Lana Del Rey’s new single “Let Me Love You Like a Woman” was released Thursday night, a few hours early of its expected Friday release. A video accompaniment was released this morning as well on her YouTube channel in a vlog montage format. 

The song has its spotlight on Lana’s voice, which is accompanied by light guitar strums and a melancholy piano melody. Its sound is similar to “Mariners Apartment Complex” and “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have- but I Have It”, both songs from her previous album. Thematically, it is a natural transition from the singer’s poetry book that was released in July. It removes her previous romanticized descriptions of Los Angeles, and shifts toward a desire for inner growth and finding real love. 

As I listened to the song, I found myself thinking that I should be enjoying the music a lot more than I was. After all, her discography is filled with moving cinematic music that approaches interesting ideas of freedom, power, and the life of a relationship. This song, on the other hand, felt uninteresting and repetitive. Some of Lana Del Rey’s past songs could almost be interchanged with this one by how similar they are in their melody, and some of her poems could be interchanged with these lyrics. 

Lana described her previous album’s music as “lowkey”, and it is possible that she has a similar goal for this one too. She stated that her upcoming 7th studio album “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” will be released either on December 10 or January 7. It is my hope that this song is not representative of the full album when it comes out, and that the rest of the new music expands on the ideas that she has laid the groundwork for.