{"id":347204,"date":"2026-01-01T23:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T23:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/347204\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T23:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T23:56:09","slug":"did-lana-del-rey-really-try-to-insult-the-beach-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/347204\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Lana Del Rey really try to insult The Beach Boys?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Did<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Thu 1 January 2026 21:30, UK <\/p>\n

In 2025<\/a>, music saw the return of the diss track.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 put music back into the gossip columns, and proved that for better or worse, the subtle art of slagging someone off seems to boost record sales. Perhaps more importantly, though, it was an expertly crafted song that not only had a loud bark, but an intensely powerful bite, and so it got us wondering at\u00a0Far Out,\u00a0is a little rivalry all that bad?<\/a><\/p>\n

Sure, hearing a good old-fashioned love song is great, but there\u2019s no denying that rage, anger, and outright hate are some of life\u2019s most powerful emotions and rightly make for great music. Paul McCartney and John Lennon proved that with \u2018Too Many People\u2019 and \u2018How Do You Sleep?\u2019<\/a>, while 1990s hip-hop undoubtedly took it too far outside of the studio, but had outstanding moments of recorded rage inside it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So revelling in my newfound enthusiasm for a diss track, I began scouring the record collection for what might be the next great version of one and found what might just be the most bizarre of all time: Lana Del Rey and The Beach Boys.<\/p>\n

Now, being the songwriter she is, it comes as no surprise that Del Rey positions herself as a Beach Boys fan. The careful consideration of a record like Pet Sounds<\/a> would undoubtedly have had an effect on Del Rey\u2019s ability to pen a ballad. So like many, she would have winced at the sharp U-turn the band would have taken in 1988 upon the release of \u2018Kokomo\u2019.<\/p>\n

The song was rightly considered a dud for the West Coast band, ditching any sense of arrangement nuance to instead write a cheesy and lyrically vapid number that baselessly showcases their vocals. It very much sounded like the ghost of the band we once knew in the mid-1960s, and the track was rightly criticised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Five years before the release of the song, Dennis Wilson had sadly passed away, and so many remarked on \u2018Kokomo\u2019 as somewhat of a soundtrack to this new, underwhelming chapter of the band that existed in the wake of Wilson\u2019s death. At least Del Rey certainly did, singing \u201cI miss the bar where The Beach Boys would go \/ Dennis\u2019 last stop before Kokomo\u201d on her 2019 track \u2018The greatest\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you analyse the line within the wider context of the song, it becomes clear that the band are simply caught in the crossfire of a wider, more pointed argument. The entire piece sees Del Rey pining for a time when she lived through a happy relationship. Reminiscing on better times, she uses The Beach Boys\u2019 underwhelming sonic change to describe a moment when something has flipped, and the greatness that once existed can no longer be salvaged.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just The Beach Boys that were used to make this point. Pop culture references are pulled from all angles, be it the Los Angeles wildfires, Kanye West\u2019s political activism or the simple idea of David Bowie\u2019s \u2018Life On Mars\u2019, Del Rey is commenting on a time where romance has made way for dystopia.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover \/ Alamy) Thu 1 January 2026 21:30, UK In 2025, music saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,24567,128,15745,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-347204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-lana-del-rey","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-beach-boys","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}