Posts Tagged ‘video games

02
Feb
12

The Lana Del Ray Debacle

LanaDelRayAnyone who follows the music press and music blogs is probably sick to death of the three words “Lana Del Ray” at the moment and I have to apologise before I even start writing this for adding to the hype surrounding this “artist”.

But the thing is, at the moment Lana Del Ray is like that girl at high-school who magically got gorgeous overnight and in doing so, managed to get the entire school talking about her.

Murmurs about her started last year when her track “Video Games” hit the internet, but now that her debut album Born To Die has been released, those murmurs have evolved into people shouting indignantly from the rooftops that Lana Del Ray is full of shit.

 

 

I gave her album a spin yesterday so I could hear for myself what the fuss was all about and I emerged from that experience simultaneously entranced and disappointed.

The tracks that made her famous (“Video Games” and “Blue Jeans”) appear on the album in all their languid glory, brimming over with promise, tension and that unmistakeable melancholy that so articulates the theme of the broken American Dream, which is at the heart of this album.

“Diet Mountain Dew” and “Radio” also stand out as noteworthy tracks – I mean how could you not admire an artist who rhymes the cringe-worthy line “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon” with the undeniably bitter, “Like a fucking dream I’m living in” as Del Ray does in “Radio”?

 

 

I think what the furore about her all boils down to can be summed up on one simple statement: no one wants to believe she’s real.

Everything about her, from her looks to her style to her music, has been accused of being manufactured like she’s just another plastic robot being churned out of the Fame Factory with no real substance to her whatsoever.

And, sad to say, if you listen to the final few tracks on Born To Die (ie. tracks like “This Is What Makes Us Girls” and “Lolita”), which sound like outtakes from a Britney Spears album, you’d agree in an instant that she’s a pop shop mannequin and nothing more.

 

 

But somehow that just doesn’t sit right with me. Call me naive, but I think there’s more to Miss Lizzie Grant (her real name) than the haters out there are willing to acknowledge or accept.

Sure, her Saturday Night Live performance was a little ropey, but in one of the most telling interviews I’ve read about her over the last few months, she replied to Rolling Stone’s comment to her that the backlash from the SNL performance was pretty harsh saying:

There’s backlash about everything I do. It’s nothing new. When I walk outside, people have something to say about it. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was absolutely excellent. People don’t have anything nice to say about this project. I’m sure that’s why you’re writing about it.

Suffice to say, I haven’t made up my mind about Lana Del Ray just yet. Her debut album, for all it’s intrigue, is admittedly a bit of an incoherent mess stylistically (she swings from Amy Winehouse to Mickey Mouse Club so effortlessly it’s scary), but if she’s still around, I think album no. 2 is going to melt faces.

In the meantime, don’t write her off completely. Give Born To Die a listen and, if nothing else, you’ll at least, you’ll at least be able to formulate your own opinion and wield it with authority the next time a hipster starts hating on Lana like he’s some nerd she refused to go to the prom with.

-ST

13
Sep
11

Is this Song Really That Crap?

lana del rayI read Stereogum from time to time because I like to be one of the cool kids when it comes to music and the kids at Stereogum are so fucking cool it makes my balls hurt just thinking about them.

They’re not as cool as the kids at Pitchfork though. Phwoar! Those kids listen to bands that haven’t even been invented yet.

So I was cruising Stereogum on the weekend when I came across a video by Lana Del Ray called “Blue Jeans” that I thought was pretty decent. Sultry vocals, twanging guitars, and lyrics I honestly didn’t think were that bad. Pop your headphones on and give this a spin…

 

 

Ok, so her get up at the end is a little crazy and her top lip does kinda look like it’s shot so full of collagen it might never move again, but I liked the track. It’s got a whimsical / haunting feeling to it that reminds me a little of Heather Nova meets Chris Isaak.

Don’t tell the Stereogum kids I said that though because hoo-wee, they HATED this song.

Lana Del Rey is a tedious contrivance and she’s already way overexposed. I hate the simpering singing style and the smarmy image. Apparently a lot of dorks have boners for her narcotized, cosmetic-surgery-mutated face, so they’ll fool themselves into liking the insipid music. Taking the song off of SoundCloud was clearly a desperate ploy to get people to look at her; unfortunately for her, that face and her relentless posing are about as likely to repel as they are to entice.

Hahaha! I must admit, that one was pretty funny in a really ruthless kinda way. Here’s another gem:

She is obviously being marketed REALLY hard. She got a lot of plastic surgery (which looks really fake btw), makes music that recycles pretty much everything very liberally, especially 50s pop music, and of course markets to indie blogs, in hopes of having crossover fans when she makes it big.

In 2 years or less she will be on top 40 radio and 12 year old girls. All of this is entirely not related to music of course. I think the song is pretty catchy, and I like the song “Video Games” even more. But all in all, I have an extremely time ‘buying it’ when it feels so inauthentic.

And another one:

Some of the most horrible lyrics ever written. You know it’s bad when “you’re so fresh to death as sick as cancer” isn’t the most eye-rolling lyric. Lizzy Grant, aka Lana Del Ray, is trying to succeed Patrick Monahan as the worst lyricist in music.

Am I out of my mind here or are these people being fucking trolls?

I think this track is pretty cool. I also really love the one that made her famous (“Video Games”), included below for your listening / viewing pleasure:

 

 

What do you crazy kids think?

-ST