Celebrity. It’s a fickle business. When Lana del Rey’s Video Games first made its way onto the airwaves last year, people instantly fell in love with her. The song was beautiful, as was she. She was dubbed the “gangster Nancy Sinatra” and could do no wrong.
An unsuccessful appearance on Saturday Night Live, which was promptly torn apart by the Twittersphere, combined with the revelation of her past as indie artist Lizzy Grant, triggered a wave of intense public backlash. Critics crawled out of the woodwork and slating her, insulting every aspect of her music as well as speculating over whether or not she had had plastic surgery. Going into the release of her album, Lana del Rey was shrouded in negative publicity.
As the old adage goes, however, no publicity is really bad press.In the end, the joke was on her detractors when Lizzy/Lana shot to number 1 in eleven countries with Born to Die. The 15-track album with some true gems; the title track is a haunting, gorgeous elegy and Video Games is unforgettable.
Looking beyond these two obvious choices, however, there are lesser-known tracks that rank as the songs of the year.
Summertime Sadness captures the poetic, melancholic end of a summer fling that Grease can only dream of, and Blue Jeans is fantastic satire on the illusions of the American dream. National Anthem is her ode to sex, drugs and rock and roll, and the sultry Carmen is fantastically sensual. Lana has a rare talent of making even the explicitly hedonistic lyric sound fabulous:
"While I'm standing over your body / Hold you like a python / And you can't keep your hands off me / Or your pants on".
There are two songs on Born to Die that absolutely blow all of these out of the water, however.
The first is This is What Makes Us Girls, a reflective look back at a rebellious, "good girl gone bad" adolescence. Lolita imagery is rife in her tale of sexual awakening and teenage defiance, but Lana makes even the most dramatic clichés sound gorgeous, "Oh she starts to cry, mascara running down her little Bambi eyes."
The icing on the musical cake is when she whispers sultrily “Pabst blue ribbon on ice”. On paper, it sounds almost comical, especially as Pabst Blue Ribbon is a beverage I always associate with Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet due to his terrifying, volatile performance in it. Yet somehow, she pulls it off. Her commentary about the hopeful delusion of young love, "We all look for heaven and we put love first" are spot-on.
Even better than that, however, is Off to the Races, which yet again dips into Nabokovian territory. (Interestingly, Lolita is also a song on her album, but it is probably the weakest one of the fifteen.) Indeed, the opening lines to the novel Lolita, “light of my life, fire of my loins” are repeated as a bridge throughout the Off to the Races. The track unfolds as a bizarre, captivating chronicle of a mutually destructive love affair with a man who is entirely wrong for her, but whom she chooses to love regardless.
Musically, it is aurgasmic. The swell of the strings and RnB beat hit perfect notes, while her voice is sensational, especially when it slips into a high falsetto at the “I’m your little Scarlett, Harlot”. The lyrics are much cleverer than they initially seem, with allusions to Leaving Las Vegas, and subtle nods to various pulp noir fiction throughout. Beneath all the references, there's just an effortless swagger in her voice and delivery, so much so that even listening to her recite wine brands sounds like high poetry.
I rarely get this excited about a song; one of my top 10 of all time now.
Thus, verily I say, Lana del Rey’s album is an unqualified success. I genuinely couldn’t give two hoots about who she was in a past life or whether her look is the product of cosmetic enhancements; to me, she is a sublimely talented singer-songwriter. While there are certain motifs she clearly adores and frequently revisits, such as the iconic red dress, I am hardly one to talk when it comes repetition, now am I?
Take a bow, Goddess.
Grade: A+
1 comment:
"We all look for heaven and we put love first" is a line.
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