if blending together movie scenes. Its hazy synths, grungy guitar lines and delicate plucked strings lean into the intentional misery that defines much of Lana’s early work and individual sound.
The album cover continues to lean into Lana’s trademark Californian imagery. She is pictured lazing atop one of Los Angeles’ instantly recognisable Starline tour buses. Emblazoned across the side is the phone number for the “Honeymoon hotline”, which fans could call to hear teaser clips for songs from the album. On occasion, Lana would even answer the phone herself and strike up a conversation with callers. In the years since, the line has stayed up as an easter egg for fans, playing a variety of songs from Lana’s discography.
Across Honeymoon, Lana’s retro influences are on full display. Jazzy highlight ‘Salvatore’ portrays Lana as a Frank Sinatra-esque lounge singer, crooning about “Dying by the hand of a foreign man happily” over distorted, decaying laughter. There’s a satirical wryness to Lana’s delivery, with certain lines revealing a smirk behind her sadness that suggests she is more in control of the tragedy than she lets on. Elsewhere, Lana shouts out Billie Holiday and the Eagles, and directly interpolates David Bowie on the bridge of ‘Terrence Loves You’, noted as her favourite song from the project.
There’s also a strong awareness of literary history, shining through on one of Lana’s first traditional interludes, ‘Burnt Norton’. This number quotes a T.S Eliot poem which ruminates on how little control we have in life due to the unstoppable nature of time. It’s a concept which runs through several of the record’s darkest cuts, including standout ‘The Blackest Day’. A decade on, ‘Burnt Norton’ reflects Lana’s growing interest in poetry that would soon result in her own book release, and continued experimentation with the ambient and spoken word.
But beyond the throwback sounds and cultural references, there’s an undeniable modernity. ‘Freak’ is amazingly sultry, overflowing with Lana’s classic Americana imagery as she uses sex to cope with the recurring boredom of palm trees and endless summer sun. Notably, the music video stars fellow singer-songwriter Father John Misty. The duo take an acid trip in the desert, dancing and drinking through colorful, dreamlike filters. Within the full album, ‘Freak’ melts into the smoky ‘Art Deco’, a standout track all about the lust and nihilism of the gritty party lifestyle Lana craves, as a Hollywood caricature of her real self.
Several other songs tackle Lana’s struggle with her newfound celebrity status. ‘God Knows I Tried’ explores how difficult it is to hold onto religion and spirituality as the dark world of wealth reveals itself to her. There is “Nothing much to live for ever since I found my fame”. Performed with dark emotion, this is one of Lana’s most haunting songs, and its chorus melody feels genuinely unforgettable. The music video for Honeymoon’s first single ‘High By The Beach’ also tackles fame from the angle of its violence and mystery. Whilst its subtle trap and hip-hop production elements interplay with a lazy lyrical narrative of disconnect in love, the whipsmart music video famously depicts Lana blowing up the paparazzi who dare to interrupt her free time with a bazooka.
However, the clearest theme and feeling on Honeymoon is of course the grief and tragedy felt when any relationship’s titular honeymoon phase collapses. The world feels black listening to songs like ‘Swan Song’, where Lana swears “I will never sing again”. It’s an insistence Lana made for several eras of her work, repeatedly claiming her most recent album would be her last, but this would prove itself to once again be tongue-in-cheek, perhaps a purposeful signal of her narrative obsession with death and self-destruction. Because of course, ‘Swan Song’ isn’t Lana Del Rey’s last song. In fact, it’s not even the last on this album.
Instead, Honeymoon closes with a Lana tradition, putting her own spin on an American standard. Her cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ uses extremely sparse instrumentation to highlight a moody organ riff and the timeless magic of Lana’s voice. Interestingly, over the past ten years, the lyrics have only continued to become more relatable to Lana’s life as a highly criticised and frequently controversial public figure. “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good / Oh Lord, please don’t let me misunderstood”.
Lana Del Rey crafted herself to be a musical religion with the utterly prolific Honeymoon. Now a certified cult classic, this underrated gem stands out as one of the most fateful in her catalogue, and is worth a listen more than ever, as every song still carves out her niche within the pop landscape so powerfully. All the way back in 2015, Lana Del Rey belted out, simply and desperately to her followers, “I need your love”. Ten years on, her devoted fans continue to give her all the love Honeymoon proved she deserves.
