With “Carmen,” melancholy songstress Lana Del Rey is up to her old tricks again, and by “old tricks” all I mean is splicing and dicing random clips to make a music video – clips of flowers blooming, the New York City skyline, old time movies, and such, cut with scenes of Del Rey on stage and with her boy toy acting all lovey dovey somewhere around New York. It’s all very True Blood-intro like if you ask me, which is still one TV opening credits sequence that I refuse to fast forward through. It’s eerily delicious and I love it, much like Del Rey’s own music. The video premiered on Lana’s official YouTube page April 21st with a message – “Thank you to all of the beautiful film makers that helped make this video.“
In my “Blue Jeans” ‘Hot Video Alert‘, I mistakenly reported that “Carmen” would be the final video in her Yoann Lemoine trilogy, following the two cinematically epic videos for “Born to Die” and “Blue Jeans.” Clearly, after watching this video and re-reading Lana’s Facebook post, I got it wrong. On February 27th, Del Rey posted to her official Facebook – “Finishing editing the video for Carmen today. Shooting the final video in my trilogy with Yoann next week.” She’s obviously talking about two separate videos, which begs the question – what other song is Lana Del Rey shooting a video for?!
Some sites are speculating that “Carmen” is in fact Del Rey’s fourth single, based on a couple of tweets yesterday about the song. I’m not 100% sold that she wasn’t simply tweeting vaguely about the video premiere, which also went live yesterday. In any event, the hauntingly beautiful “Carmen” appears on Del Rey’s debut album, Born To Die, as well as a B-Side on the “Blue Jeans” vinyl. Co-written by Del Rey and Justin Parker (co-writer on “Video Games“) and co-produced by Emile Haynie (The Roots, Kid Cudi) and Jeff Bhasker (Alicia Keys, Natalia Kills), “Carmen” is a true testament to Del Rey’s gift as a songwriter. Yet another stunner from Ms. Lana Del Rey. Catch Lana performing live on next Sunday’s The Voice UK and download her music on iTunes BELOW. U.S. fans, look out for the “Blue Jeans” remix EP on iTunes May 1st.
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