Lana Del Rey has unveiled the video for ‘National Anthem,’ the fourth single to be taken from her number one debut album, ‘Born To Die.’
Continuing her fascination with the darker side of Hollywood glamour, the cinematic eight-minute promo recreates the assassination of John F. Kennedy, with hotly-tipped Harlem rapper ASAP Rocky playing the late President and Del Rey his equally iconic wife, Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
Beginning with a black-and-white homage to Marilyn Monroe’s famous ‘Happy Birthday’ performance, the video then intersperses footage of the couple’s idyllic home life with shots of a pouting Del Rey lip-synching along to the orchestral slice of trip-hop, before concluding with a dramatic monologue played over the inevitable tragic final scene.
Her hip-hop co-star, who she’s also collaborated with on a track called ‘Ridin’’, had previously claimed that the video was ahead of its time in a typically eloquent interview with German channel 16bars.tv:
“I play JFK, she plays Jackie O. Some cool trippy shit, some real 2015 shit. People are going to get it in three years, and that’s the whole purpose of it.”
