Del Rey album haunting but flawed
Born To Die Lana Del Rey (Interscope) ★★★ 1/2 (out of five)
By the looks of it, Lana Del Rey’s pop career was born to die in a very vicious and public manner.
Only months after being crowned the latest Prom Queen of the Internet on the strength of a series of sensual, ornate and pseudo-orchestral songs — Video
Games, Blue Jeans and Born To Die — the New York starlet is drawing ire for her looks, her lack of indie credibility, her stilted performance on Saturday Night Live, and her supposed submissiveness as a woman, to name but a few of her crimes against humanity.
Everyone from NBC’S Brian Williams to anonymous Youtube commenters are weighing in on Del Rey’s inadequacies, eviscerating her like a pack of nasty highschool bullies, eager to tear their former best friend to pieces. It’s a ridiculous, if not sad predicament for someone who can actually sing — Del Rey’s voice ranges from hard-to-please sexpot to naive teen to numb party girl — and the potential to be more than a one-hit, five-month wonder.
So she’s not the most engaging performer. (Neither is Avril Lavigne.) So her real name isn’t Lana Del Rey. (It’s Elizabeth, or Lizzy, Grant.) So her dad might be an investor of some sort. (How dare a rich kid write music?) So she released an indie album before honing the ’60s-soundtrack-pop sound of her Interscope debut,
Born To Die, due Tuesday. Apparently, it’s OK for Lady Gaga and Katy Perry to change their names and sounds — or come from some money as is the case with the artist formerly known as Stefani Germanotta — but Del Rey isn’t accorded the same leeway, partly because she was initially embraced as an indie artist, not a major-label pop star.
Don’t let labels — or any of the extraneous drama — get in the way of listening to, and perhaps enjoying, Born To Die, a breathtakingly haunting, if flawed, study in contrasts, produced by up ’n’ comer Emile Haynie. With its cinematic strings, tinkling pianos and references to James Dean, Del Rey’s songs are rooted in the ’60s, yet they’re also as contemporary as the Kardashians — with lyrical references to clubbing, punk and video games, not to mention the subtle hip-hop beats peppered throughout her tunes. Those same sonic arrangements evoke feelings of triumph and sadness, highlighted by Del Rey’s tales of bad boys, booze and impending breakups. It’s the soundtrack of a young couple in the throes of a mad, torrid relationship who know they’re about to go out in flames. “Don’t make me sad / Don’t make me cry / Sometimes love isn’t enough,” she laments on the title track. “Said you had to leave to start your life over / I was like, ‘No please, stay here,’” she pleads on Blue Jeans. “You’re no good for me, but baby I want you,” she confesses on Diet Moun
tain Dew.
Which leads us to Born To Die’s main flaw. Just like Adele’s ode to heartache, 21, Del Rey’s album is too repetitive — 15 songs! — and while most of them feel gorgeous, they don’t match the grandeur of her first three singles. Only a few come close, including the trip-hop-flavoured Million Dollar Man, Summertime Sadness, and Off To The Races, one of Del Rey’s woozier numbers. “And I’m off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers, Chasin’ me all over town / ’Cuz he knows I’m wasted, facin’ time again on Rikers / Island and I won’t get out,” she coos like a devilish angel on the latter.
Del Rey likes to call herself a “gangster Nancy Sinatra,” but her huskier vocals and abandonment issues are reminiscent of a
naughtier, if not more damaged version of another ’60s vixen — British soul star Dusty Springfield. (Not her real name, either.)
Born To Die isn’t such a far cry from what Del Rey was doing on
Lana Del Rey A.K.A. Lizzy Grant — the album she released on an indie label in 2010. (She pulled it from circulation only a few months later, but all the songs are currently posted on Youtube. She says she will re-release it this summer.) Lana Del Rey A.K.A.
Lizzy Grant, produced by David Kahne, features some of the same retro vibe and lyrical references — sweaters, Coney Island, national anthem — which seems to refute claims by those critics who think she’s just another pop star manufactured by a bunch of producers and record executives.
Even if she is, the real litmus test should be her songs and her abilities as a performer. She needs to work on both — especially the latter, in this day and age of female pop stars and their over-the-top shows — but at the very least, we should give Del Rey a chance to release and tour Born To Die before we kill her off.