There's Something Oedipal About Lana Del Rey...

...right?

Intro

I first heard of Lana del Rey sometime in the early 2010s, but I didn’t pay her any mind until the release of her hit album Norman Fucking Rockwell! in 2019. I became a bit of a casual listener from then on, only occasionally checking on her new releases but feeling mostly averted from her because of her numerous 2020 controversies. It wasn’t until August of 2022 that I really started to take the dive into her discography and 2023 when I would solidify my fan status of Lana. I pushed aside my distaste for her COVID controversies and her “Question for the Culture” (if you know, you know--I can’t delve into it for my own sanity’s sake) and fully gave into the art, and God, was it good.

Her discography offers a vast array of sounds, lyrics, and aesthetic themes, some of which are more problematic than the others. Lana del Rey’s music likes to (whether intentionally or not) sexualize abuse and romanticize the DDLG (or Daddy Dom, Little Girl) kink, and with that has come a whole slew of problems for the proceeding generations. Throughout Lana’s discography (both released and unreleased), there is a running theme of referring to her lovers as her Daddy and to herself in ways that are girlish and small. 

There’s no rhyme or reason for the order in which I am going to discuss the songs I intend to look into, nor am I going to cover all of her tracks that mention “Daddy,” but I am going to touch on a few that stand out to me.

Explaining Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory Regarding The Oedipus Complex

But before I do that, what do I even mean when I am referring to Lana as Oedipal? What does that word mean? It’s a rather complex (no pun intended) word to describe, so instead I will opt to share with you a cut up quote from Marky Klages’ Literary Theory: The Complete Guide, in which she summarizes Sigmund Freud’s defining characteristics of the Oedipus complex, specifically as it presents in the Female. 

She writes, “[...T]he girl notices that boys have penises and that girls don’t. Freud says that girls instantly recognize penises as the superior counterpart of the clitoris, and fall victim to penis envy. ‘She has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it,’ says Freud. [... S]he  can take the ‘normal’ route, which is to accept ‘the fact of her castration.’ If she accepts this ‘fact,’ she develops a sense of inferiority to the male; she decides her lack of a penis is punishment for some wrongdoing [...]; she gets furious with her mother for not giving her a penis, and for not having one herself [...] An important consequence of her penis envy [...] is a loosening of the bond with her mother. On discovering that her mother doesn’t have a penis, and didn’t give her one, the girl takes the libidinal desire she [...] felt for her mother and turns it into anger and hatred for not giving her a penis. This moves her toward the necessary shift to taking her father as libidinal object. The girl then decides that, if she can’t have a penis, she’ll have  a  baby instead, and takes her father as her love object with the express purpose of having a child by him; her mother then becomes solely the object of jealousy and rivalry. [...] This is the Oedipus complex for girls [...]. It starts when the girl begins to desire her father. Hence in girls the castration complex comes first—they first realize they are  castrated, then they enter into an Oedipal relation, desiring to kill the mother, marry the father, and have his baby.”

Okay. So that’s a lot to unpack and that’s just a cut up fragment of a summary of Freud’s understanding/description of this Complex. What I can best say to summarize that is that basically “all” women will grow up to and resent their mothers (and women just like them) because the mother is responsible for a sort of “key ingredient” for “optimal” livelihood that they are now lacking, which leads to them sexually desiring their fathers (or men just like them) as a way to spite the mother (because then the woman will have effectively stolen her mom’s man, or even her mom’s “own penis” if we want to take it a step further). I understand that this can be extremely jarring to read and difficult to try to grasp, so if you want to tap out on this one, I completely understand, because frankly, I don’t really like reading or talking about it. It brings me immense discomfort to discuss the incestuous (and pedophilic) nature of Freud’s theories, but unfortunately and regrettably, I do find it morbidly fascinating, so discuss it I shall, nevertheless. 

