Lana Del Rey Slows Summertime Romance to a Crawl on the A$AP Rocky-Starring Summer Bummer – SPIN

Summer lovin: Its supposed to happen so fast. Summer Bummer,Lana Del Reys new song with A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti,stops it dead in its tracks.

True to the ethos of the artist who came up onSummertime Sadness, Bummer unfurls at a glacial paceor rather, the pace glaciers used to have. The song openswith atmospheric piano, as Del Reymoans a few lines about how its never too late. Shes daring her lover to leave, maybe, or just hinting atthe existential dread of every earliersunset. Abackground murmur builds, peppered with Cartis ad-libshe doesnt get one full line in the whole song, just background yeps and whats that couldve just as easily been sampled fromsomething else. ProducerBoi-1das beat kicks in,dryandscratchy, as if he were playing everything with a wire brush. The air feels close. Wrap you up in my daisy chains, Lana speak-sings.Hip hopin the summer / Dont be a bummer, babe.

With Rockys first line, the song momentarily snapsinto focus. His verseshoulders the bulk of the storytelling, such as it is. I might fuck with her all summer for real, headmits, slippinginto an approximation of Lanas own woozy,whispered flow. So nebulous is the relationship between these two protagonists that it might, in the end, all turn out to be a hallucination born of heat exhaustion.

Even as it widensslightlythe range of hercatalog, Summer Bummer is best viewed asa classically Lana Del Rey set piece: a heavilystylizedsoundtrack fordrugs, pools, and high-contrast monochromes. White liesor maybe thats, ahem, white linesand black beaches / And blood red sangrias, she sings later, mirroringacolor scheme that dates back toOff to the Races.Sonically, Bummer islike a trap-inspired takeon HoneymoonsHigh by the Beach,and thematically, it doesnt go anywhere thatsong didnt already.

The bestdefense of Summer Bummer is that it is not Groupie Love, the secondA$AP Rocky feature fromDel Reys new album Lust for Life, released simultaneously today. Groupie Love relegates Rocky to a pop songs standard third verse rap feature, where anysupposed romantic chemistry falls flat. Del Reyschoruses are almost lush enough to sell a vision ofvintage backstage hedonism, but she winds uptripping over the clichs she idolizes.Time after time, writing my lines / Having my baby there next to me couldnever hope to compete with, Got my bad baby by my heavenly side. The very firstlinesYoure in the bar / Playing guitarshould have been struck as soon as they were written.

Let us, at last, take one moment to acknowledgethattheSummer Bummer single artwork (photographed by Neil Krug) is absolutely killer.

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Lana Del Rey Slows Summertime Romance to a Crawl on the A$AP Rocky-Starring Summer Bummer - SPIN