She's so fake. She's acting. It's not even her real name.
Since when has authenticity been integral to pop music? Bowie wasn't actually an alien, Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno. Justin Beiber isn't human. Possibly.
But who cares. Artifice is what makes pop music rather exciting whether you want a fix of martian weirdness, badass cowboys or a creepy boy robot manufactured American Fundamentalist Christians. And give me Lana's dreamy noir fantasy over Adele's kitchen sink reality any day.
I guess whether people like Lana Del Ray comes down to whether you're drawn to the character she portrays which is ultimately a male fantasy figure. From the blogs online thus is something that many people find hugely problematic, especially from a feminist perspective.
She's not playing Lizzie Grant, the normal girl from Lake Placid and NY, the girl dropped by two record labels. She's performing Lana Del Rey the sexually charged but ultimately shallow ingenue from a David Lynch movie. An overly needy Gangster moll, beautiful, high maintenance and eager to please her man if he has the right address and wallet contents. As she purrrs in 'National Anthem' "money is the reason". Her characters are compelled towards a luxurious life like moths to a flame, even though it brings them sadness or death. Her characters she plays are sad, unhinged and consumed by the fragments of love that men toss at her, along with their money. The dreamy and muffled sound the record has is like a life of luxury viewed through a haze of champagne and valium.
Perhaps part of the reason Lana Del Rey is so contentious is that we've become so used to strong assertive female role models in pop. Madonna, or the Spice Girls cartoon "Girl Power!" to Rihanna, Lady Gaga the extreme where kiddy pop artists like Katy Perry sing about demanding to see her man's "peacock". Thrown into this mix, Lana Del Rey appears very old fashioned and uncomfortable throwback to a less gender equal age. The fact that he does this willingly seems to infuriate a lot of writers.
Gender politics aside BORN TO DIE is a great record. Cinematic sound, lush orchestration, slow hip hop beats, sad melancholic lyrics, it's a rich production, and I mean that musically and theatrically. A mixture of 50s glamour and 21st century hip-hop.
Lana's Nancy Sinatra-esque vocals are feminine, breathless but laconic. The poor darling sounds like she could faint at any moment, if she could be bothered! It's heavily produced as she clearly has a weak voice when performing live. But these are undeniably great recorded pop songs and on record they sound great. The lyrics are LA Noir gangster fantasy with a hint of faux fifties nostalgia there's plenty of name-dropping to more glamourous times whether it be a namecheck of James Dean in the excellent 'Blue Jeans' or aspiring to be both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie O in the video to National Anthem.
This is one if those rare albums where pretty much every track could be a single, there's already been four of them: Videogames, Born to Die, Blue Jeans, National Anthem. Sure they've suffered from being overplayed but that's the sign of a great pop record and I think this is one that will listened to or years. Sure Lana Del Rey may be fake but she's a hell of a lot more interesting than any of her peers both as an recording artist and icon. Born to be a star.
BLUE JEANS
SUMMERTIME SADNESS
NATIONAL ANTHEM
No comments:
Post a Comment