PhilosopHer of Modern Song: Brooklyn Baby

By Lana Del Rey and Barrie O'Neill

I’m wiser than I look, and I look like a sexy baby. I’m everything you remember about being young, except I’m young now, and that’s what counts. The people I went to high school with don’t even know Lou Reed. I’m performing his songs on a hazy New York summer rooftop. You don’t know what’s going on in my head, but you know I wear vintage clothes. Think of the dopest, chillest guy you can imagine. I’m cooler than him. And I’m that guy’s girlfriend. I’m a lowkey star. I live in a song. I’m a perfect dream girl, and I’m real. 

Except I’m a barista, I’m just out of college, I live in in bushwick with 3 roommates I hate, and I like to go thrifting on my days off. Every day people treat me like I’m not a person. I have no concept of the future. I don’t think it could be real I wish I lived in a time when my existence mattered. I spend many nights awake and alone, trying to find solace in music. Other nights I spend with other bodies, attempting to live in the burning moment. Too tired to be hanging out. Escaping reality so I’ll want to keep my grip on it. Everything I’m trying to ignore follows me everywhere. No one gets it. 

What’s up with your generation? Why are you so entitled? I don’t have to fucking explain it. Boomer, you’re my mirror. 

Long before I had ever been to Brooklyn, I revelled in the aesthetic of Brooklyn baby. Lana has gotten into some questionable territory in the public eye, but nobody can discount her commitment to her aesthetic. Every contradictory, cop-dating, critic-bashing detail of her life makes me admire her art more. She refuses any attempt to sway or define her. She doesn’t give a fuck! She’s a complicated woman. Isn’t being complicated a requirement of being a woman?

I don’t think this song is ironic. She doesn’t humor haters. Aren’t we tired of it?

Lou Reed, another legend of fuck-it coolness and complicated PR, was supposed to be on this track. The day she arrived in New York to record it with him, he died. I think they’d get each other. 

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Note: I wrote this before Lana Del Rey mysteriously started picking up shifts at a Waffle House in Alabama. See my previous comment about aesthetic commitment.