That’s the rub for many observers: Del Rey has achieved a level of success that many feel she hasn’t earned yet.īut pop stars are rarely born more often they’re made, whether via the popularity of a YouTube clip or the machinations of the musical-industrial complex.
For an artist with more ups and downs in her short career than the Republican primary, that’s a fairly impressive feat, more or less assuring a decent showing when Billboard announces its definitive sales chart next week. That’s higher than Adele and Leonard Cohen, Kelly Clarkson and Coldplay. 1 on the iTunes album chart, with the deluxe edition (featuring three additional tracks) at No. Neverthelesss, of this writing, it was No. Besides, even when she begs, “Tell me I’m your national anthem,” her expressionless vocals come across not as ironic, but sourly uninvested. Is this a Swiftian satire of pop culture in the "Real Housewives" era, or is Del Rey actually embracing a Randian view of existential capitalism? Does it even matter? A bad song is a bad song, no matter its intentions. As the song wanders from a perfunctory verse to a vacant chorus, it picks up lyrical detritus in its wake, the most famous being: Some observers have detected a knowing wink in Del Rey’s performance, as though there’s an element of parody in a song like “National Anthem,” on which she hints she’s “blurring the line between real and the fake.” But that song is bad-movie bad, one of several tracks that drag down the second half of "Born to Die." Like "Manos: Hands of Fate" or "The Room," it confounds all critical faculties and almost dares you to read too much into it. On “Off to the Races,” she paints an afternoon skinny-dipping as an all-American tableau: “White bikini off with my red nail polish / Watch me in the swimming pool, bright blue ripples.” It’s often evocative, immersing listeners in her private world, but too often the details seem off lines about “Pabst Blue Ribbon … on ice” and “Jesus on the dashboard” break the spell and deposit you right back in the real world. But Del Rey is a risky songwriter, peppering her lyrics with concrete imagery and specific nouns, depicting her world in exacting detail. Critics are quoting clumsy lyrics about drinking top-shelf liquor and taking bodies downtown, and certainly there are cringe-worthy lines weighing down all these songs. Perhaps more telling, "Born to Die" is most interesting when it’s terrible.
There are a few fine songs, but many more that stumble about awkwardly. The album is occasionally compelling, but it’s rarely daring. Now that she has released a hit album, however, the response from critics and fans has been fascinating for what it reveals about the pop-culture machine - as well as the idea of success in America.Ĭonsensus seems to be forming that "Born to Die" is neither as bad as her detractors claim nor as great as her defenders argue. She was Twitter famous - Rebecca Black famous - which these days is more famous than you get by releasing a hit album. Some reviewers have called her new debut full-length, "Born to Die," “the album equivalent of a faked orgasm,” and others have deemed it “not just irritating but almost morally objectionable.” Others have praised “her preoccupation with Hollywood archetypes of American femininity” and called it “close to pop perfection.”īut thanks to the upstart pop star's disastrous performance on "Saturday Night Live" a few weeks ago, Del Rey inspired fountains of Internet ink dissecting her persona and the critical responses to her persona before most people even knew who she was - let alone had a chance to gripe about hearing her songs all the time. She’s too detached or just detached enough. Aside from the basic facts about Lana Del Rey - the most pertinent being that Del Rey is the stage name of Lizzy Grant, formerly a promising folk-pop singer with a so-so album under her own name and a millionaire father bankrolling her career - music writers can't seem to agree on anything at all.
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