The Cinematic Aesthetic of Lana Del Rey: Analyzing Her Iconic Visual Style

🎵Come and take a walk on the wild side🎵

Flower crowns and heart-shaped sunglasses will never not be iconic. 

Diving deep into Lana Del Rey’s song aesthetics taught us that it’s actually a very complex and deep black hole that can’t be scoured within minutes. 

Her music is all about the aesthetic, and she doesn’t hesitate to use as many motifs and symbols as she can in her songs. Because if songs had no meaning behind them, or didn’t teach you lessons they wouldn’t be Lana’s songs.

For example, her use of the American flag in most of her songs, in all of its simultaneous greatness and destruction of dreams, tragic romance, and death, depicts all things grandiose. And her use of the 50s and 60s movie star aesthetics, to evoke nostalgia about the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Her sound, the emotions she brings to her songs and how she captures the listener up into a state of euphoria with a tinge of sadness are addicting and leave you changed forever and always wanting more.

Tip: Listening to Lana Del Rey makes you feel like a sad rich girl in a white satin dress in her room, on the balcony during a windy night, looking up at the moon and thinking about her true love.

Vintage Glamour and a Lot. Of. Smoke.

Her debut album, Born to Die, changed the pop landscape in 2011 when it was released.

In the music video for “Born to Die”. The setting of the Album lead, Born to Die has a tragic story behind it and looks like a turbulent relationship, and that’s how the music video comes to you with the fire, passion, moody lighting and dark coloring.

For us, it doesn’t get any more iconic than Lana sitting on a throne in a church wearing a flower crown with tigers on each side.

Her album, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” has seemingly been taken on film rather than digital and gives the images a vintage quality. It has everything in it, from black and white aesthetics to random clips and shots that later come together to mean something, to a lot of smoke to fade out of scenes. And how could we forget Lana staring INTO your soul for three seconds straight.

Although both these albums have slightly different outlooks, they’re both imperative with a moody setting. Lana’s duality shines through in her music videos with her looking like a 1950s movie star…but also like the girl next door.

Can you see it too?

With her major label debut single ‘Video Games’, the singer placed webcam clips of her mouthing the song between old, grainy footage of teenagers skateboarding against the setting sun, and a drunken actor stumbling through Hollywood, American flags. 

She encapsulated the bittersweetness of the song through these visuals, as well as evoking a penchant for nostalgia and the past.

Even after 11 years, her visual style and appearance taken straight from the 60s hasn’t changed much. Her latest music album, Did You Know that there’s a tunnel under the Ocean Blvd, has her dressing up as a 60s Hollywood star.

Album Cover Aesthetics

Her album covers followed suit with their penchant for duplicating the essence of the visuals in the music videos. The cover of her debut album, Born to Die, had a simple yet confronting artwork. 

The singer looks directly at us with a moody gaze, a vintage green car just visible in the background and pops of pink coming from Del Rey’s lipstick. The bright blue sky evokes the American summertime, with Del Rey’s perfect hair and big hoop earrings hinting at her love of Hollywood glamor. 

There’s a sense of ambiguity at play, with the vintage-inspired hair contrasting with a more modern and down-to-earth, simple shirt, alluding to the album’s blend of old and new sounds and visuals.

With the cover of Paradise, we’re instantly transported into a world of luxury and opulence with its shiny gold font, and the background of a swimming pool and palm trees, directly reflected in her songs ‘Gods and Monsters’ and ‘Body Electric’.

Motifs, Symbols and Meaning behind her aesthetic:

Other than the use of the American flag and the vintage Hollywood glamor, Lana alludes to the meaning behind every story and plot point of her songs. Through her songs, she’s been known to touch on the toughest subject matter such as abusive relationships, addiction, and issues of American girl/womanhood.

To make music of unpleasant topics and to create moving art out of reality is Del Rey’s sensitive and cathartic way of reaching audiences more emotionally and sensually than it would to do it bluntly and by non-creative means.

Major concerns about Del Rey’s music come from the fear that younger fans are susceptible to blindly imitating Del Rey’s behaviors in her songs to fulfill an ‘aesthetic’ out of their adoration. However, we must not undermine this to only be an ‘aesthetic’ because it is actually rooted in reality.
She believes in growth and looking inward to better understand ourselves and how our minds work. And we agree with her. So, here’s to the nostalgia of singing, “Hot summer night, mid-July, you and I…” during the middle of July.