Her subversive, 1950s-Americana musical and aesthetic style, her pout, her talons, those impeccable waves - those who had been introduced to Del Rey wanted to consume every part of her. In the months leading up to her SNL appearance, Del Rey was on a meteoric rise - the epitome of the untouchable and unknowable “ cool girl” trope that would later be outright rejected by savvy women.īut before the “cool girl” would be deemed an anti-feminist cliché, Del Rey was celebrated as its poster child. The performance - and, to this day, her only SNL performance - turned her into a national conversation and made her, for the worst reasons, into a household name. The defining event in Lana Del Rey’s early designation as one of music’s biggest contrivances was her Saturday Night Live performance on January 14, 2012. How a panned Saturday Night Live performance changed Lana Del Rey’s career Here’s how that fact went from liability to asset. We’ve known for a long time that the character of Lana Del Rey, pop star, was a work of fiction. Lana Del Rey had the misfortune to come up within a musical moment that heavily prized the idea of authenticity and that loathed poseurs - and now, nearly a decade later, she’s reaping the benefits of living with a new musical moment, one that takes it as a given that everyone’s a little bit fake, that we are all performing at all times, and that to own your act is beautiful. What seems to be behind the shift is less anything in particular that Del Rey herself did and more a massive change in how we as a culture think about pop, celebrity, and artifice.
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The Lana Del Rey that the Washington Post anointed as one of the decade’s most influential musicians is still in many ways the same figure that the Observer sneered over as a failure and a fake. So what’s changed? Is it Del Rey herself? She’s certainly grown as an artist since the days of her breakthrough single “ Video Games,” but she hasn’t changed so much as to explain such an enormous turnaround in the public consensus on her. Or, as the Observer wrote in 2012: “She’s a failed pop singer who got lip injections, changed her name, and now has a great backstory about living in a trailer that makes her New Jersey Chanteuse schtick as Urban Outfitters-ready as a pair of tight Levi’s.”Ĭompare that to how critics talk of Del Rey seven years later, in reviews of Norman Fucking Rockwell!, in which they laud both the album and Del Rey herself: “ a fully-realized artist who has remained true to her obsessions - aesthetic, cultural, and personal - outlasting the misogynist criticisms that could have derailed her early career” “ a 21st-century pop poet documenting, much like Whitman did, her own perspective of America” and “one of the most consistent album artists and world-builders of this decade.” At the beginning of this decade, Del Rey - the nom de plume of 34-year-old Elizabeth “Lizzy” Grant - was frequently dismissed as a fraud or a faker or “a groupie incognito posing as a real singer,” as Del Rey herself would put it in her 2012 song “Gods & Monsters.” “Her indelible pop melodies are strung together with the grace of a tragic ballet,” writes Pitchfork, in what’s more or less a reflection of the critical consensus that includes her being the only musician on the Washington Post’s “ Decade of Influence” list: Lana Del Rey is a mature pop artist, one of the greats of her generation, and someone worthy of being taken seriously.īut that wasn’t always the case. Not two months later, in October, it was named the 19th best album of the 2010s by Pitchfork. Lizzy Grant by summer.At the end of August, Lana Del Rey released her latest record, Norman Fucking Rockwell!. Fellow reviewers appear equally as harsh, but the singer, whose real name is Lizzy Grant, still plans to re-release her 13-track indie effort titled Lana Del Ray A.K.A.
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I’m sure that’s why you’re writing about it.”ĭoing his best to reassure her, Rolling Stone‘s Austin Scaggs insisted that he is a big fan of the song “Radio,” though an excerpt from the mag’s album review is not so friendly.
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People don’t have anything nice to say about this project. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was absolutely excellent. “When I walk outside, people have something to say about it. It’s nothing new,” she continued about the outspoken opinions filling the media and Twitterverse. Amid all the recently controversy, Del Rey still managed to earn her place in the upcoming SXSW lineup. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.”ĭel Rey performed “Video Games” off her upcoming Interscope release, Born to Die, which is due out on Tuesday, Jan. I’m not a natural performer of exhibitionist. Asked whether she feels comfortable onstage, Del Rey replied: “I’m nervous.