“If you hold me without hurting me, you’ll be the first who ever did,” she sings, her voice an angelic falsetto even as she describes emotional devastation.
Del Rey has subdued her rebel side in favor of partnership.Ī slow march of a song, “Cinnamon Girl” details a conflicted relationship.
“Is it safe to just be who we are?” she wonders over a minimal piano and strings background. The only visuals she draws are of a car: “In the backseat, I’m your baby / we go fast, we go so fast we don’t move… so spill my clothes on the floor of your new car.” This isn’t the first time she’s doubled down on auto iconography ( “Born to Die,” anyone?) but now there’s a sweetness instead of a recklessness in her attitude. The song is exactly as the title tells it: a tender, intimate love ballad. On “Love Song,” Del Rey leans into sincerity. That commitment adds new twists to the otherwise straightforward storytelling of “Doin’ Time,” inserting Del Rey into the song’s layered history. She sticks to the original lyrics, name-checking Sublime singer Bradley Nowell, and drummer Marshall “Ras MG” Goodman, and maintaining the gendered pronouns in the bridge about an “evil” girlfriend. Her cover of the 1996 Sublime song (which samples Gershwin’s 1930s “Summertime”) is breezy and swinging, turning the track into an atmospheric, bossa-nova-inflected mood. A whole generation may grow up with Del Rey’s version of “Doin’ Time” as their classic.