Disclaimer

A final note before delving into my analyses, I want to make it clear that I am NOT saying that these analyses are definitive reflections of Lana’s intended meanings for the songs, I am not trying to undermine the meaning of the darker content of these songs, and I am not saying that I even agree with the conclusions that I am about to draw. I find it rather repulsive to look at many things through a Freudian lens because I find that he, in his own way, romanticizes and fetishizes incest and does so under the guise of mere “psychoanalysis,” which I find to be incredibly problematic. This post is simply meant to serve as a “What if we considered these lyrics from this angle?” and “What are the ramifications of writing lyrics that glamorize and romanticize--whether it's intentional or not can be argued, but either way, these songs and concepts have been romanticized entirely by the consumer--these dark themes?”

Okay now finally with ALL of that out of the way, let’s do the more fun stuff, and delve into some of these freaky lyrics.

Yayo

Starting off, I want to talk about the track “Yayo,” which was officially released on the Paradise Edition of Lana del Rey’s official debut album Born to Die in 2013, but was originally written and recorded sometime in 2007, where it was then released on Lana’s (now unreleased) debut album Lana del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant. 

The part of the song that really stands out to me is the chorus followed by the first line of the second verse which reads as follows:

Put me onto your black motorcycle

50s babydoll dress for my "I do"

It only takes two hours to Nevada

I wear your sparkle

You call me your mama

Let me put on a show for you, daddy

Let me put on a show

Let me put on a show for you, tiger

Ahh-ah-ah, let me put on a show

I need you like a baby when I hold you

Lana discusses wanting to dress herself in 1950s-esque attire, specifically noting the babydoll dress, which if you are unfamiliar, looks something like this:

                                                        

Not all babydoll dresses look exactly like this one, nor are they exclusively worn by children, however, you cannot deny that this doesn’t look like a little girl dress to you. 

Then, she says the line about the ambiguous “You” calling her mama, which if you consider Freud’s view on every child wanting to fuck their own opposite-sex parent, this checks out. To get in good with this man, Lana must be both mother and little girl. (This is one of the issues with Freud’s work--it makes no sense and there are a lot of holes in his ideologies.) 

Then she wants to put on a show for this Daddy-ish “You,” which I can only imagine involves some sort of sensual dancing or stripping (at least based on the production of the song and the sound of her voice while singing it). But again, there’s that dynamic between playing baby and being sexy while doing it, forcing herself into the submission of her “Daddy.” It’s even prominent in the way Lana’s voice changes throughout the song. When she is singing about tattoos in the beginning her voice is abnormally deep, but as we get into the “Daddy” territory of the song, Lana’s voice becomes extremely high pitched and has almost a baby-like affect to it (This is also something she does in some of her other songs, including “Florida Kilos”, in which she is, again, mentioning a “Daddy” and yayo/coke, this time in a voice so babified it’s almost unlistenable at first, due to how jarring it is). 

                                        

Verse 2 begins with Lana literally likening herself to a baby in the way that she needs this man. I don’t even think this line needs any explanation for how extremely Oedipal that is and how perfectly that falls right within Freud’s ideology, but I will sum it up for you quickly. She needs him in the way a baby needs her father. She desires to be both girlfriend and daughter in relation to this man.

Lana’s Relationship to Her Mother + Boarding School

Next, I want to briefly cover some history for those of you who may be unfamiliar with Lana del Rey’s personal life. Lana has publicly mentioned via social media and song lyrics that she has a strained/no relationship with her mother. 

(Everything underlined in the next block of text is a hyperlink to the songs mentioned @ the proper timestamps for the lyrics I quote, with the exception of the poem, of which I just linked the whole recording)

This is evident in “Black Bathing Suit” in which she sings the line, “So I’m not friends with my mother, but I still love my dad.” In “Fingertips,” she discusses her journey of mental health, her family, and her career and she explicitly mentions her mother in the lines, “Caroline, what kind of mother was she to say I’d end up in institutions? [...] What the fuck’s wrong in your head to send me away, never to come back? Exotic places and people don’t take the place of being your child.” In “A&W,” Lana opens the track stating, “I haven’t done a cartwheel since I was 9. I haven’t spoken to my mother in a long long time.” In “Old Money,” she sings, “My father’s love was always strong. My mother’s glamor lives on and on.” In “Wildflower Wildfire,” Lana sings, “Here’s the deal. My father never stepped in when his wife would rage at me, so I ended up awkward but sweet.” Finally, she mentions her mother in her 2020 poem, “LA Who Am I to Love You,” where she writes the lines, “L.A, I know I'm bad, but I have nowhere else to go, can I come home now? / I never had a mother, will you let me make the sun my own for now, and the ocean my son? / I'm quite good at tending to things despite my upbringing, can I raise your mountains?” and “You see, I have no mother / And you do / A continental shelf / A larger piece of land from where you came / And I? / I'm an orphan.” 

