Lana Del Rey releases the spoken word track Patent Leather Do-Over

Lana Del Rey seemed to be trying to work though a self-created crisis as she released a new spoken word song on Saturday.

The Norman F***ing Rockwell singer, 34, shared the track Patent Leather Do-Over on Instagram, along with an abstract video to accompany it.

The new music comes days after Lana was widely lambasted by critics and social media users for a note in which she complained how fellow female singers including Doja Cat, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj and Beyonce could earn ‘number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, f***ing, cheating.’

Lana’s spoken-word song features her breathy voice reciting a poem of the same name over an abstract musical track that veers between soothing ambient textures and more sinister noir-tinged guitar stabs.

Fittingly, the song was accompanied by a video of palm trees swaying in the breeze below a piercing orange sun.

The Ultraviolence singer let the track stand on its own, though she captioned it with ‘music as always by jack,’ a reference to her producer Jack Antonoff.

The two musicians previously collaborated on her last critical hit, Norman F***ing Rockwell, on which they co-wrote most of the songs. 

The song features references to poet Sylvia Plath and her iconic semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar. 

‘Sylvia, I knew what you meant when you talked about swimming in the ocean and leaving your patent leather black shoes pointed towards it while you swam. It tickled you to leave them there,’ she says cooly.

Lana followed up the music with a close-up black and white photo of herself sitting on the ground in front of a tree and sniffing a white flower while gazing into the camera.

‘patent leather do-over from “behind the iron gates,”‘ she captioned it.

Lana currently has two spoken word albums in the works. The first, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, was intended for a January release, though it was subsequently delayed and a new release date hasn’t been announced.

The poems recited on the album will also be part of a poetry collection of the same name. 

Patent Leather Do-Over will be featured on her second spoken word album, Behind the Iron Gates — Insights From an Institution.

The Charlie’s Angels songstress previously said the first album would be sold for only $1, and 50 percent of both albums’ sales will go to charities supporting Native American communities. 

She’s also set to release her next traditional album, White Hot Forever, on September 5.

Lana previously caused a stir on Thursday when she shared a post complaining that other singers could have ‘number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, f***ing, cheating,’ while she was criticized for ‘glamorizing abuse.’

Critics and social media users were quick to point out that all of the women mentioned were black and/or Latina, aside from Ariana Grande, who has referred to herself as Italian American.

It’s not clear why the singer–songwriter felt attacked in the first place, as her most recent album scored an impressive 88 percent on Metacritic and 98 percent from Google users.  

As of 2020, she has sold 19.1 million albums and over 13 million singles worldwide. 

Lana returned to Instagram on Friday with some ‘final notes’ on her ‘controversial post’ and insisted that ‘critics can’t read and want to make [her post into] a race war.’

‘But in truth making it about race says so much more about you than it does about me — you want the drama,’ she wrote.

‘You don’t want to believe that a woman could be beautiful, strong and fragile at the same time, loving and all inclusive by making personal reparations simply for the joy of doing it.

‘Nothing new here in your reaction. Same as ten years ago when a million think pieces came out about me feigning emotional fragility or lying about coming from no money when that was the truth,’ she said.