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Tag: Lana Del Rey discography

  • 2012 Strikes Again: Lana Del Rey Determined to Send A Message That She Hasn’t Forgotten About the Critical Crucifixion of Her Early Career During Coachella Performance

    2012 Strikes Again: Lana Del Rey Determined to Send A Message That She Hasn’t Forgotten About the Critical Crucifixion of Her Early Career During Coachella Performance

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    If there’s one thing 2024 has taught us so far, it’s that celebrities don’t forget a slight (*cough cough* Beyoncé making Cowboy Carter in response to the 2016 CMAs). For Lana Del Rey, that slight arrived at the very beginning of her career. Or, as she was specific in calling out: January 14, 2012. The night of her forever notorious Saturday Night Live performance. To prepare Coachella audiences for the idea that this is where her mind is still at, she put up a billboard (which is becoming something of an LDR signature) that parodied those Christian ones you usually see on the side of the highway. Except this one said, “Has anyone else died for you? Lana Del Rey SNL Jan 14 2012.” 

    Del Rey, well-aware by now that she is indeed a Christ-like figure to her fans, is having fun with this kind of power (not just the power to buy billboards wherever she wants—something Angelyne knows all about—but the power to compare herself, The Beatles-style, to Jesus). While some might have thought it was a non sequitur meant to show that even someone as iconic as Del Rey could still poke fun at her past faux pas (and it was a faux pas, not a totally out-of-left-field lynching from the critics), it was instead a harbinger of her performance to come. 

    Never one to imbue too much fanfare into her generally simple live shows, Del Rey decided to put a bit more effort into the occasion. Certainly far more than she did the first time she performed at Coachella in 2014. And, as she points out briefly between “Born to Die” and “Bartender,” “We were here exactly ten years ago to the day. We’re still doin’ it.” That’s right, April 13th was a Sunday in 2014, and Arcade Fire was headlining that night instead (long before the Win Butler allegations surfaced). At that time, Del Rey’s “costume” choice was a tropical-inspired, vibrantly-colored floral dress. Much more no-frills than what she donned for her headlining debut: a sparkling baby blue number with a peekaboo cutout just above the stomach paired with knee-high glittering rhinestone boots (not unlike the ones she wore for a performance in Antwerp during the LA to the Moon Tour). It was also apparent that Del Rey had put in work to slim down before the show (perhaps incorporating the added benefit of her lifetime supply of Skims after becoming Kim’s shill). Proving her commitment to restoring herself as fully as possible to her 2012 aesthetic/glory. 

    In fact, when Del Rey posted an image of herself with longer, honeysuckle blonde hair two weeks before the festival, the automatic thought was, “Oh, 2012 Lana is reemerging.” Her desire to return to that moment in time is likely because she’s still grappling with the reaction she received when she achieved mainstream success with “Video Games.” As any psychologically attuned person knows, it can take years to fully process a trauma. And it seemed that Del Rey was very ready to process hers and release it for Weekend 1 of Coachella. Starting with the strategicness of that “Christ billboard.” Because if the critics were going to crucify her, Del Rey could at least take comfort in the fact that her fans worshiped (and worship) her with the same fervor as Jesus fanatics (or Tulsa Jesus freaks, to make an LDR song reference). Is it hyperbolic that so many celebrities compare themselves to Jesus (see also: Madonna and Ye)? Of course. But it isn’t an inaccurate comparison in a time when celebrities have become the new deities. And just like gods, people enjoy knocking them off their pedestal time and time again. 

    But Del Rey was determined to be seen as a god (not a monster) on her big night. Thus, she rode “into town” on the back of a Daddy type’s motorcycle, leading in an entire procession of motorcycles that included her go-to backup dancers/singers, Ashley Rodriguez and Alexandria Kaye. It was the pinnacle of her “Ride” vibe from, what else, 2012. And, not so coincidentally, “Jealous Girl,” an unreleased track that went viral on TikTok in ‘21, soundtracks the entrance. Though recorded in 2010, it was leaked online in November of ‘12. Her inclusion of this track as an intro seemed to make an instant comment on her toxic relationship with critics, with Del Rey’s lyrics to “Jealous Girl” touting, “Baby, I’m a gangster, too, and it takes two to tango/You don’t wanna dance with me, dance with me/Honey, I’m in love with you, if you don’t feel the same, boy/You don’t wanna mess with me, mess with me.” Almost like a warning to critics to stop “playing” her, Del Rey has long been known for positioning herself as a “gangster,” even publicly baiting Azealia Banks with comments like, “u know the addy. Pull up anytime. Say it to my face. But if I were you—I wouldn’t.” This, alas, is arguably her least believable persona—the one that insists it can “cut a bitch” if necessary. Because in a physical fight between Banks and Del Rey, there’s no question Banks would win. 

    Barring the fact that the word “gangster” is somewhat problematic when describing a white girl or coming from her own mouth, Del Rey was known for using it to brand herself as a “gangster Nancy Sinatra” at the beginning of her career. And so she mashed up “Jealous Girl” with Kehlani’s “Gangsta” from the Suicide Squad Soundtrack—an interesting choice considering Kehlani publicly condemned her on Twitter in 2020 for not blurring out the faces of Black and Brown protesters and looters in a video she posted on Instagram. Perhaps she’s talked it out with Kehlani since, or maybe it’s a belated peace offering/mea culpa. Whatever the case, Del Rey wanted to remind the audience that she’s still the same “gangster bitch” they first came to love at the beginning of 2012—botched SNL performance or not. 

