{"id":1995502,"date":"2025-09-03T21:27:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T21:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1995502"},"modified":"2025-09-03T21:27:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T21:27:35","slug":"brooklyn-baby-by-lana-del-rey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/brooklyn-baby-by-lana-del-rey\/","title":{"rendered":"“Brooklyn Baby” by Lana Del Rey"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today, Lana Del Rey is seen as an icon of West Coast elegance and mystery, waxing poetic about her California home in tracks such as \u201cDid you know that there\u2019s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd\u201d and the aptly named \u201cCalifornia\u201d and \u201cWest Coast.\u201d Before the West Coast swept her up, though, Lana Del Rey spent the first 28 years of her life on the East Coast, and she is always sure to pay homage to her roots. This is done no better than in 2014\u2019s \u201cBrooklyn Baby,\u201d a smooth, melodic, and almost sultry tune that invites listeners to put on their rose-tinted glasses and romanticize Brooklyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Lana Del Rey\u2019s<\/a> history with New York traces all the way back to 1985, when she was born Elizabeth Grant in Manhattan. When she was still an infant, her family moved north for a quieter life in the Adirondacks, and she spent her childhood and early teen years in Lake Placid<\/a>. After beginning to struggle with heavy drinking, though, her parents chose for her to attend a boarding school in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Once she achieved sobriety and graduated, she took a gap year to spend time with her aunt and uncle in Long Island, who first fostered her passions for music. Around this time, she began writing songs and performing at clubs throughout the five boroughs under the name Lizzy Grant, and at the end of her gap year, she decided to attend Fordham University in the Bronx, where she graduated from in 2008.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBrooklyn Baby\u201d was released in June 2014 as the fourth single from Lana Del Rey\u2019s sophomore album, Ultraviolence<\/em>, which is now revered as one of her most critically acclaimed bodies of work. Riding off the success of 2012\u2019s Born to Die<\/em> and its hit single \u201cSummertime Sadness,\u201d Ultraviolence<\/em> helped refine Del Rey\u2019s style and solidify her as a serious player in the pop music industry. With her sophomore album, Del Rey traded catchy pop hooks for a smoother sound profile that is as sultry as it is melancholic. Lyrically and sonically, she calls back to the soft rock sound of the 1960s and 70s, romanticizing the era at its best in \u201cBrooklyn Baby\u201d (\u201cThey think I don\u2019t understand \/\/ The freedom land of the seventies\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

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From the first few guitar strums and delicate hums of Del Rey\u2019s ethereal voice, listeners are immediately overcome with nostalgia for a 1970s world that many of them (Del Rey included) were not even alive for. The addictive melody immediately draws you in and transports you to a bustling, culture-filled, 1970s Brooklyn<\/a>. Though the song is just shy of six minutes long (on the longer side for a 2010s pop track), it never drags on or bores you. The closing guitar strums, a reiteration of the ones that opened the track, leave you yearning for more, inspiring you to maybe just let the song loop so you never leave this unbeatable feeling of warm nostalgia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This 1970s energy was no accident. In an interview shortly after the song\u2019s release, Del Rey revealed that the song was meant to be recorded with Lou Reed<\/a> of the Velvet Underground, who unfortunately passed away<\/a> the day of recording.<\/p>\n

On first listen, \u201cBrooklyn Baby\u201d may read as a love letter to life as a young adult in Brooklyn, but most critics<\/a> agree that Del Rey fact satirically playing at the self-righteous city ing\u00e9nue, or a \u201chipster\u201d as some would put it, that is so prevalent around Brooklyn. The lyrics, much like many of Lana Del Rey\u2019s other songs, idealize the narrator\u2019s relationship with a much older man (\u201cThey say I\u2019m too young to love you \/\/ I don\u2019t know what I need\u201d). She even acknowledges others\u2019 criticisms of such a relationship, to which she responds with insistence and naivete (\u201cThey say I\u2019m too young to love you \/\/ They say I\u2019m too dumb to see \/\/ They judge me like a picture book \/\/ By the colors, like they forgot to read\u201d). The narrator frequently references their ego and self-importance with lines like \u201cI think I\u2019m too cool to know ya\u201d and \u201cYeah my boyfriend\u2019s pretty cool \/\/ But he\u2019s not as cool as me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The chorus is perhaps the clearest example of Lana Del Rey portraying this somewhat insufferable hipster character who \u201cget[s] down to Beat poetry,\u201d boasts about how her \u201cjazz collection\u2019s rare,\u201d and \u201cget[s] high on hydroponic weed.\u201d The bridge calls back to that same naive insistence explored previously, claiming that if others don\u2019t like how she, as a member of the younger generation, lives her life, they can simply \u201cbeat it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m talking \u2019bout my generation
I\u2019m talking \u2019bout my newer nation
And if you don\u2019t like it, you can beat it
Beat it, baby
You never liked the way I said it
If you don\u2019t get it, then forget
\u2018Cause I don\u2019t have to fucking explain it<\/p>\n

-Lana Del Rey, \u201cBrooklyn Baby\u201d<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, this independent, society-be-damned \u201chipster\u201d energy is not something foreign to Lana Del Rey or her musical themes, so perhaps there is a level of candor to these lyrics. Regardless, she still tells a vivid story about a young woman living in Brooklyn in the early 21st century. By listening to \u201cBrooklyn Baby,\u201d you still get that idyllic vision of the borough, and you especially feel that yearning for the culture of the area from a time long passed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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