In this respect, she recalls old-school enigmas like Prince and Kate Bush: artists we can't – and don’t want to – picture doing anything as mundane as making a cup of tea. For years, we have had no idea who Lizzy/Lana might be behind closed doors. Rather she looks like a proper pop auteur – one who doesn't try to be "accessible", "relatable" or anything else that pop stars are supposed to be in the social media era. In 2021, she doesn't seem inauthentic – whatever authenticity is – at all. All the while, she has never made it any clearer where Elizabeth Grant ends and "Lana Del Rey" begins. It's also instantly recognisable as her own. With each album, she doubles down on her aloof persona and refines a sound that is cinematic, languid and dreamy.
However, Del Rey has succeeded by doing the exact opposite. With such reinventions, the mechanics of pop stardom are often laid bare, because even a genius-level chameleon can't hide every single contrivance. Thanks to the shape-shifting flair of David Bowie and Madonna in particular, conventional wisdom states that pop stars must reinvent themselves to stay relevant. Impressively, though Del Rey is playing this "dark" game at a time when artists are subject to increasingly close scrutiny, she has maintained much of her mystique. "It's dark, but just a game – so play it like a symphony," she sings on Dark but Just a Game. Chemtrails is a richly evocative pop album on which Del Rey continues to build her own mythology – opening track White Dress finds her pondering her pre-fame days as a waitress – and reveals a growing disdain for fame. Nearly a decade later, the singer's excellent seventh album Chemtrails over the Country Club has just become another chart success, debuting at number two in the US and number one in the UK.
Still, despite this early sneering at her supposed lack of "authenticity", Del Rey has firmly defied her detractors. "I think because I cartoonised the footage of myself in the video for Video Games, things look exaggerated." In real life my lips don't look that big," she told the New York Times that year.
Lana del rey beautiful people beautiful problems chords full#
Even her strikingly full lips were considered fair game for a rather sexist line of journalistic inquiry. Music writer Rhian Daly notes that at this point in her career, some of Del Rey's critics were "obsessed with the idea of exposing her description of her early life as a fabrication" they wanted to "prove" that she came from a more affluent background than she claimed. When Video Games became a hit and her second album, 2012's Born to Die, cemented the singer's mainstream breakthrough, she was plagued by accusations of "fakeness". With Del Rey branding herself a "gangster Nancy Sinatra", this image was so effective and well realised that it sparked a bit of a backlash.
It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue." "I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – Lana Del Rey reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. "I wanted a name I could shape the music towards," she told Vogue in 2011. After releasing her debut EP as Lizzy Grant in 2008, she adopted a stage name that better fitted the enigmatic image she was developing – one steeped in glamour, but with a tragic undertow. We know she grew up in upstate New York as Elizabeth Woolridge Grant and began writing songs at 18 when her uncle taught her to play "six basic chords'' on the guitar. This mystique is a key part of her appeal, but it comes at a price – namely, fans and critics asking: "Who is the real Lana Del Rey?" The basic facts can be pieced together from her early interviews. Why musicians are having prosthetic makeovers Since she broke through in 2011 with the single Video Games – a stunning retro-pop song that sounded eerily familiar yet startlingly unique – she has managed to keep fans captivated without giving too much away. Lana Del Rey is one of the most fascinating and mysterious artists of her generation.
0 kommentar(er)
