"Guns and Roses" by Lana Del Rey, Thursday, January 6, 2022

Following up a hip-hop infused pop record with lyrical content alluding to the Golden Age of Hollywood, Lana Del Rey took her sophomore record in another direction. Del Rey began working with Black Keys guitarist and vocalist Dan Auerbach in 2013. Trading hip-hop beats for rock guitars, Del Rey keeps her vocals mellow and in a low register, unlike 2021 Del Rey. Is 2014's Ultraviolence a rock record? With references to Jeff Buckley, Lou Reed, and Guns N' Roses, the aesthetic of this Del Rey record transports listeners as far as the '90s, while touching on the late '60s and '70s. It's a mellow rock record, though, and much mellower than current projects by Miley Cyrus and Olivia Rodrigo. 

HEAVY METAL LOVER OF MINE. Listening to Lana Del Rey, there's a dichotomy that runs throughout her discography of elegant and trashy.  The girl with "hair done up real big, beauty-queen style" loves to sing about sex, drugs, and in today's song, rock 'n' roll. "Guns and Roses" looks at relationship with a bad boy on his motorbike. Del Rey's theme in this song is like most of her songs, a girl who was probably raised a good girl becomes completely dedicated to a bad boy who rides a motorbike. Del Rey writes most of her song using common motifs, often reworking lines from previous works into her current work. "Guns and Roses" is based on two earlier, prot0-Lana Del Rey tracks Elizabeth Grant was rumored to have recorded in 2008 or earlier, four years before Born to Die's release. The song "Axl Rose Husband" was recorded but never released nor leaked, though Del Rey released a demo back in 2008. "White Pontiac Heaven," a reworking of "Axl," was leaked in 2012. Just as a novelist may throw away pages or even scrap a novel, Del Rey's early works show listeners the path she is taking musically, but we hear a much less refined version.

I WASN'T THE MARRYING KIND. Guns N' Roses was set to be the biggest rock band on the planet, putting a Southern twist on glam rock. But in 1991, Nirvana and grunge changed the rock scene, making late '80s acts less popular. Still, GNR were particularly loved in the South, the problematic Axl Rose and all. Lana Del Rey introduces a new character in the song named after the hard rock band, or rather, she reintroduces that girl from pre-Lana Del Ray recordings. The character in the comical "Queen of the Gas Station" on Lizzie Grant's album is summoned back on "Guns and Roses." It's not a Brooklyn-born girl who's living in California. Instead it's a girl from the south who hopped on the back of a motorbike with the baddest boy who promised to show her life beyond the one traffic light in town. Settling down in Vegas, Del Rey's character is still enamored with this bad boy, comparing him to Jesus how he "walks on the Pacific" and Detroit to their eventual "promised land." Del Rey glamorizes this life on the run, a real teenage dream. It's fun, but thoroughly unrealistic. 
 

Read “Guns and Roses” by Lana Del Rey on Genius.