A dream of motorcycle love divine, linen, pearls, and the gold of life in L.A. — Ultraviolence takes you there. It's expository of the beauty in divine feminine sadness. Her poetry is the Californian sun that is shining through the window of whatever classic car she's in the passenger seat of. Her melodies are the tears rolling down her cheeks during all the parties and bright lights. Her persona as the 'west coast sad girl blessed with beauty and rage' only stands taller with the stilettos she's wearing on the cover of Ultraviolence.

Lana Del Rey spent her life before the spotlight surrounded by music and poetry. At the age of 18, she started singing in small clubs and bars. Her lifelong love and breath became her poetic songs. Elegantly, she built an aesthetic world of the 1950s/60s inspired by sad girls and bad boys on motorcycles living under the Hollywood sign. Seven record releases later, she is the ‘queen of sadness.' Recently just named 'Artist of the Decade,’ Lana puts all of her emotion and beauty into every record; but her power is even more intense and sweet 'like cherries in the spring' on my favorite of her records, Ultraviolence.

Probably her most emotional record tells a story of her beauty in a life of danger, obsessive love driving through the west coast. She captures and exposes the beauty of sadness — and the sadness of true love. The black and white cover and motif of blue hydrangeas paints the feeling that is amplified by each track. Chic grunge, soft beaches, loud engines, red lips. Each song is complemented with the intensity of the lyrics and the life she writes about. Her lover, or maybe her downfall, is her everything — the air she breathes, the cigarette smoke she exhales. She flaunts the beauty in her psychotic emotions, the obsession, the running away, getting drunk on the ache. The lyric from the title track, “Ultraviolence,” encapsulates a lot of the melancholy on this record.

"We could go back to New York/ Loving you was really hard / We could go back to Woodstock / Where they don't know who we are" — you can feel the longing she has for her man, but also the pain that love and longing cause. You can feel how she would do anything for him, but he won't change. She would change everything for him, start over completely for him. But, the revelation that she can't fix him, dawns on her in “Shades of Cool."

"But you're unfixable / I can't break through your world / 'Cause you live in shades of cool" — She explains that his heart’s unbreakable, she speaks the truth of the love in her heart, but the coldness all around her. Throughout the album, the addiction she has to this type of love begins to break on the horizon. Songs like “Black Beauty” and “Cruel World,” depict the abuse and pain of her relationships, but in a charming way that showcases her love and attachment for those aspects. Her poetic depiction of her depression and escapism is what makes Ultraviolence such an experience. Each track pushes you further into some golden, lemonade, French perfume ascension, and you'll notice tears rolling down your face at the warm despair. Like the late nights that she sings of, the drugs gateway an even more permeating addiction, her lover. She knows she needs to get free and run away; but going back to New York — going back to the start — won't solve anything, although she tries. The pain is easy to love because “I'm pretty
when I cry.”

You can almost feel her heart pumping her gold veins when she sings, "I'll wait for you babe, you don't come through babe / you never do, babe, that's just what you do / because I'm pretty when I cry."

Part of the beauty of this record, even if you can't relate to all aspects of it, is that you can feel Lana's sadness and you can start to understand your own. Her sadness is what gives her writing its allure and conceives her ability to find beauty in everyday life, and in the darkness of her permeating love. Listening to Ultraviolence has the power to make me feel less alone in my own emotion and infuses it with some mystical type of glamour. It is very rare that an entire album has that ability. The images that form in my head are some of the most gorgeous, blue hydrangeas, beaches under stars, classic cars, long brown hair, kisses, cigarettes, and expensive perfumes dancing a choreographed ballroom waltz.

I wish I could write about the power of her words as eloquently as she writes her songs. The forever magnetic cocktail of her darkness, sadness, and golden Hollywood world will never stop inspiring me to live for who I am and find the glamour in ordinary moments, otherwise thrown away. Lana's music will never fail to put you in a pretty black dress and speak to you in a mysterious and bewitching way. Her beautiful and effortless melodies rub off on you, and will never fail to make you feel your deepest most enchanting emotions.