Lust for Life Lana Del Rey

Playing a doomy chanteuse who gets all hot and bothered from making big, beautiful mistakes, Lana Del Rey has never posed with a car or motorcycle without giving the impression it’ll end badly. That’s why the cover of her new album, Lust for Life, is so bizarre. Not only is she smiling—wait, she can do that?!—but standing in front of an ol’ pickup truck, wearing a country dress and daisies in her hair, she looks like she’s about to run to the general store, not screech toward some gorgeous, ultraviolent death.

If Lust isn’t quite Lana’s first “happy” album, it’s certainly her most responsible. On “Love,” she sings to the kids, “The world is yours and you can’t refuse it ... but that don’t mean that you should abuse it.” On “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems,” featuring Stevie Nicks, she lets the sun shine in on her self-induced dramas. During “Tomorrow Never Came,” a duet with Sean Lennon, she even breaks character by admitting, “Isn’t life crazy, now that I’m singing with Sean?”

But there’s still a song called “Heroin,” with layers of smoke, reverb and nostalgia. It’s still a Lana Del Rey album, thankfully.