Carmen

Album: Born To Die (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • This cautionary tale of a doomed woman who sells her body on the streets is littered with Coney Island references. Del Rey told The Sun: "Carmen is a song I can't say too much about because it's so close to my heart. It's the song on the record I relate to most closely. It's set partly in Coney Island, a place that's been important to me throughout my New York City career."
  • Coney Island is a peninsula in southernmost Brooklyn, New York City, USA, with a beach on the Atlantic Ocean. As well as containing America's one time largest amusement park, it was America's original Sin City, decades before Las Vegas, and was rife with prostitution.
  • For those of you who skipped your French lessons at school, Lana's French spoken part translates as "My love, I know that you love me too/You need me, you need me in your life/You can't live without me/And I'd die without you/I'd kill for you."
  • The song's 17-year-old protagonist suffers from substance abuse. Del Rey admitted in 2012 that she had a problem with alcohol when she was a teenager, but hasn't drunk for a number of years.
  • The song came about in a natural way. Del Rey recalled to Complex magazine: "I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, 'Carmen, Carmen doesn't have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor's top shelf.' And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things... it was really easy to channel."

Comments: 6

  • Ira from Algeria I love Lana, she is amazing and so special, she sings things she felt, she tell the world her story not like others singers, I can not compare Lana with any singer, she is the best.
  • AnonymousI love this song and I love you so much Lana Del Rey I hope to see you one day love you bye!
  • Lisarowe from UsaCorrections on some of these lyrics:

    It's

    "Famous and dumb at an early age
    Lying, I'm lying"

    "Looking for fun, getting high for free"

    "Tying cherry knots, smiling, doing party favors"
  • Dinosaur I love this
  • Anna from RussiaI thought that the song was about young, but famous girls that are very pretty and seem rich and happy (fooling everyone that she's having fun, liquor on a top shelf), but actually they need to sleep with required men in exchange for their fame and money (street walk at night, star at day). Just my opinion.
  • SakHmm also Carmen was an opera about a woman that was very popular so I thought maybe it could mean that everyone wants her but her life is not as perfect as it's portrayed? Idk man
see more comments

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