In 2011, armed with a retro take on modern malaise and a viral single about suburban romance, Lana Del Rey inadvertently cracked open a can of worms regarding notions of authenticity. Was her mysterious transformation from struggling singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant to the magnificently blasé bombshell Lana a genuine one, or was it a myth spun by music execs to sell a hipster American dream? Was the success of “Video Games” organic, or was it nudged along by a timely deal with Interscope? Was the safety she found in men undermining feminism, or was it actually a poignant reflection on her struggle as a woman to find self-worth?

Despite sparking such big questions, few would have been surprised if Lana Del Rey were merely a flower-crowned blip on the cultural radar. But nearly eight years later, not only has she stuck around—she has really come into her own. Her fourth album Lust for Life, from 2017, cemented a shift in Del Rey’s songwriting: suddenly her wit seemed sharper, her imagery more lush. On “Coachella - Woodstock in My Mind,” she found herself in the festival’s fray, pondering the apocalypse and what this thing called life really means. Looking back to look forward, she seemed like a poet for these times.

In anticipation of her fifth record, the currently dateless Norman Fucking Rockwell, Del Rey has released three songs that her team dubbed “fan tracks” (the album’s first single is still forthcoming). It would be a shame if they didn’t make the album, however: These are some of Lana’s most stunning, candid songs to date. Beginning with September’s “Mariners Apartment Complex,” continuing days later with “Venice Bitch,” and culminating with last week’s “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it,” this trio of releases, made alongside Jack Antonoff, represents the purest synthesis of Lana’s artistry yet. While her fourth wall has always been more cardboard than concrete, her growth is especially remarkable because of its thematic consistency. She continues to tease the tropes that have so often been used to pigeonhole her, including femme-fatale melodrama, sadness as a form of rebellion, kitschy sexuality, and her beloved Americana imagery, all prim debutantes in pastels.

On “Mariners Apartment Complex,” Del Rey obliquely addresses the fetishization of her melancholy and politely asks to flip the script. As she explained on BBC Radio 1, the song was inspired by a late-night conversation with a man she was seeing, in which he asserted that their romantic compatibility was a result of their mutual anguish. “I thought it was the saddest thing I’d ever heard,” she explained. “And I said, ‘I’m not sad, I didn’t know that’s why you thought you were relating to me on that level, I’m actually doing pretty good.” Over stoic piano, swooning strings, and a pensive acoustic guitar strum, Del Rey offers a more multifaceted portrait of herself than others might offer: she is “the bolt, the lightning, the thunder,” “your die-hard, your weakness,” a port in a vast sea. “Think about it, the darkness, the deepness/All the things that make me who I am,” she implores, breaking her cool reserve as her voice floats delicately skyward.

It is a similar assertion of strength, of the contradictions and complexities of her own experience, that makes the subdued “hope” particularly affecting. She continues to explore her own state of existence, one that, as “Mariners” pointed out, is frequently assumed but can only be self-defined: “They write that I’m happy, they know that I’m not/But at best, you can see I’m not sad.” While stark and meditative, she allows herself to confront her own despair by invoking one of the condition’s premier authorities: “I’ve been tearing around in my fucking nightgown/24/7 Sylvia Plath.” The track’s mournful piano melody and atmospheric desolation allow the weight of each word to be felt. The sincerity Del Rey gives her delirium, stripped of the instrumental grandeur often punctuating her ballads, is heartbreaking; she’s self-defining.

In another era of Lana, “Venice Bitch” would have been a coy kiss-off—and indeed, initially it seemed like a return to quippy, frivolous rhymes. (The woman who once remarked “my pussy tastes like Pepsi-Cola,” is now, with love, “your little Venice Bitch.”) But the song turns out to be a 10-minute expanse of masterful unraveling. Atop distorted guitars and a careening synth warble, she allows her murmurs of “wha wha wha wha whatever/everything, whatever” to roam free while still keeping a firm grip on the spool. She knows she will eventually resume actual verses, perfect in their self-mythologizing: “You write, I tour, we make it work/You’re beautiful and I’m insane/We’re American-made.”

The Lana Del Rey persona has been refracted through so many lenses, it has threatened to erase the person at the project’s heart. While it’s true that her songwriting has matured, particularly her lyrics, who is to say her intentions have changed? “I’m always being myself,” she told Pitchfork last year of the early skepticism she faced. “They don’t know what authentic is.” Lana’s pen of late seems determined to show us.