Lust as Portrayed by Lana Del Rey

Among every artist in my lifetime, none have infatuated me quite like the career, persona, and discography of Lana Del Rey. If someone were to ask who my favorite artist is, Lana’s name would be uttered as soon as the last syllable of their question left their lips. 

Lana is an artist whose aesthetic harkens to the early 20th century, yet, like many artists, she explores ideas and sounds that plague the modern culture. She elegantly examines American culture, femininity, and desire, and I believe this makes her the best artist to discuss the vice of lust. 

When one thinks of lust in pop culture, minds might immediately turn to the sexually provocative music videos that break the internet once every four years or the use of women as objects to brag about in many male artists’ records. These are not inaccurate selections, but I think they fail to tell the entirety of the story of lust as a vice. Lust is more than an outward sin revealed by clothes, dances, and the ways we treat others; lust is a sin that begins internally in our hearts. 

The Church emphasizes that sexuality “affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love” (CCC 2332). Therefore sexuality is not a sin, rather lust is a sin that comes from misusing the good of our sexuality. 

If this is hard to understand, walking through the different distortions described in Lana’s discography might enlighten. The first root of lust is the desire for affirmation and acknowledgment, as illustrated in her debut album, Born to Die. Lana’s rhetorical devices call to mind Plato’s in the sense that she often speaks through personas that warp and change as her discography matures. In Born to Die, Lana acts as a naive woman in the face of men who often take advantage of her. The juxtaposition is reflected by the high-pitched, younger voice in the choruses and the verses containing her signature deeper voice. In “Off to the Races,” Lana explains that “he loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart,” but what is love to Lana? 

Her examples make it seem like “love” merely materializes in physical adoration. “He likes to watch me in the glassroom, bathroom, Chateau Marmont, sipping on my red dress, putting on my makeup…perfume, cognac lilac fumes; he says it feels like heaven to him.” 

The lustful man “loves” through the senses. The smell of perfume and the visual of a young woman in luxurious clothes create a strong attraction toward the sensation, but not the person. Lana’s descriptions are things that any woman can do. Anyone can wear a red dress, put on makeup, and wear his favorite perfume. There is no personal affection here. Lust strips the personal in favor of the physical sensation. Any emotional affection comes in the form of tolerance instead of authentic care. “He doesn’t mind I have a flat broke down life. In fact he says that’s what he might like about me,” and “who else is going to put up with me this way? I need you,” are glaring examples from that song alone. 

Lust, many times, is choosing the quick fix over the long-term remedy. What Lana desires is far more than the love she has here, yet she’s afraid of the possibility that this dynamic is the best she will have. 

Her relationships are one-sided in almost every song on the album. In these love ballads towards negligent and unavailable men, Lana never receives the reciprocation she needs. Lust is a sin of choosing what is in front of us instead of what we need. Humans need union, validation, and relationship so badly that we often take a lower, more readily available version of it instead of one that completes the desire. 

Lana has songs that fantasize about the desire for holistic love, but like many other people, her songs depicting relationships consist of her convincing herself that she has found this love in the complete opposite.

The next pillar of understanding the sin of lust is realizing that lust is usually a byproduct of deeper insecurities. In her latest album, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, Lana ditches the characters that narrated her prior albums and instead embraces the vulnerability of writing a personal record. The standout song on the album is the 7-minute confession of her lustful struggles titled “A&W.” 

“I haven’t done a cartwheel since I was nine, I haven’t seen my mother in a long long time,” she sings. 

For a song about a lifelong struggle with lust, the opening can be rather confusing. Instead of focusing on the actions first, Lana creatively introduces the two roots of her insecurities: bodily image and lack of parental guidance. 

“I mean, look at me, look at the length of my hair, my face, the shape of my body. Do you really think I give a damn?”

Catching the lustful gaze of men acts as a defense mechanism to bury the insecurities Lana has. It makes sense on the surface; somebody finding you attractive should eliminate issues of self-image. 

However, with partners coming and going as soon as they reach the end they seek, Lana realizes that she is the means to an end that could have been fulfilled by any woman they happened to run into that given night. What Lana does not realize is that she has begun a cycle of addiction.

“Called up one drunk, called up another, Forensic Files wasn’t on; Watching Teenage Diary of a Girl wondering what went wrong.” 

Like many lust addicts, she knows her lifestyle is not good for her. The issue is that when lust is used as the solution for issues, it is hard not to resort back to acting out when triggers occur. Issues start big, but as we continue to engage in sin, lust becomes the solution for miniscule problems. 

The addiction is reinforced in the second part of the song with the repetitive statement, “Jimmy only love me when he wants to get high” which transitions “A&W” into the interlude containing a Judah Smith sermon about overcoming lust. This is a piece endorsed by her, considering she recorded it, as indicated by her voice commenting and laughing in the background.

The last stage of the issue is the despair of lust. Eventually, we reach a point where we ask whether this sin is all that we are and all that we deserve. Lana’s chorus echoes these sentiments, repeating, “It’s not about having someone to love me anymore,” and her bridge contains the heartbreaking, self-depreciative line, “Did you know a singer can still be looking like a side piece at 33?” 

For longtime Lana fans, this might feel like a strong shift from her early works “Sad Girl,” and “Ride,” which use her role as the mistress as a bragging chip. This progression in her career shows how lust breaks someone down more and more as time goes on.

For each aspect of lust, one can find even more examples in Lana’s discography. Her vulnerability allows her to candidly describe the initial joys and chronic pains of the vice. Lust can be overcome through a change in self-image and our image of others, but what this ultimately alludes to is a yearning for the eternal desire of holistic love and an attempt to satisfy it through mortal means. Although Lana seems to differ from the Church in terms of modesty and what would constitute an act of lust, both Lana and the Catholic Church turn to God’s love to fully overcome the vice, because the omnibenevolent God by definition cannot fail us. Lana’s pain allowed her to insinuate the truths laid out for us by Christ and the higher love He calls us to.