If we are considering Freud’s psychoanalytical lens, this makes entire sense and lines up perfectly with his understanding of the Oedipus complex. According to him, Lana should have a bad relationship with her mother because she is “responsible” for Lana’s “castration.” Because of this castration, Lana develops a close relationship with her father and wants to marry a man just like him to spite the mother. This is why Lana likes to talk about the guys she dates and fucks as if they are her “Daddy.” 

One of the major issues we know about Lana’s relationship with her mother is that her parents sent her away to boarding school when she was about 14 or 15 years old because of her alcohol addiction. Her mother did not allow her to return home. When she was away, she said she was very lonely and her only friend was an older male teacher who was the one who introduced her to Lolita (creepy). The story of Lolita depicts a pedophile lusting over his tween-aged stepdaughter and the two engage in a perverse relationship (I am not sure how totally accurate this summary is because I have not read the novel, this is just my understanding of it). Lana references Lolita in a lot of her work, both released and unreleased, and even has a track on her 2012 album, Born to Die that shares the same name. She even goes on to write several songs about this boarding school experience, and wanting to get into relationships with her teachers. 

I don’t think it’s exactly morally right to try to psychoanalyze and dissect a real person’s relationships with their parents like this. However, if I were to put my morals aside for a split second, I would say that it could make some Freudian sense that Lana felt compelled to romance older men after this experience of being sent away as a child by her mother, but not having her father be willing to step in and defend her. This, in return caused other older men to take advantage of her situation and vulnerability, and thus caused her to seek their approval and find solace in them, in the way she never could with her own father who should have been protecting her. I think this analysis might be slipping a little too far from what Freud was trying to get at in his theories, but also maybe not because his stuff is a bit difficult to follow at times because of how creepy it all sounds. 

Anyways, moving on. I want to mention another 2 songs that, like “Yayo,” also come from her Paradise EP, “Body Electric” and “Cola.” 

Body Electric 

In “Body Electric,” she sings the line “Whitman is my daddy,” in reference to famous writer Walt Whitman who wrote the poem “I Sing the Body Electric.” In the music video for this, when she sings this line, she gestures toward a tattoo on her right arm that reads the names “Whitman” and “Nabokov,” who, as I mentioned earlier, Lana idolizes the writing of, specifically Lolita. Am I reaching by trying to make an Oedipal connection to this line? Possibly. But I do still think it is worth noting that when she sings the word “Daddy” in the video, she gestures towards her tattoo tribute to the author of the famous pedophile step-daddy book. Additionally, she also calls Elvis (famously a pedophile groomer) her “Daddy” in this song in its opening line. Not inherently significant, but still rather curious.

                                                    

Cola

In “Cola,” we finally receive explicit confirmation that Lana has an affinity for men who might as well be her father. She starkly opens up the song by saying:

My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola 

My eyes are wide like cherry pies 

I got sweet taste for men who are older 

It’s always been, so it’s no surprise 

Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds and he’s making me crazy 

All he wants to do is party with his pretty baby.

I think it is a little uncomfortable that she is comparing herself to confections that are associated with youth and even innocence. Cherries are an oversexualized fruit associated with virginity (which is obviously associated with youth). Pies are usually big and round and children are typically associated with having big and round eyes. Sweet treats in general are usually associated with youth, so if we really wanted to go there, we could make the connection that these old men like her for her youthful sweetness and she likes that about herself because it feeds into her desire for older men/her father.

Also in these lines, we are receiving explicit confirmation that she likes older men, and then she makes a direct reference to Harvery Weinstein, a famous film producer (and now-convicted sex offender). In doing this, Lana seems to have been saying that she dreams of having an older rich boyfriend who can afford to fund her young, fast, partying lifestyle. 

