There have been few bigger pop moments in the past six months than that of the discovery and subsequent snowballing of Lana Del Ray, whose album is out this month. AILBHE MALONEhas actually met her.
THE BACK STORY
Born Lizzy Grant, Lana grew up in New York and first released music under her birth name in 2008 ( Kill KillEP). Then followed an LP in 2010 titled Lana del Ray, which was pulled after two months to avoid confusion once Lizzy fully became Lana.
Everyone still on board? That’s the plot-twisty bit done with. Lizzy has become Lana, a name chosen by her management team by combining Lana Turner with the Ford del Ray. Fast forward to 2011, she signs to Stranger Records, then Interscope and then there’s Video Games/Blue Jeans, which totally changes the playing field. The debut single to end all debut singles, the double A side (that means two excellent singles on the same disc, rather than one good one, and one duff one, younger readers) was accompanied by evocative found-footage videos, and a hook which lodged itself straight into your hypothalmus.
THE MUSIC
Despite all the haterzzzz (we'll come back to that) Lana's music is the part that's hard to argue with. Termed "Hollywood Sadcore", her shtick has been around since her early Lizzy days (have a listen to Put Me In A Movie). Though she's often been called the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra", we'd warn against mentioning that to her, as she said in an interview: "I spend eight fucking years writing gorgeous songs and someone in a meeting says 'gangsta Nancy Sinatra' and that's that. It's brutal. I know two of Nancy's songs but she's not someone I've ever really listened to. I know everything about Frank, of course, because he's the real singer."
Since Video Games/Blue Jeanscame out in June 2011, there've been snippets of new material – more often than not, it's old Lizzy demos. Admirably, most of the album content has refused to leak (at the time of writing anyway), so all we've got to work on is the single Born to Diewhich is super lush in the vein of Video Games, Off to the Races, a melange of hip-hop and M.I.A. that doesn't quite work, and National Anthem which is probably the most interesting step she's taken yet. National Anthemhas traces of Princess Superstarmixed with a cocky chorus, and might be the best way for Lana to back out of the pouting-with-strings corner she's backed herself into.
THE BACKLASH
As ever, the blogs weren't happy. Lana was artificial, man! She had been groomed by a major label, dude! And look, she's had lip injections too! She's a FAKE. We bet she didn't even make the videos herself. On and on it went, until all of a sudden, all the attention that had been focused on the music Lana was making, suddenly shifted on to the way she looked. While Lana has mentioned that such comments hurt her feelings, and that she'd rather detractors focus on her singing than her face, we'd point you to her statement to Pitchforkon the subject.
“I write my songs and I make my videos. Elvis had good management and that’s why he looks well-crafted but actually – other than his custom-made jump suits – he was always a gentleman, always a star, had a face like a god, and a voice like a dark angel. So he wasn’t really contrived, he was just dead cool. That’s why his legacy lives on, because he was actually perfect.”
THE FUTURE
From our end, here's what we know. Pop Corner interviewed Lana a while ago. She was charming, and spoke in a way that wouldn't sound out of place on Bugsy Malone. One anecdote comes to mind, instead of saying "movie", she called a film "a may-jor motion pick-cha". Despite messing up her performance on Saturday Night Live(she was criticised for being nervous, off-tune, you name it), other TV performances have been good since (check her out on French channel Canal + bit.ly/ui8nua). What's also worth thinking about, as one person noted on Twitter re Lana's SNL muck-up, if this music was being made by a long-haired Spector-styled indie group, it wouldn't matter a hoot what they looked like, or how it was performed live. Let her succeed, or fail, on her own terms – not the ones prescribed for her. Nerves, hype, over-groomed, manufactured or not, we're still hooked.
Born to Dieis released on January 30
