Very few musical acts currently active are discussed as intensely as Lana Del Rey. Her hit song, "Video Games", first appeared on the Internet in June of last year, and she subsequently signed with Interscope Records in October. Her debut album, Born to Die, releases worldwide on January 31, and you can bet that the response to it will be strongly divisive. That is because Del Rey herself is strongly divisive, and it isn't entirely clear why that is.
Del Rey has been doing interview after interview for months, she has been touring, and it all led to her performance on Saturday Night Live on January 14. She looked visibly nervous and the reception from both critics and the public was mixed, to put it nicely. In truth, it was a subpar performance, but after being shot into the spotlight very quickly and already being booked as a guest on SNL, it isn't difficult to understand her nervousness.
The truly strange thing about Del Rey is how intensely people love or hate her. There is little middle ground, if any - she is either vehemently defended or hotly insulted. Everything from her appearance to her voice to her mannerisms and so on has been scrutinized, and a large issue has been authenticity. Who is she really? It is easy to draw comparisons to Lady Gaga, the biggest female pop star in the world right now, as many also question her authenticity. But while Gaga is devoted to maintaining every aspect of her image at all times, Del Rey (whose real name is Elizabeth Grant) appears consistent in a more genuine way.
A lot of how successful her career will be depends on Born to Die. Up until now, the public has - for the most part - only heard a few songs. There was "Video Games", then "Blue Jeans", and "Born to Die" was released in December. Reactions to the album will vary, inevitably, from very positive to deeply negative. The opinions of some - Pitchfork immediately comes to mind - will be more important than others. Pitchfork has become, whether you like it or not, a fairly significant influence on the music industry, and they have embraced Del Rey thus far. "Lana Del Rey is an extremely unlikely indie fave," Josh Love wrote in the website's Top 100 Tracks of 2011 feature, where "Video Games" placed 19th, "but that's OK- it doesn't look like the rest of the world knows what to do with her, either."
It's impossible to determine what the future holds for Del Rey. In the end, the noise about her doesn't matter, the music does. Born to Die is an album that, somehow, lives up to the hype - mostly. It is overlong, and there are several moments where it just sounds nuts ("Off to the Races" confounds). The songwriting is engaging, but not particularly varied. Her voice is the star, and it never fails to deliver with its range and its earnestness. It is difficult to classify the album into a specific genre, because it incorporates elements of pop, alternative rock, hip-hop, and orchestral music. Undeniably, it is unlike pretty much anything else in music right now, and that is an important point. Del Rey needs to showcase what exactly she's all about, because the aura of mystery won't sustain a long career.
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