Bartender

“Bartender” is the twelfth track from American singer, songwriter and poet Lana Del Rey and her sixth studio album, “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” (“NFR!”). The song was written by Del Rey and Rick Nowels, with the duo also producing the track.

“Bartender”, instrumentally, is a piano-heavy song, with Del Rey’s angelic vocals pairing with the melody almost too perfectly. In “Bartender”, Del Rey discusses a love interest who she metaphorically titles her “bartender”. Del Rey also discusses the unknown of the future and never having a certain plan. In January 2018 in an interview with Pitchfork magazine, Lana Del Rey spoke about Bartender and how she felt as if it didn’t belong on a particular record: “I’ve got a couple of other tracks [to release in 2018]. I’ve got this weird track called ‘Bartender’ that doesn’t belong to a record yet.” Ultimately, Del Rey chose to add it towards the end of “NFR!”.

The music video for “Bartender” is part of a 3-part music video with Lana Del Rey’s other tracks from “NFR!”, more specifically “Norman Fucking Rockwell” and “Happiness Is a Butterfly. The music video for these tracks was uploaded to Lana Del Rey’s YouTube channel under the title: “Lana Del Rey – Norman F***ing Rockwell”. Directed by Chuck Grand and edited by Del Rey herself, the “Bartender” portion of the video features Del Rey and friends throwing donuts, slushies and drinks at two policemen who chase them around an empty lot while edited explosions are shown in the background. As of March 2020, the video has almost 4 million views and over 214 thousand likes since its upload in December 2019.

Release Date: 30th August 2019

Songwriter/s: Lana Del Rey & Rick Nowels

Producer/s: Lana Del Rey & Rick Nowels

Label/s: Polydor / Interscope

Music Video Release Date: 20th December 2019

Music Video Director: Chuck Grant

Chart Rankings: “Bartender” did not reach the mainstream charts, however the song has 16.8 million streams on Spotify worldwide.

The lyrics to “Bartender” can be viewed here: LINK