Everyone Hates Lana del Rey

“Those who really hate what [Lana del Rey’s] about — and there are a lot of these people — look for something in music that she has no interest in providing. To enjoy what she does, you have to give yourself over to her media-saturated fantasy and put the everyday on hold, and you also have to lay aside pop radio’s typically sunny affirmations.”
– Pitchfork review of Ultraviolence

If you follow any music writer or website, you’ve probably seen at least one think-piece on Lana del Rey’s new No. 1 album, Ultraviolence, already. As with Born To Die, the album has attracted a great deal of press that typically ticks off at least one from what appears to be a stock bullet-list of talking points: feminism, depression, authenticity, a lack of cheer, weak women, toxic love, and so on and so forth. Much of the variation in the articles comes from differing opinions on these points, rather than trying to say something new. In fact, the prime critical questions about del Rey have remained the same since the video for “Video Games” went viral: “Is Lana del Rey real?” and “Is she actually miserable?”.

I’m not going to offer my answers to those questions because neither one directly interest me. When I first heard Alice In Chains (or any other music that dealt with misery) my gut reaction wasn’t one revolving around the question of “Why this?”. The current critical fascination centered on why del Rey’s music is what it is both fascinates and irritates me. This is a topic to be discussed in lurid tabloids, not musical press. The motive behind music matters much less than the music itself.

I’m less interested in my own reaction to Ultraviolence (and del Rey as a whole) than I am about why other people’s reactions seem to be so strong. Why do we feel the need to have a reaction to del Rey’s music? This is especially bizarre in regards to the often somnambulist songs found on her newest album, which don’t seem to warrant the kind of intellectual stimulation people so clearly find there. This is easily the most depressed (not depressing) album I’ve heard since I listened to Sinatra’s sad bastard period (which included albums with cheery titles such as Where Are You? and No One Cares, among others), albums that were well-reviewed (deservedly so) but not subject to the kind of close analysis del Rey’s work consistently receives.

The closet analog I can think of for del Rey’s work, and our critical fascination about it, is The Weeknd. Both artists are concerned with detailing the downsides of being a seducer, each from their own end of the gender spectrum. While Tesfaye is concerned with how hollow club hook-ups are and how twisted the narcissism of the club alpha male can be, Grant explores the emptiness of being a glamorous femme fatale, mistress, and/or trophy fuck, depending on the song. The lack of fulfilment both artists have experienced in their sexual relationships is the subtext of almost all of their music, at least in my view. Incidentally, and interestingly, both artists have been accused of disrespecting women in their descriptions of bad sex.

The key difference between The Weeknd and Lana del Rey is that the former makes his dissatisfaction with the club lifestyle both musically and lyrically obvious. The dark club (or night club, if you want to be cute) aethestic Tesfaye and his producers have honed ensures that all of his output both sounds and reads as nightmarish and/or depressed (“Initiation” is the obvious example). In contrast, Born To Die sounded like a 40s Hollywood soundtrack with a hip-hop beat behind it, while Ultraviolence cops a vaguely rock and roll sheen for its mid-tempo ballads. Neither musical aesthetic is strikingly miserable. Though her lyrics can be embarrassingly straightforward, the music on del Rey’s albums don’t provide the obvious emphasis offered by The Weeknd’s dark club sound.

I think this is causing some serious mental dissonance for modern critics, who are baffled by the idea that poppy music can be this depressed. We are, after all, living in the peculiarly spineless era of Poptimism, where the popularity of music is taken as an indicator of its quality. Critics have trained themselves to embrace unsophisticated music, to take unserious music seriously. I refuse to do this out of sheer stubbornness, but venues like Pitchfork and The AV Club have made it a central part of their method.

Poptimism has its ups and downs, but the technique of approaching pop music without trying to look for deeper meaning (because there often isn’t any) fails with Lana del Rey’s music. I’m not saying del Rey is a particularly revolutionary or brilliant songwriter, but she is putting more thematic content into her music than artists like Katy Perry. Other modern pop musicians have worked to code messages into their music, but these messages are either natural features of pop archetypes given a very slight spin (the “Be weird” ethos of Lady Gaga, for example) or part of the performance more than the music (as with Miley Cyrus’s recent Bangerz tour). One unique quality of Lana del Rey’s critical coverage is that I rarely hear anything at all about her performance style; she seems to be the only pop musician left who isn’t particularly concerned with dressing up her stage in gimmicks.

