*This is an article from the humor section, not real news.*
Track List:
- Under the CITGO Sign Over Fenway
- The Orange Line Never Came ft. Dropkick Murphys
- Grandfathah Please Stand On the Celtics Jersey of My Fathah While He’s Lobstah Trapping
- Paul Fucking Revere
- Did you know that there’s a closure in Sumner Tunnel and it will be closed most weekends until 2024
- Million Dollar Lobster Roll
- Marlboro Market Interlude
- Let Me Love You Like a Kennedy
- Ultramasshole
- Music to Watch Construction Workers To
- Off to the MarMon
- America Runs on Whores
- Chowda
- Irish Pub x Southie Bitch
Lana Del Rey has famously written about many of the places that she’s lived: Brooklyn, LA, Florida. Despite spending much of her early years and adolescence on the East Coast, her time in New England has been excluded from her songwriting. However, critics are raving about her newest album, Paul Fucking Revere, which is largely inspired by the time she spent living in Boston in her late teens and early 20s.
“It’s nothing like anything you’ve heard before!” says Johnathan Adams, a reviewer from the Boston Globe, describing the genius union formed by exploring Del Rey’s signature themes of love, lust and tumultuous relationships while somehow seamlessly integrating almost every major landmark in the city of Boston.
In this record, Del Rey incorporates the melancholic melodies and Americana imagery we’ve come to expect from her, with elements of folk storytelling heavily influenced by Boston’s deep cultural ties to Ireland. Adams describes the emotions invoked by listening to PFR: “After getting only three songs into my listening party, it all clicked. Suddenly I was dating a man from Dorchester, sitting on a stoop chain smoking a pack of Marlboro Reds, explaining to my friends that he just gets me while they tell me I could do better.”
The symbolism and depth of the lyrics in Paul Fucking Revere surpass the artistry of any of her other albums. Her vivid delivery immediately transports the listener into the scene described, like in the line “Watching the Sox, sipping my Dunkin, the wind in my hair, contemplating a Munchkin, Like seeing the red of the sign over Fenway Park” of track one “Under the CITGO Sign Over Fenway.”
In track two, Del Rey laments the pain and helplessness of an on-again-off-again relationship using the inconsistency of the MBTA as a metaphor. Likening the impact of an unreliable love to that of an inefficient transit system in the verse, “I waited for it, at the station in Back Bay, in Government Center, when I was going the other way, the blue line stopped working and the orange line went down in flames, You said to meet me at Faneuil Hall, but the orange line never came,”
The titular track, “Paul Fucking Revere,” takes Lana’s fascination with old Americana imagery to a whole new level. Instead of banking on the nostalgia of decades past, Del Rey and Antonoff partner together to paint a timeless, even centuries-old, sensual fantasy. Slightly altering Henry Longfellow’s iconic poem, Del Rey depicts a steamy night of secret rendezvous, yearning, passion, and British people cumming. “One if by land two if by sea, On our midnight ride he made love to me.”
In track eight, “Let me love you like a Kennedy,” Del Rey gives a nod to Boston-born JFK while perfectly capturing the nuanced and gut-wrenching feelings following a heartbreak, profoundly singing, “Let me love you like a Kennedy, let me hold your splattered head. Let me shine like a bullet, let me crash over you in my bed.”
Drawing from all corners of Boston and the center of her heart, Del Rey has produced a “bom, bom, bom. So good! So good! So good!” album. This ode to New England will cement Lana’s place among other Massachusetts greats, such as Meghan Trainor, Yo-Yo Ma and that one guy who plays the saxophone outside of TD Garden sometimes. It’s clear that the singer had a revolutionary war in her mind while writing this album!
Sunita Rai • Sep 26, 2024 at 1:12 am
Lana Del Rey’s Boston-inspired Paul Fucking Revere is a wild ride through Dunkin’ cups, broken MBTA dreams, and steamy Paul Revere fantasies . With lyrics that hit like a Sox home run and storytelling steeped in Irish pub vibes, it’s a love letter to New England like no other!