Music bloggers everywhere have become fascinated with Lana Del Rey, and not necessarily for all the right reasons. Lana Del Rey is endlessly fascinating, after all. Is it the pouty lips and sorrow-ridden eyes? Or perhaps it’s her smooth, jazzy alto voice that plays a seductress to the susceptible listener?
Since her performance on Saturday Night Live, Lana Del Rey has been the name on everyone’s lips. She’s been called distant, awkward and weird. But they can’t deny that they’re fascinated, and they keep revisiting that performance with sharp tongues, and consequently, Del Rey becomes more and more popular. In a way, her so-called “disastrous” performance on SNL has become a big selling point for her first album Born to Die – an ambitious debut for a young artist with practically nothing to her name but a decently sized Internet following and a sub-par live television performance. But Del Rey, or Lizzy Grant as she was once known, pulls something off on this album that most modern artists have never attempted to do.
Though her style could be described as melodramatic and overly saturated with emotional lyrics, Lana Del Rey is neither contrived nor boring. Born to Die transitions patiently from one track to the next, and intersperses quirky lyricism with intricate instrumentation. Del Rey brings a wide array of instruments (including harps!) to back up her simplistic, no-frills vocals. Some efforts prove to work better than others, while some maintain a level of awkwardness that can be acceptably comfortable. She goes from flat-out depressing in “Born to Die” from cynically observational in “Diet Mountain Dew.” While artists like Taylor Swift present a romanticized version of the twenty-something relationship, Del Rey gives it to us cold and hard: “Do you think we’ll be in love forever?” she inquires. She drones about boys playing “Video Games” and success as the best revenge (“Baby love me cause I’m playing on the radio / How do you like me now?”).
Some could argue that Del Rey has spoken too soon, that she’s still a baby in this big, bad music industry. At least, though, she has something figured out that most radio chart toppers are still fumbling with, even after years of experience. She can cultivate a conglomeration of personalities, a mix of quirky sexiness diced up with that vintage hipster chic while maintaining her own uniqueness. However, that’s her image– and image is only half the product. Adele, who seems to have burned the path for artists like Del Rey, once said that she makes music for the ears, not the eyes. Del Rey is struggling to balance the two, and it’s obvious that she hasn’t exactly found her footing in this industry yet, but that doesn’t mean she never will.
Though Born to Die reflects a new period of popular music that goes down like a breath of fresh air after being smothered by a cloud of smoke, Del Rey is the Tim Tebow of music. Her gimmick makes her interesting, but can her talent follow up?
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