This includes the first line of the song, “My body is a map of L.A.”. She personifies different parts of the city to show her deep emotional connection with it. But she describes in the song that eventually, with the help of her friends, she has healed.Īrcadia starts by beautifully describing how Del Rey feels she is connected to Los Angeles, the city she once dreamed of living in. I believe that she is describing how he made her happier but eventually her changing for him to be what he wanted didn’t actually satisfy him and he left. Lana Del Rey has used the color blue to describe both happiness and sadness throughout her discography making the meaning of blue banisters intentionally ambiguous. But only if he can “paint my banisters blue” says Del Rey. In the song, a man comes into her life and says that he will do things for her like fix her weathervane, give her children, and help her take away her pain. The banisters represent Del Rey and her personality. It shows that Lana has been through pain but she is finally healing.īlue Banisters are a metaphor. She has healed.īlue Banisters, the namesake of the album perfectly describes what the album is about. She compares losing her lover to losing her father but you can tell that she has distance from it. She doesn’t want to have to miss her lover and her father anymore. She says she doesn’t want to be sad anymore. This is her describing how she is tired and wants change to happen already. In the chorus, she talks about being at a Black Lives Matter march, “All the things I couldn’t want for, I screamed for them”, she sings. She also hints at problems with her father a theme throughout much of Del Rey’s discography. The song is called “textbook” because the story in it could be considered basic or already done like out of a “textbook.” In this song, Del Rey addresses an unnamed lover, to whom she speaks vulnerably and truthfully about her own emotions. It opens with a soft but deep beat that prepares the listener for the album. Textbook is the first song on the album and it sounds like it was designed to be. However, the soft and soothing vocals and its incredible cohesiveness make it a surprisingly easy listen. Initially, the size and complexity of a project like this can seem rather intimidating. It is a 15 track, nearly 62 minute, record and has as much complex lyricism as to be expected from a Lana Del Rey album. It was also complimented for its raw honesty and how it reveals Del Rey’s vulnerability more than ever before. The album also received great reviews from Rolling Stone, Spin, and Clash Magazine And it appears that that has become the general consensus. Tatiana Tenreyro, a columnist and music critic for, went as far as to definitively call it the better of the two albums. The album was released only 7 months after her 7th album, ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club.’ The sister album has therefore been subject to many comparisons.
It received much acclaim and many have been calling it some of Lana Del Rey’s best work.
On October 22nd, 2021, Lana Del Rey released her 8th studio album, titled Blue Banisters after the second track on the record.