Venice Bitch

“Venice Bitch” was the second single from American singer, songwriter and poet Lana Del Rey (real name Lizzy Grant), from her sixth studio album, “Norman Fucking Rockwell!”, which was released in 2019. “Venice Bitch” was written and producedby Del Rey and Jack Antonoff, both of whom produced and wrote the whole album.

In “Venice Bitch”, Del Rey sings about a love and their times together, perhaps referring to “Venice Beach” in California, where these memories took place, but switching around the words to suit the feel and emotion of the song. Del Rey makes references to poetry and songs in the track, such as “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells, and a poem by Robert Frost. In a radio interview with Zane Lowe from Beats Radio 1 on the day of the track’s release, Del Rey explained the length behind the song, and its intention: “It was funny when I played for my managers. I was like ‘yeah, I think this is the single I wanna put out,’ and they were like ‘it’s 10 minutes long, are you kidding me. It’s called Venice Bitch, like why you do this to us? Can you make like 3-minute normal pop song’ and I was like ‘no, end of summer some people just wanna drive around for 10 minutes and get lost in electric guitar.’”

The music video for “Venice Bitch” was released on the same day as the track and was uploaded to Lana Del Rey’s official YouTube channel. Directed by Del Rey’s brother Chuck Grant (who directs many of Del Rey’s videos now), and features vintage, grainy footage of endless highways and the occasional black and white shot of Del Rey, which matches up with what Del Rey intended the song to be for – driving at the end of summer. As of March 2020, the video has almost 12 million views with 313 thousand likes.

Release Date: 18th September 2018

Songwriter/s: Lana Del Rey & Jack Antonoff

Producer/s: Jack Antonoff & Lana Del Rey

Label/s: Polydor / Interscope

Music Video Release Date: 18th September 2018

Music Video Director: Chuck Grant

Chart Rankings: “Venice Bitch” performed fairly well on mainstream charts, reaching #95 in France, #97 in Greece, #32 in New Zealand, #80 in Scotland, #35 in Spain, #76 in the UK and #10 in the US.

The lyrics to “Venice Bitch” can be viewed here: LINK