Did you know that there’s a tunnel under ocean Blvd?

A few days ago, the Recording Academy (Grammy’s) made public the nominations of the music albums that could win the Grammy’s Award for best album of the year. In the nomination, we can see the album of Lana Del Rey “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under ocean Blvd” that is a plea for self-confidence. This really comes through in the line, “love me until I love myself”. This metaphor around the spectacularly crafted tunnel under Ocean Blvd.

The title is a reference to the “forgotten” Jergings Tunnel, located under Hollywood Boulevard, which was closed during the 1960s. The album consists of sixteen tracks, including fourteen songs and two interludes. In an interview conducted by Billie Eilish for Interview, the singer revealed that she wanted the music for the album to have “a spiritual element”.

Many fans of the artist are so excited ‘cause, despite being a very good singer, she has never won any important awards and has always been overlooked, in facts we can see it in the music video of “Candy Necklace” where the singer dresses up as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Short, they had both changed their name and their hair just like Lana did, and she said:

“It’s as if both of them have fallen into their own holes. So, the point is this: how do you not fall down doing your job?”

The song is about her toxic love: he’s not reliable in terms of romance due to his reckless nature. The second verse indicates that he has been abusive towards Del Rey and even caused her to feel the urge to end it all. At first, it seemed like their relationship was great, but then the guy started to treat her like a piece of trash and it’s really affecting her mind.

One of the “scariest” tracks is: “Judah Smith Interlude”, which is a recording of one of the pastor’s sermons, he’s a homophobic and bigot pastor and that scared most fans of the artist. Furthermore, this track follows “A&W” which is an abbreviation of “American Whore” that talks about her life, from childhood until today like her relationship with her mother, her appearance as a sexy woman and her relationship with sex, so “Judah Smith Interlude” plays as wholly ironic. Lana Del Rey is the type of person who would go to a mega-church with celebrities, both for soul cleansing and to mock its flamboyant nature with her friends. She’s doing exactly that with this song; throughout Smith’s sermon, Lana and her friends can be heard laughing as Smith winds around his point. Other times, she can’t help but express her distaste for Smith’s cringe-worthy absurdity. Smith’s cringy absurdity is something she can’t help but hold back from.

An interesting track of this album is “Fingertips” that was called, by the million fans, a “lullaby by an angel” and it doesn’t have any refrain. The song title comes from the first verse where Lana Del Rey longs to express the intricacies of her work without being misinterpreted; the third verse finds Del Rey pondering whether she will ever have children and if she could nurture and raise them; As the song draws to a close, Del Rey reflects on her childhood in Lake Placid, New York, and a boy named Aaron Greene with whom she once dreamed of starting a family; In the final verse, Del Rey takes a deep breath and puts aside painful memories of him.

Antonio Cinquegrana

IIA linguistico