“Say Yes to Heaven” by Lana Del Rey, Friday, May 26, 2023

 

Lana Del Rey returned this earlier year with the latest installment of her "Carol King Era" of songwriting in Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?  This new era of the Del Rey persona created by Lizzy Grant feels like a slow progression away from pop hooks, and maybe where this started was with Del Rey’s second album, Ultraviolence. But Del Rey’s real critical acclaim arrived with Norman Fucking Rockwell!, the album that both ended pop Lana and started the ‘70s-styled singer-songwriter that she followed up with Chemtrails over the Country Club, Blue Banisters, and Did you know. 

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. Lana Del Rey’s fan base is strong, quick to interpret ever line that the singer writes in the blogosphere. Not only do fans read into her released songs, they also track down her unreleased demos and leak them online. Usually Del Rey pays no attention when one of her unreleased songs is leaked; however, when a sped-up version of “Say Yes to Heaven” started appearing on Tik Tok, the singer addressed the song’s leak by releasing it on streaming services. While the track had been leaked on Tik Tok, fans had been talking about “Heaven” since 2016 when snippets of the song emerged online. With credited songwriting and production to The Black Keys’ Rick Nowels, the song has been rumored to be a track cut from Ultraviolence.  While critics seem to love the new Lana Del Rey, some of us miss the old days of hip-hop beats and wall-of-sound dream pop production. Del Rey seems to be giving the fans what they want with the release of “Heaven,” harkening back to the classic voice, rock guitars, and bad-ass lyrics.  

LIKE A BARGE AT SEA. I was excited to hear “Say Yes to Heaven,” thinking that Del Rey’s looking back at her musical past may challenge Del Rey to go back to the days when her music was easier to listen to. But “Say Yes to Heaven” feels like a Lana Del Rey b-side. It’s missing something, and I believe that’s the fact that the lyrics don’t hit hard enough. “Say Yes to Heaven” has very short verses and a very simple chorus. It’s also a little cliché: heaven, this song, is falling in love with the speaker. It’s not a “Dark Paradise.” No emphasis is place on how bad this boy is. It’s almost a Lana Del Rey song but it needs to be workshopped a few times before it’s officially album-ready to align the song’s imagery and metaphors with a folk tale in rock ’n’ roll history. Perhaps John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” could have been a clue as to where the song could have gone, maybe painting a picture of Lennon as a peaceful revolutionary who tried to live peacefully until he was assassinated. There’s certainly a Lennon-Yoko Ono love story Lana could have woven into the lyrics of “Heaven.” Regardless of the weaknesses of “Say Yes to Heaven,” I hope that Del Rey looks at her past eras and thinks about revisiting some of her old songs.

Read the lyrics on Genius.