Cruel World

This melancholic, bluesy slow-burner is about a self-professed crazy girl who's just ditched her drug addict loser of a boyfriend. "I shared my body and my mind with you," she croons, "but that's all over now."

Del Rey told Clash magazine this is her favorite track on Ultraviolence. "I went down to the beach and I was thinking about everything, personally," she recalled. "The verse is thoughtful and laid back, but then the chorus falls into this world of chaotic and heavy sub-bass. The juxtaposition of those two worlds, the peaceful beginning and the chaotic chorus, it summed up my personal circumstances of everything going easily and then everything being f---ed up. It felt like me."

Del Rey recorded several of Ulltraviolence's tracks with producer Dan Auerbach at the Black Keys vocalist's Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. Auerbach is also co-credited with claps on this song. Auerbach admitted that he didn't have to do very much work on the tracks Del Rey brought into the studio: "Her demos were so good, her songs were so strong that I wanted to get my musicians in who I love and get my sound that I get here with her songs and that's it. I didn't want to mess it up," he told Rolling Stone. "She sang live with a seven-piece band. That's the whole record – a seven-piece band with her singing live. It was crazy."