“Oh God, miss you on my lips / it’s me, your little Venice bitch.” With these choice words Lana Del Rey opens the second single from her sixth album, which we now know is going to be called Norman Fucking Rockwell. Co-written with Jack Antonoff, “Venice Bitch” is a sprawling, six minute jam meant to be listened to in traffic. Del Rey’s psych-pop noodlings were unveiled this afternoon during an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1, where she announced the aforementioned name of her album, and laughed at her managers’ general displeasure at releasing such an epic song. “I played it for my managers and I was like, ‘yeah, I think this is the single I want to put out,’” she told Lowe. “And they were like, ‘it’s 10 minutes long. Are you kidding me?’ It’s called ‘Venice Bitch.’ Like why do you do this to us? Can you make a three-minute normal pop song?’ I was like, ‘well, end of summer, some people just wanna drive around for 10 minutes, get lost in some electric guitar.’”
She also discussed the name of the album, a reference to creative dudes who won’t shut up about how great their ideas are, and said she’s working on book of poetry called Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. What’s evident is that Del Rey is in a golden age of creativity, with “Venice Bitch” and last week’s release of “Mariners Apartment Complex.” We have until next year to wait for the full release of Norman Fucking Rockwell.