  

In the chorus, she sings the lines, “We can escape to the great sunrise / I know your wife and she wouldn’t mind.” In an Oedipus Complex lens, we can take this line to mean that Lana is “stealing” this older man, this providing, father-like figure of a boyfriend away from his wife, who would then be her mother-figure in this scenario. Again, this perfectly lines up with Freud’s assertion that girls want to steal their fathers from their mothers. 

In the second verse, Lana makes a direct reference to her father, when she sings the line, “I pledge allegiance to my dad / For teaching me everything he knows.” We can take this to mean that her dad has taught her how to seek after men like him and that she will always be endlessly devoted to him, whether it is by showing him direct affection or doing so secondhand through the men that she spends her time with romantically and sexually. 

In the bridge of this track she sings, “Drugs, suck it up, like vanilla icys / Don't treat me rough, treat me really niceys.” Here, again, we are seeing that comparison to a childlike treat and she is utilizing a more childlike affect with these language choices, specifically in that second line. It could be argued that Lana is once again taking on the role of the Sexy Baby to impress and seduce the older Daddies that she seeks. Or at least, that’s what Freud would want you to believe Lana is doing.

              

Put Me in a Movie

Finally, I want to end with one of the most jarring songs of Lana’s whole discography, which is an unreleased (though widely known) track entitled, “Put Me in a Movie.” 

This song is agreed by many to likely be based on the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Lana cites this as being one of her favorite novels and, as I mentioned previously, she even has the author’s last name tattooed on her. Also, as I mentioned before, she was introduced to this novel as a young teen, by her older male teacher (who she claimed to be her only friend) while she was away from home at boarding school.

           

In “Put Me in a Movie,” the narrator speaks of the abuse she’s facing at the hands of an older man. It is unclear what age the narrator is supposed to be or if this is real abuse or an imagined romanticized scenario. The chorus of the song contains the following two lines, each repeated twice, “Come on you know you like (Good) little girls / You can be my daddy.” Following the bridge, she repeats the line, “Feels like sugar in me.” If we were to take these lines as Freud would, he would believe that the speaker has found herself in a relationship with an older man that she wishes to be like her father and she wishes to submit herself to this man like she were his daughter, and when they are together it feels good (sweet and “like sugar”- another childlike food reference) and that libidinal desire is being fulfilled. Or, even worse, she has found herself in a sexual relationship with her father and has thus successfully ousted the mother from the relationship. 

If you were asking me, however, I would say this feels like an anthem for girls who were victims to older men, specifically in Hollywood. It reminds me of the cases where there are these Big-Wig celebrity men who are producers, directors, business men (ahem) who use their power to lure children into spending time with them, feeding them drugs and alcohol, and then doing unspeakable things to them. It reminds me of the children who get trafficked and forced into creating explicit videographic material. There is a deep sadness to this song sonically and lyrically, that, if we look at it from a Freudian lens and specifically in terms of the Oedipus complex, gets completely ignored and then the lyrics are forced to be taken at face value, which I find to completely undermine the entire point of writing a track like this. If we take this song as Freud would want us to, are we any better than the men who exploit little girls and claim that the little girls were “willing” to engage in these horrific behaviors, or would we be exploiting the little girls’ pain as well because she “has” to “want” to fuck [men like] her father.

My Issues With Freud’s Oedipus Complex-Lead Theory of Psychoanalysis

Where I think this lens is problematic in this fashion is that it completely ignores the MAJOR issue at hand in these Daddy-Girl relationship dynamics which is that these old men are preying upon weak and vulnerable young girls who don’t know any better, and even if they do, they lack 100% of the power, control, and autonomy to remove themselves from their abusive situation.

Sure, there are instances where the girl exhibits a pattern of lusting after men like their father (or maybe even their fathers themselves) but oftentimes it is NOT stemming from a place of mere “Penis Envy” or wanting to fit themselves in with the heterosexual norm to avoid hysteria and/or whatever other pervy bullshit Freud was spouting, but rather these intense taboo sexual perversions are stemming from pre-existing sexual trauma instilled upon them at a young age by men who are unwilling (notice how I did not say unable) to control themselves (because saying unable removes the element of it being a choice, and pedophiles and rapists are ABSOLUTELY making a choice, it is not just an “illness” that “can’t be helped”). 

