Lana Del Rey may or may not wish she "was dead already," depending on who you ask. But the "West Coast" pop star does, in fact, meet an untimely end in the director's cut of her new music video for "Shades Of Cool."
Del Rey and director Jake Nava dropped the original version of "Shades Of Cool" in mid-June, on the very same day Ultraviolence was released. The music video is very much typical Del Rey fare: she falls in love with a much older man, he's a gangster and the two spend lavishly dull days together in Beverly Hills. Del Rey's job is to look pretty and bored, his job is something a little seedier, but Del Rey loves her man anyway.
The director's cut and the original music video follow largely the same template and story line... except for a twist ending. The new version of "Shades Of Cool" features Del Rey potentially drowning instead of just swimming in a pool and there's also images of a bloody knife superimposed over Del Rey's body.
The director's cut is actually a marked improvement on the originally released rendition of "Shades Of Cool," building up the relationship between Del Rey and her older lover and culminating in something very tragic and very Hollywood.
However, the original cut was reportedly scrapped after Del Rey made comments to The Guardian saying she "wishes she were dead already." Del Rey later recanted her statements, saying the journalist was asking leading questions, but not before getting Twitter lectured by Kurt Cobain's daughter Frances Bean.
Watch the director's cut for Lana Del Rey's "Shades Of Cool" on Nava's official website, This Is Frank.
"Shades Of Cool" is the second single from Del Rey's second studio album Ultraviolence, which was released June 17. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 182,000 copies in its first week.
