I have a bit of a confession to make,
and I feel a bit weird, almost guilty saying this: I kind of like
Lana Del Rey. Kind of. I've felt this way for a while now, and
despite my normal sense of comfort with my own tastes, I have made an
actual effort to keep this fact hidden. I only listen to her when
I'm alone, I feign ignorance when she's mentioned in conversation,
the very few people I've admitted this to I've sworn to secrecy. For
the first time, possibly ever, I have felt a certain amount of
embarrassment for liking something. This feeling is new to me.
You can probably tell.
But the fact of the matter is, I can't
help it. I like her music, whether I mean to or not, and the sooner
I come to grips with this fact the better it will be in the long run.
However, that doesn't mean I don't have a few problems with how she
does things. After all, the reason I'm embarrassed is because I
actually recognize why so many other people dislike her. With all the
hate coming her way, I totally get where it's coming from. So what
is the problem?
In a nutshell, it's her image.
Everything wrong with her career just sort of revolves around her
image, but it's not so much what that image is, it's that it's so
central to her.
No, really, I just listen to her for the
songs. I swear.
Think about it; despite the fact that
she's got a song about how she's on the radio now, I have not
actually heard her on the radio. The first most people heard of her
is what they saw at the same time in her music video to Video Games.
And what they saw was exceedingly obvious hipster bait. From the get
go of her career, she was attempting to attract a key demographic
through means other than her music. And by the beginning of her
career, I'm talking about the album she released, then rescinded,
under the name Lizzy Grant. It was available briefly before she
bought the rights back, and she has refused to re-release it since.
While there's probably a good reason or two out there to explain a
move like this, the most obvious possibility is that she was giving
hipsters an opportunity to do what they do best: brag about being
into something before anyone else. It's just that it's so obvious
she was doing it. Throw in her (often sung about) time spent living
in a trailer park (after she signed a recording contract for
$10,000) and the fact that she's a little white girl from New York
going by an artificially exotic name, and you've got all the markings
of a singer trying to influence her way into a position of fame and
adoration.
But she made a couple major mistakes.
One, she estimated her intended audience wrong. She's relied on her
image way, way too much, and while it's true that musicians make
careers out of good looks or image alone all the time (see American Idol, seasons
1 through 11) it doesn't work quite so well when you want to be taken
seriously as a musician. Lana wants to be loved and respected as an
artist, and image based careers only work to this degree on pop music
audiences. I mean, pop audiences adore Katy Perry and Justin Bieber
enough to go to movies about them, they're not overly concerned with
quality. She tried to illicit that same level of devotion starting
with a core audience of underground music snobs and spread out from
there, but she was so obvious about it that even hipsters recognized
they were being manipulated. So they turned on her.
Her other problem is in her sexiness.
Currently, audiences are completely fine with strong women who are
comfortable in their own sexuality (Pink!), which can be empowering,
and with women who use their sexuality in a way to attract a male
audience (Katy Perry) and exert some level of control over them,
which can be a kind of empowerment. Audiences are even fine with
whatever Nicki Minaj counts as, and while not necessarily empowering,
that certain counts as some kind of kind of self confidence. Lana
Del Rey's approach to using her sex appeal consists of a creepily
subservient “I exist only for your pleasure” image that I can't
quite tell if it's for real or not. On the one hand, I'm not
convinced it isn't just a satirical look at the image, on the other
hand, she awkwardly flaunts it in ways that prevent me from being
convinced that it is.
You see, this. This? This is exactly
what I'm talking about.
She might be trying to show how dull
and lifeless women are when seen as mere sex objects, or she might
just be a sex object who's not all that into it. It's hard to tell.
She makes it hard to tell.
Lastly, there's her SNL performance.
Yeah, it was just really bad. There's not some greater issue with
her persona or business tactics here, it's just that it really was
bad. Like, probably not “worst ever” bad, but maybe within the
bottom 25.
And all of this is a shame, because
beneath the awkward sexuality, the fake name, the obvious
manipulation, and the focus on her image and persona over her music,
there is a talented musician with good music to perform. I don't
care if some of her lyrics seem disingenuous; I only care if she
feels the need to make us think they are genuine because then
she'd be missing the point. I don't care if she wants to change
names or labels; I only care if it starts to affect the availability
of her music or if that music is sacrificed for (or worse, created
as) a publicity stunt. I don't care if she isn't as good live; as
long as what she puts to recording is listenable and good, I'll be
listening and good.
