Jackie at the Wheel

The video opens with Lana Del Rey in a white dress, breathy and composed, singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" into a microphone. Then it goes somewhere else entirely—she becomes Jackie Kennedy, A$AP Rocky becomes JFK, and for the next six minutes National Anthem plays out as a recreation of a marriage, a glamour, and an ending everyone already knows.

It’s a strange piece of work. The home-movie aesthetic, the slow luxury of it, the way the violence at the end arrives without shock—just one more dissolve in an already-dissolving life. Lana has always been drawn to beautiful men who would eventually ruin her or die on her, and in 2012 she hadn’t yet learned to be ironic about it. That sincerity is what makes the video land. A$AP Rocky, for his part, is genuinely magnetic—the casting works in ways it probably shouldn’t.

The song itself is pure Lana: heavy production, that low-register voice, lyrics that collapse money and love and nation into one enormous melancholy object. "My money is my anthem" as romantic declaration. The American Dream as both aspiration and eulogy. She was doing something real here, even while half the internet was still arguing about whether she was doing anything at all.