Hazy, supersaturated, and nonsensical are all words that fit the Urban Outfitters exclusive vinyl cover for Del Rey’s third official album, Ultraviolence. With so much going on, it’s important to remember that gaudy, English-style font, so brazenly plastered across the cover art as if it belongs anywhere outside of a high school production of anything by Shakespeare, is truly the most egregious aspect of the entire composition. In it, she quotes both Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” reimagines herself as both Eve in the Garden of Eden and a stripper, while Marilyn Monroe, Jesus, Elvis, and John Wayne watch on. The short film Tropico is not subtle either, exaggerating Del Rey’s fascination with the darker side of Americana. It’s over-exposed, it’s obvious, and that’s exactly how it should be. Del Rey, demurely posed in Robin’s egg blue as a Virgin Mary lookalike, is bathed in the flash of a camera. The cover of this digital EP–featuring the three songs included in the short film of the same name–is bland, for sure. The spotlight, much like the art direction, is present, though not quite focused. Dressed in a bomber jacker, she stares downward, distant and unsure, yet sports a bejeweled bustier and platinum-blonde hair, perhaps dreaming of resplendent pop stardom, but unsure of how to achieve it. The Microsoft Word-esque typography rests in stark black against a washed-out, beige wall, as nondescript as it is blasé. She’s a singer in transition–not really Lizzy, and not yet Lana, expressed by the album’s art through its conflicting imagery. There’s an inkling of her interest in a mythical America, but she doesn’t yet have the means of expressing it fully. The album showcases a Del Rey not yet fully formed. In 2010, Del Rey released her first official album, Lana Del Rey a.k.a. Let’s go back to a simpler time, before the H&M commercials and twirls on Saturday Night Live. Here are the strangest of the strange, from the pedestrian to the bewildering. As curious as some of her artistic decisions may be, I find there’s an aesthetic arc at work nonetheless, one that finds inspiration in both the esoteric imaginings of the American cultural consciousness, and the everyday beauty of off-center selfies and lackluster lighting. Yesterday, she announced the official release date for her fifth album, Normal Fucking Rockwell!, alongside its tracklist and cover art, and it sure is…something.
There’s a lot of cover art to choose from: singles, EPs, albums, not to mention her unreleased material that lingers in the darkened corners of the Internet.
The undisputed queen of perplexing album is Lana Del Rey, beloved singer and Courtney Love interviewer.
Luckily, I adore ugly things, both in their attempted seriousness or their blatant disregard for visual organization, which often occur simultaneously. There’s a lot of ugly album cover art in the world.
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