A strange case
Is she the new icon of indie music or a blatant product of marketing? The case of Lana Del Rey is obviously a rather strange one. Last August, a supposedly low-budget music clip called Video Games – a luxurious pop song performed with a charmingly smooth voice – went rapidly viral.
Thanks to its homemade allure, Video Games immediately won the favour of the websites and magazines focusing on indie and underground music, which acclaimed Lana Del Rey as a newly born star. In the meantime, though, the news leaked out that her true name was Lizzy Grant and that she had already published an album back in 2010.
Rapidly, Lana Del Rey’s real background started to come into focus: born Elisabeth “Lizzy” Grant, the daughter of a New York multi-millionaire, she had debuted the previous year with her actual name, but her first album had been a flop and thus withdrawn from iTunes.
After that, as Lana herself explains, she had looked for a more consistent name with the help of her lawyers and managers, and Lana Del Rey was finaly born. Apparently, then, the truth was quite different from the young-and-inexperienced-artist picture that Video Games seemed to suggest.
Inevitably, the Web responded with sudden and brutal criticism, stirred up by a far from flattering live performance at Saturday Night Live. Yet, the doubts on her authenticity aside, her music is what really matters. And unfortunately Lana’s newly released album, Born To Die, sounds like a work with a few ups and a lot of “fillers”.
But what strikes even more is the fact that Pitchfork, the music website which had previously praised Video Games, has been the first to attack her with tough determination: “The ultimate disappointment of Born to Die, then, is how out of touch it feels not just with the world around it, but with the simple business of human emotion.”
Arts & Culture
-
14.05.2012
50 years of rock
-
10.05.2012
Art, books & design
-
09.05.2012
Web cinema
-
08.05.2012
May’s art agenda
-
04.05.2012
Dying Types
-
26.04.2012
Investigating the future
-
24.04.2012
Minimalist landscapes
-
22.04.2012
Slow Seating
-
18.04.2012
MOST
-
11.04.2012
Apocalyptic scenarios
-
05.04.2012
April’s art events
-
04.04.2012
Dante in a cave
-
03.04.2012
Eight nights at MOMA
-
20.03.2012
Spring Exhibitions
-
15.03.2012
Music, films and technology
-
13.03.2012
The usual suspects
-
07.03.2012
The eyes of the world
-
05.03.2012
Wrecking ball: the Boss is back
-
01.03.2012
Full-length format
-
24.02.2012
Italian Art in London