Here’s every iteration of Lana Del Rey we’ve ever seen, each one cracking open to reveal another guise: Norman-era AOR Lana into Ultraviolence-era nihilist Lana into Chemtrails-era folk Lana into—after the song’s tense, jaw-dropping switch-up—the bratty, half-rapping, trap-loving Lanas of Born to Die, Honeymoon, and Lust for Life. The title “A&W” both refers to the roadside chain restaurant and stands for “American Whore”—the original title, according to producer Jack Antonoff. In the song, Lana garbles the name of a Marielle Heller film, references a three-star hotel and Forensic Files, and interpolates a doo-wop standard you might know from the Tom Hanks film Big. A man named Jimmy appears, perhaps the same mythic Jim who’s popped up throughout her discography, as do chopped up, tape-filtered strings that sound like they’re from “Norman Fucking Rockwell.” If a single song could act as a crash source in Lana signifiers, this would be it.
And yet, taken as a whole, “A&W” is unlike anything she’s ever made. It’s a psychedelic, collagist freakout that rides from exasperation—“I’m a princess, I’m divisive/Ask me why I’m like this/Maybe I just kinda like this”—all the way through to the delirious liberation of accepting your status as a lifelong outcast. By its end, she’s taunting the object of her affection with a wry, wily grin: “Your mom called, I told her you’re fucking up big time/But I don’t care, baby, I already lost my mind.” Lana has always operated with a kind of creative abandon seemingly at odds with conventional wisdom, but “A&W” might be the ultimate expression of that wildness, a chimeric, haunted folk-trap ballad welded together with nothing but the heat of her own star power.