The critiques I’ve heard lobbed in the direction of Ultraviolence, and Lana del Rey’s work as a whole, range from reasonable comments about her mediocre, journal-margin poetry style lyrics to ridiculous comments about her not being ‘poppy’ enough. A few of the reviews I’ve read for Ultraviolence, most notably this one from The AV Club, criticize it for lacking any obvious singles. You can hardly criticize del Rey for this considering how obvious it is that its deliberate; look no further than the anti-pop slowdown in the chorus of “West Coast”, the album’s standout track, for proof of that. Calling a spade a spade does not constitute criticism; in fact, it doesn’t even register as interesting.

Similarly, Anthony Fantano, who usually comes across as fairly reasonable, compared the album to a “trashy romance novel” and mocked del Rey’s singing voice in bits that felt more like open mic night comedy than criticism. First, it’s absurd to criticize del Rey for using tropes from trashy romances when that seems to be the point of her music. Not finding that interesting simply means the album isn’t for you; Fantano’s line is something I’d expect to hear from a 14-year old hipster, or from del Rey’s “Brooklyn Baby”. Second, the singing on this album probably sounds off to Fantano because its one of the few pop albums I’ve heard in years that doesn’t smack of Auto-Tune. The fact that del Rey sounds like an actual human being on Ultraviolence is a pleasant surprise considering what mainstream pop has been like for the past decade or so. I have a pet theory that most pop songs mine electronic music tropes in order to make their Auto-Tuned vocals sound less out of place, and I’m grateful that this album lacks any such dash of synth.

It may be that unadulterated humanity that causes critics to react so strongly to Lana del Rey. The idea of Lana del Rey as some arch persona masks the fact that most people initially believed that the woman from “Video Games” was a real person. This prompted fervent debates over whether or not del Rey was really whatever she was claiming to be; you don’t debate authenticity when an artist is clearly putting on airs, like Lady Gaga. Unlike Madonna or David Bowie, the ur examples of pop personas, there’s no obvious sign that Elizabeth Grant’s Lana del Rey stage-name is anything more than a catchy alias. It’s not obvious whether she’s detailing fictional characters or periods of her own life, though her recent interview with The Guardian strongly suggests the latter to be the case. With del Rey, however, the strongest evidence of her intentions tends to be right there on the surface: Born To Die’s fatalism was obvious from the title on down, as is Ultraviolence’s pulp fiction approach to romance, where lurid, un-poetic lyrics trump subtlety. The fact that the first appearance of the Lana del Rey name was on Grant’s first major label release, Lana del Rey (AKA Lizzy Grant), suggests that viewing Grant and del Rey as separate, with the latter being an exaggerated version of the former, may be deceptive. The title of “Fucked My Way To The Top” doesn’t exactly suggest a person concerned about being too on-the-nose.

If Lana del Rey lacks some core verisimilitude (as so many have claimed), I’d argue that it’s because the image she’s made for herself lacks craft. “Authenticity”, as used in music, largely stems from old time superstars like Lead Belly, who’s image and quoted history were carefully produced into an outlaw image (John Lomax, his manager and earliest chronicler, forced Lead Belly to perform in prison garb for years after his release). Lead Belly may have been a real life ex-con, but Lomax still had to struggle to keep him inside that narrow archetype. The authenticity was produced by ignoring what didn’t fit the image.

Lana del Rey is “inauthentic” because the picture of her is too broad. Her songs are rife with emotional wavering, mixed feelings, and messy relationships. The American icons she references and apes come from an authentic desire to adopt the glamors of the past; her lyrics and images are rife with name drops to past eras of Hollywood and rock music alike, such as the “he hit me and it felt like a kiss” chorus quote on “Ultraviolence”. Its obvious that Grant loves Americana, from old Motown classics to those “trashy romance novels” Fantano scoffed at (what’s more American than the celebration of kitsch?). Lana del Rey being ‘inauthentic’ is code for ‘inconsistent’, which makes her one of the most human pop musicians we have. Which is more realistic, the languor of Ultraviolence and Born To Die, or the over-the-top enthusiasm of Jason Mraz and Andrew WK? Its like comparing a diary to a Facebook profile: both are affected, sure, but the former isn’t goal oriented. While many pop musicians seem to have a goal of getting people to put their damn hands up, Lana del Rey doesn’t seem to have much of a goal at all. I find that reassuring, but I suspect that many others find it baffling.

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