Venice Bitch
"Venice Bitch" is a song by American singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey. It was released on September 18, 2018, through Polydor and Interscope Records, as the second single from her sixth studio album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019). The song was written and produced by Del Rey and Jack Antonoff.[1] The song was met with unanimous praise from music critics and was ranked by numerous publications amongst the best songs of the year and decade. The song title references Venice, Los Angeles.
"Venice Bitch"
Release[edit]
On September 12, 2018, The Fader announced that "Venice Bitch" would be released on September 18 as the second single from Del Rey's forthcoming studio album, following the first single, "Mariners Apartment Complex", released a week earlier.[2] On September 17, Del Rey shared a preview of the track accompanied by a vintage-inspired visual on Instagram, and announced that the song would be premiered on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show.[3]
Composition[edit]
"Venice Bitch" is a folk rock, psychedelic pop, and soft rock song which runs at nine minutes and thirty-six seconds long, making it Del Rey's longest track to date.[4][5][6][7][8] Rolling Stone said the song "starts as an tender ballad, with Del Rey unspooling her unique mix of young love and contemporary Americana over an acoustic guitar and subtle strings: "Ice cream, ice queen / I dream in jeans and leather / Life's dream, I'm sweet for you / Oh God, miss you on my lips / It's me, your little Venice bitch." Halfway through, though, "Venice Bitch" transforms into an airy psych-pop jam that coasts to a cerebral, polychrome end."[4]
Time noted that "the track has plenty of surprises in store, from distortion interludes to muted synth lines of varying insistence to eerie electric guitar plucks."[9] Stereogum compared the lyrics to those on Born to Die, but with a "far less pop-oriented" production than that of her previous work.[10] Greil Marcus made comparisons to various songs from the 1960s, including the Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl" and "In My Room", Randy Newman's "Lucinda", and Tommy James and the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover".[11]
The lyrics feature the line "Nothing gold can stay" which is the title of a poem by Robert Frost.[12][13]
An early demo version of "Venice Bitch" was utilized on "Taco Truck x VB", the final track of Del Rey's 2023 album, Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. This version was described as "the grimy, heavy, original and unheard version" of the song by the singer in a profile in Rolling Stone UK prior to release.[14]
Music video[edit]
The music video for "Venice Bitch" was directed by Del Rey's sister, Chuck Grant. The vintage-inspired visual features "grainy footage, big moods, endless highways," according to Paper.[28] Will Hermes of Rolling Stone noted that the video is "a collage of vintage Super 8-style freeway footage, faded, flashed, fogged, looped and sped up, intercut with weathered images of Lana hanging on her smartphone, or goofing around in a pickup bed with two female friends, trailed by what looks like a police car." He concluded that the video "magnified" the overall "hypnotic" effect of the song.[16]