Frankly, I think the majority of my Freudian Oedipal psychoanalyses that I presented you with today are complete bullshit. I felt like I was grasping at straws to try to connect these lyrics to Freud’s writings. I do think some of these ideas in a vacuum can hold some merit, but not in the way that Freud thinks. For example, like I mentioned before, there is a trend of women dating men old enough to be their fathers. But I don’t think it is coming from a place of castration anxiety or as a way to enact revenge on their mothers. 

Instead, I believe that it is often coming from places of sexual trauma brought upon by father figures, a lack of positive adult role models (male or female) in the child’s life, and an oversaturation of this type of hypersexualized, Sexy Baby, “I <3 Dating Older Men” media that is prevalent in pop culture. Vulnerable young girls and young women who are exposed to this type of media (especially with a traumatic past) are unlikely to be able to understand why it is problematic and harmful to get themselves into this situation. 

And then older men who are predators are well aware of this, so they present themselves in a way to appeal to these vulnerable young women as a means of preying on them, while still allowing room for plausible deniability (“She was coming on to me! I had nooo idea that this EXTREMELY YOUNG LOOKING GIRL was only 16, she looks mature for her age!”). 

Take for example, the instance of Benji Gleason on TikTok, who rose to fame several years ago for lip syncing to Lil Peep songs and “Thirst Trapping” to Lana del Rey songs, despite not being a fan, just because he knew it would make his account go viral. Many young girls saw this alternative looking older man lip syncing to their favorite songs and projected their Lana del Rey fantasies onto him, and he used that to his advantage to gain their attention (whether he’d directly admit he was looking for the attention of specifically young girls or not). Just last month, he was arrested and charged with 17 felonies including a plethora of various sex crimes. That’s what these men do. They lure young girls in, claim they don’t want the attention of young girls, but then keep doing the things that they know will get them the attention of the young girls, until one day they get caught for being a freaky sex criminal.

I don’t think it’s inherently fair to blame artists like Lana for the poor decisions of young girls and for the old grown-ass men who prey on young girls, but I do think that Lana’s overt romanticization and aesthetic-ification of being a young girl in vulnerable situations and dangerous relationships (whether that’s what she intended to do or not) is a MASSIVE contributing factor to the reinforcement of the normalization of these bad things. Why wouldn’t a young teen fantasize about dating a man old enough to be her father when Lana del Rey when her sexy music videos contain such beautifully shot, romantic frames (I’ve included several of them throughout this point, for reference, but there are more!)? 

I think it is up to artists like Lana del Rey to make sure that they tread carefully when making music that seems to so overtly glamorize abuse. Lana writes really good music about really dark topics such as toxic familial dynamics and abusive relationships, however it becomes dangerous when she doesn’t seem to condemn the bad behaviors of these bad men, and instead romanticizes it. 

The most notable example of this is in “Ultraviolence,” where Lana sings the infamous line, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss.” Whether she meant it to be taken romantically or not, I don’t think really matters. I think when writing something so dark, it is important to consider your audience and the types of ways in which a line like that can resonate with and affect the listener. I don’t have a solution for this, and I don’t even know if there is one. But all I know is that the damage has already been done.

Lastly, do I think that Lana del Rey has a secret desire to fuck her own father? No. However, I do think all of the “daddy” lyrics in her songs are incredibly uncomfortable and jarring. I didn’t even touch on all of them in this post, that’s how many there are (The listicle I am linking you to isn’t even in-date anymore as Lana has released another album and several singles since then). But, it seems that I am in the minority with this opinion. 

I will leave you with this before I sign off: This is a comment from the music video for Lana del Rey’s latest song released in February of 2026, “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” in which she refers to her husband as her “daddy.”

My apologies for inconsistent formatting, the site is giving me major technical difficulties with my images that make no sense and it isn't letting me fix it! I'm tired of raging so I'm just succumbing to the imperfections :,)