Forget about Lady GaGa for a few minutes. Never has a new artist managed to create such an enigmatic persona, or such a great stir of controversy for it, as New Yorker Elizabeth Grant has. Under the psuedonym Lana Del Rey she rose to Internet fame with her first single “Video Games,” taken from her debut album “Born To Die,” and it’s accompanying video. The video became extremely popular in the blogosphere, garnering over 22 million views.
More recently, though, she’s created quite the buzz over her performance on “Saturday Night Live.” From “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams to “The Firm” actress Juliette Lewis, it seemed that everyone thought that Del Rey’s performance on “SNL” was embarrassingly bad. Because, quite frankly, it wasn’t the best performance ever given.
The thing about Del Rey’s music is that once somebody listens to her songs, the studio versions that is, it doesn’t matter just how amazing or disappointing she is live.
“Born To Die” is a dark collection of tender piano songs, except with gangster hip-hop beats and synthesizers thrown in meticulously they create a moody affair sung by an even moodier-voiced femme fatale. If there’s anything prominent in her album, it’s an intense sense of irony; this element is ever-so-prominent in the militantly-produced “Summertime Sadness” where Del Rey says that she’s “got that summertime, summertime sadness” in a voice full of dead euphoria.
The album’s second single, “Born To Die,” is a truly goose bump-raising piece. “Feet don’t fail me now, take me to the finish line” she sings in the song’s opening lines in that deep, full voice of hers. The song’s prominent use of emotional violence as primary instrumentation give the track an almost epic feel, as if this song was composed to be played in a tragic moment of a movie. “Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry. Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough, I don’t know why,” she sings in the song’s entrancing chorus.
Del Rey has a certain way of singing in her lower register that makes her sound emotionless, and yet at the same time her indifferent tone adds a layer of ambiance to her music. It’s as if she is too numb to even try to convey herself through her vocals, and yet those sleepy vocals she delivers on most of the tracks in “Born To Die” illuminate the lyrics like a candle in the darkness of the song.
There are some times when Del Rey pays a visit to her upper register. Some of these moments are slightly forgetable, like “Diet Mtn Dew,” while some do the song a huge favor, like in “Million Dollar Man.” The track’s slightly jazzy instrumentation is invaded with Del Rey’s distinctively dystopian production twists, which in this song consist off static-y, wavering sounds that belong more on an alien film than on a song. Unlike most of her songs, “Million Dollar Man” has a classic sound to it; it sounds like a 21st century remake of a 40s ballad. “One for the money, two for the show. I love you, honey. I’m ready, I’m ready to go,” Del Rey sings in her easiest to decipher vocals ever. The disappointment and hurt shown in this song are obvious in comparison to the otherwise cryptic, bored vocals found in her other songs.
One thing about Elizabeth Grant’s Lana Del Rey persona is that she’s quite the patriot. In many pictured the New Yorker can be spotted wearing red, white, and blue as a part of her outfits, if not a flaunting a flag itself. She can even be seen topless hugging a heavily tattooed man as they both stand in front of a giant star-spangled banner in the single cover for “Born To Die.”
What’s more, though, is her clear allusion to extreme American patriotism in her song “National Anthem.” The track opens with the delicate playing of violins superimposed over the sounds of the Fourth of July before some drastic hip-hop beats turn into the backbeat of the song. Del Rey’s breezy delivery in the first verse make it that much more anthemic when the chorus kicks in. “Tell me I’m your national anthem,” Del Rey exclaims repeatedly, clearly aided by numerous background vocalists. “Red, white, blue’s in the sky. Summer’s in the air and, baby, heaven’s in your eyes,” she sings in a falsetto in between her demands for allegiance. The song truly becomes the masterpiece it is when Del Rey says “Money is the anthem of success. Money is the reason we exist. Everybody knows it, it’s a fact. Kiss, kiss,” making it clear the song’s double-entendre deals with the inborn love and worship and love and money.
While “National Anthem” slightly hints at the fact that it might be about Del Rey’s father Rob Grant, an important domain investor, the full-lipped singer’s real life experiences truly come out in “This Is What Makes Us Girls.” The song retells the experiences of a teenage Del Rey and her new best friend as they steal police cars with senior guys, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice, and table dance at the local drive. “Running from the cops in our black bikini tops, screaming ‘get us while we’re hot, come and take a shot’,” Del Rey says of her high school-age mischief before explaining the predetermined demise of all friendships between girls, “This is what makes us girls. We don’t stick together ‘cause we put love first.” Towards the end of the song the invincible teenager tale she created all falls through when the “freshman generation of degenerate beauty queens” go a little too far and Del Rey gets sent away. This part of the song is based on true events, as Del Rey, then Lizzy Grant, was sent to boarding school in Connecticut after getting into trouble with alcohol and marijuana. In the bridge she sings, “I got sent away, I was waving on the train platform. Crying ‘cause I know I’m never comin’ back.”
Getting a look into Lizzy Grant’s is extremely interesting, but it’s when the enigmatic Lana Del Rey sings about those unsolvable relationships that the album truly peaks. In “Dark Paradise” Del Rey sings about a dead lover that she can’t, and doesn’t plan to, let go of. “Your soul is haunting me and telling me that everything is fine, but I wish I was dead,” she tenderly sings over the haunting, electronica-tinged production. “No one compares to you, but there’s no you except in my dreams tonight,” she sings before the song breaks into a dark, almost dance-influenced segment where she wordlessly vocalizes. The lyrics in this track are top-notch, making chilling statements about the thin line between a dead lover and lover who might as well be dead.
The appeal of Lana Del Rey is that with her it’s all the little details that make the song great. If it weren’t for the fact that she mentions her boyfriend’s split attention between her and his video games, “Video Games” would just be another song about a girl and her boyfriend. The allusion to Vladimir Nabokov’s classic of the same name in “Lolita” makes it clear that the song is about a young girl who likes to prey on older men without having to really say it. The clever way she manages to convey the fact that the protagonist in “Carmen” might be a prostitute through little hints reveals that there are more to Del Rey’s lyrics that meet the eye, or the ear.
“Born To Die” is by far one of the best debut albums of all time, and might even even be a contender in 2012 music accolades depending on what is released later this year. If this album had been released in 2011, it would have for sure been on the No. 1 spot of “Best Albums of the Year” lists. The full Lana Del Rey experience might not be present fully live yet, but it certainly is in this album. After giving this album one listen it becomes evident that Del Rey is an extremely smart singer who knows exactly what she’s doing, music-wise and image-wise. She might even be a genius.
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