Lana Del Rey is melancholic in both sound and lyrics and her two new songs created for Tim Burton’s Big Eyes are a certain proof in that regard. ‘’Big Eyes’’ and ‘’I Can Fly’’ are both love ballads, but their themes hint at a different significance. The first one bears the title of the biography movie and the second one is most likely meant to draw a freedom-like conclusion upon the oppressed context of the main character’s life. According to Rolling Stone, the first track will be included somewhere in the middle of the movie, whereas the latter is supposed to mark its finale, as will play over Big Eyes end credits.
Lana Del Rey’s ‘’Big Eyes’’ is the core musical piece of the movie and therefore borrows its title. The biography drama centers on the story of painter Margaret Keane, spanning from her gigantic success in the 1950s to her troublesome restless life in the 1960s, when her husband claimed credits for her art. She became famous as the woman who painted portraits of children, real close-ups with great focus on the eyes, which in some cases determined that the ginormous eyes occupied almost a quarter of the painting. Although somehow fragile in aspect, the paintings also send a frightening vibe, as a pair of huge eyes constantly staring can become irritating at some point.
Big Eyes is a ‘’musical painting’’ of all the feelings of fear and deceit inhabiting the female artist, Margaret Keane. As the eyes are said to be the window of one’s soul, someone watching can go beyond their physical attire and dive into the spirit of the person. If that is true, the chorus of Lana Del Rey’s ‘’Big Eyes’’ unravels a malefic lover (the husband), whose eyes are synonyms of his lies and bear all their significance: ‘’With your big eyes/ And your big lies’’. Apart from treachery, feelings of anxiety and sheer horror are noticeable from the first two stanzas: ‘’ I saw you creeping around the garden/ What are you hiding?’’. If ‘’Big Eyes’’ – the single is obviously full of negative emotions, not the same is applied in the case of ‘’I Can Fly’’ (obvious even from the title). Indeed, the track contains verses like ‘’You had me caged up like a bird in mid-summer’’, but the state of captivity is overridden once the declaration ‘’I can fly’’ hits at the beginning of the chorus.
Lana Del Rey has previously recorded music for movies like Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013), based on the novel by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. She also joined the crew of Maleficent earlier this year, when she recorded a cover of the classical variant of ‘’Once Upon a Dream’’ from Disney’s 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty.