The title is an Iggy Pop rip, one of many blatantly referential turns of phrase on the album. The notion of not-altogether-fun slippage between generations seems more of an obsession than ever for Del Rey on her fourth album, Lust for Life. Psychedelic burnout, Watergate disillusionment, serial murders-all tingeing images that otherwise might evoke “a simpler time.” Most striking is the sense of menace underlying the garishness. But in the colors, the couture, Del Rey’s impish glint, they’re novel. In small ways-say, the body types of the people posing with Del Rey-they capture something about the era they reference. Still, I can’t stop staring at these LaChapelle photos. So the nostalgia kick should be played out by now. Ever since the Los Angeles singer first achieved fame in 2011, she’s rarely been described without mentions of Instagram filters that make new photos look old, or of the way that platforms like Tumblr and Pinterest encourage young people to collage the bygone. Pop culture has been mining the heyday of Polaroid in this fashion for a while now, and Lana Del Rey has led the way. She poses in a ruffled dress in front of a tiered garden styled with person-sized candles, next to a sign reading, “Happy Birthday America … 1776 1976.” She stains a wedding table with red wine, her mascara running and the flash catching the blood behind her retinas, as a man in the foreground smokes in ripped whitey tighties. She descends a spiral staircase next to a gaudy fake Christmas tree of the kind you just don’t see anymore, wearing an equally gaudy coat, her eyes squinting, the camera having snapped at the wrong moment. Scroll through the photos that David LaChapelle recently shot with Lana Del Rey and you may be hit with a whiff of linoleum, or microwave dinner, or asbestos.
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