As much as she may deny it, Lana Del Rey has always seemed more like a character than a real person. Her music has largely concerned itself with a version of the American dream that is built on a romanticized sense of patriotism, an idealized vision of former glory, and an exaggeration of all-American stereotypes. However, with all its less favorable history stripped away, the country Lana Del Rey worships has never actually existed. It’s obvious Del Rey knows this. She’s always been a smart songwriter, and her music has often been delivered with a wink and a nod. But the country has changed dramatically since 2012, when she released her first album, Born to Die. The national mood has shifted from hopefulness to despair. In keeping with this, Norman Fucking Rockwell! is an album in which Del Rey admits that the America of her own creation (and, by extension, the men who populate it and her own perception of her place within it) is a far cry from the reality she now finds herself occupying.

As a newly-awakened woman, she has no choice but to face head-on the unrelenting dread of our present moment, her emotions raw and immediate after years spent cultivating a fantasy. She’s never sounded more desperate than in the chorus of “The greatest,” as she pleads despairingly, “Don’t leave/I just need a wake-up call,” before admitting that she’s “facing the greatest loss of them all.” “The culture is lit/And if this is it/I had a ball,” she sings, but if anyone mistakes this play on words for lightheartedness, she’s quick to correct them. The country is literally on fire as we stand by in stunned silence: “Hawaii just missed that fireball/L.A. is in flames, it’s getting hot/Kanye West is blond and gone/’Life on Mars’ ain’t just a song/I hope the livestream’s almost on.” Everyone is complacent/complicit, herself included, and no one is going to get off easy.

Even as she acknowledges this grim truth, she still clings onto hope, though it’s “a dangerous thing for a woman like [her] to have.” The album’s final track deconstructs Lana Del Rey as a figurehead to reveal the flawed human beneath: “I’ve been tearing up town in my fucking white gown/Like a goddamn near sociopath/Shaking my ass is the only thing that’s got this black narcissist off my back.” As dark as these lines sound, she continually insists to her listener, “At best, you can see I’m not sad.” As a closing statement, it isn’t exceedingly optimistic, but it’s not fatalistic either. As long as we’ve got a crumb of happiness left, she tells us, there’s a fighting chance we can pull ourselves together enough to pull ourselves out of this mess.