10 Feb 2012
Reviews
Review | Lana Del Rey
Born To Die, Lana Del Rey, Interscope, 30 Jan 2012
Hype can be a terrible thing for an artist. In this age of instant gratification, dictated to by fickleness and pre-emptive cynicism, a backlash can occur as swiftly as the adoration seemed to first arrive. Some people love to watch a downfall. The aimless trolls of the internet criticise those who crumble under the pressure they created or don’t live up to the impossible expectations set for them. The poster girl for this particularly modern strand of bitterness is Lana Del Rey. Introducing her seems a pointless activity when everything that could have been said about her already has been, but strip all that away and we have her new album, Born To Die.
The titular track is a stunning way to start the album; an existential love song tinged with despair and faint desperation. “Choose your last words/This is the last time/Cause you and I/ We were born to die” Del Rey croons in a gravelly purr. We melt. ‘Off To The Races’ sees Lana quoting Lolita (“Light of my life/Fire of my loins”) and revealing a father complex Freud would have a field day with, while ‘Blue Jeans’ yearns for a patriarchal relationship in which she’s utterly looked after, marrying a bygone attitude with programmed drumbeats and samples.
‘Video Games’ stands alone as an absolutely flawless slice of pop, cut from Skeeter Davis’ melancholy and the voice of a girl surrendering herself totally to love. The understated genius of it means you can’t listen to this song too many times but there’s a chance she shot herself in the perfectly formed foot by writing a song that is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to match up to by virtue of its exquisiteness. The intrusive background samples are starting to grate a little by ‘Diet Mountain Dew’ and its repetitive nature doesn’t lead anywhere. Her “Ghetto Nancy Sinatra” moniker comes to fruition on the brilliantly executed ‘National Anthem’, in which she raps and sadly laments “Money is the anthem of success.” The theme of the song inadvertently sums up the individualist drive and subsequent despair and ennui of a generation left to cope with cold materialism – whether she wanted it to or not.
‘Radio’ is a continuation of this despondency and appears as a spiky commentary on the meaninglessness of fame while ‘Dark Paradise’ narrates the end of a relationship that leaves her bereft, suicidal and unable to move on. Intense and raw in its openness, the chorus is divine and illustrates her true understanding of melody. ‘Carmen’ tells the tale of an empty, drug-addled damaged woman in the worst but most sonically beautiful comedown, followed by ‘Million Dollar Man’s emotionally unattainable male and love struck girl. By ‘Summertime Sadness’ you start to wonder what season Lana is happy in – probably not even a Cornetto and a donkey ride on the beach would put a smile on her chops.
This is an album comprised of despair, obsessive love, uncertainty, neuroses, red lipstick, alienation, alcohol, damaged beauty queens, broken girls and cruel boys. It tells of the dangers of surface happiness, of buying into a notion of satisfaction as a commodity, the emptiness of consumption and purchased gratification. The message is a strong one and increasingly relevant in an age of ever growing economic disparity, new generations obsessed with self preening and self improvement via physical means above all else and meaningless dead eyed sex rather than real human connection. There’s a dark tone throughout and a picture of Lana as an old romantic who’s only made happy by true, all-consuming love. She may play into age-old gender stereotypes and the “damaged little girl” shtick can be a little wearisome to ears that ordinarily dote on women musicians who stamp, spit and scream their way through gender barriers, but it still works.
Listening to it you can’t help but consider her background – her former forgotten persona, the millionaire father, buying back the rights from her debut album so it could no longer be distributed… Is it all a calculated marketing ploy? Then again, does it even matter? This album is a stand against the mercenary, even if wealth or influence may have helped get her to where she is. Maybe coming from privilege she has seen its precarious joys. She’s using a platform to say something and criticise the perception of material gain as happiness. Cynicism and questions of authenticity are understandable but her songs convey a desolation that sounds all too real. Hipsters may have given her the cold shoulder but it’d be foolish to call this album anything but brilliant.
Emma Smith
Love this review. It is a fair and insightful evaluation and I agree with your interpretation at all levels. What a pleasure to find it, amid the torrent of shallow critical stabs devoid of any deeper understanding. Thank you.
Thanks so much Astrid! I’m glad you liked it. I just think the criticism levelled at her mostly has nothing to do with her music and everything to do with very gendered ideas about how much she “deserves” success. The Strokes came from rich boy backgrounds and were never questioned about it because it was irrelevant. I think this album is stunning whichever way you look at it and I’m glad you do too! x