    Unfortunately, as one review from The Guardian pointed out, if this was Del Rey’s attempt to prove she had come a long way from that performance vocally, this wasn’t the finest example of a coup. Not least of which was because of the ceaseless mic and sound problems that persisted throughout the short set. A set that consisted of nineteen tracks instead of the eleven she performed in 2014. And, sadly, the setlist hasn’t evolved much since that time, with many of the exact songs showing up in ‘24, including “Born to Die,” “West Coast,” “Young and Beautiful,” “Ride,” “Summertime Sadness” and “Video Games.” All of which remain “classics” in her oeuvre, but which are becoming extremely overwrought at this juncture as she’s never removed them from her setlist. Even Madonna doesn’t play “Like A Virgin” and “Material Girl” every time she tours—in fact, that would make her sick. 

    The only truly unexpected addition/“shakeup” to Del Rey’s extremely tired setlist was the decision to open with “Without You,” presented as an unabashed love letter to fans in this context (“I’m nothing without you”). However, it was already during this song that her arbitrary trail-offs and failure to sing complete lyrics portended how the rest of the show would go, relying mostly on her choir-y backup singers and cameos from Jon Batiste and Billie Eilish to mitigate any shortcomings. One doesn’t bring Jack Antonoff up as a “cameo” because he just seems to be perennially there, in Lana and Taylor Swift’s orbit. As for the latter, many had speculated she would be a guest onstage, but perhaps she didn’t want to outshine LDR yet again, as she did at the Grammys and during “Snow on the Beach.”

    “Without You” then led into “West Coast,” during which Del Rey didn’t bother to sing the opening verse and it became more of an interlude-y type thing as she languidly danced about. To sustain her California theme/homage, she then dove into her cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time,” a track that she’s made all her own in the way that Whitney Houston was able to do with “I Will Always Love You.” Except, when performed live here, there were plenty of “quiet singing” and off-key moments. Which were perhaps also meant to be obfuscated by the pole dancing that went on throughout, just one of many “props” onstage, including a motorcycle (Del Rey really wants you to know she loves to ride). And it could have also been an unwitting statement on Del Rey’s part in that the women on the pole were all of color, harkening back to her addendum to the “question for the culture,” when she insisted she was unfairly victimized and persecuted by the media because “when I get on the pole, people call me a whore, but when Twigs gets on the pole, it’s art.” Firstly, Del Rey had only even been “on the pole” for a brief scene in her Tropico short film and no one called her a whore for that, and secondly, yeah, Twigs does make pole dancing into art. Del Rey just kind of flops around on it. Anyway, she seemed to be preparing the audience for when she actually would “get on” the pole (a.k.a. casually swing around it). 

    But before that, the audience was given a trippy, psychedelic instrumental intro to “Summertime Sadness,” just another among many moments when she trailed off on lyrics. Seeing her do this against the Miss Havisham-meets-dilapidated-Jay-Gastby-mansion backdrop, it highlighted the idea that Del Rey will be singing these same songs “till the end of time.”

    This includes another post-2017 staple, “Cherry,” featuring the usual choreo. But at least Del Rey mixed up some of the lyrics by adding, “Can I get a fuckin’ hallelujah/Sippin’ on a Coca-Cola.” Maybe that addition is a substitute for the fact that she vowed to never sing the now “insensitive” “Cola” again (which was, incidentally, part of her Coachella 2014 setlist).

    Another “business as usual” performance was “Pretty When I Cry,” with lots of echo piled onto her voice as she lay onstage in “orgiastic atrophy” with her backup dancers. Toward the end, she misses the mark on singing in her mic and goes slightly off-key, perhaps another nod to SNL 2012? And speaking of, she gives us another song from that year in “Ride,” prefaced by her usual voiceover, “I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer,” etc., etc. In other words, “I love Daddies.” Although Evan Peters doesn’t fit that bill, it didn’t stop him from making out quite uninhibitedly to the tune of “Born to Die.” And it was, very literally, just the tune, for that was the song that arguably had the most mic issues, allowing for large chunks of instrumentals only. “Bartender” then commenced with a super off-key verse, as though she couldn’t hear herself. “Will you turn Byron down one?” she has to ask soon after starting. Presumably Byron is one of her mics. And he was not accommodating.

    After getting through that, a small “Burnt Norton” interlude precedes “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” which relies on a “cloth dance” to distract from more vocal woes before “The Grants.” This track, too, is one of the few fresh additions to the usual setlist after Del Rey released Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. And one imagines she finds it a relief to perform, as all the vocal heavy lifting is done by her three backup singers, Pattie Howard, Melodye Perry and Shikena Jones. The eponymous single from that same album then opens with an introduction about the why of constructing a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard (mainly because it was very dangerous to cross the street, as it is among many boulevards of LA County) as an image of the sealed tunnel is projected onscreen. In this moment, Del Rey is at her most wistful and nostalgic. Indeed, the majority of her career is founded on the kind of wistfulness and nostalgia that millennials have increasingly turned to as a source of comfort.

    For “Norman Fucking Rockwell,” Del Rey again lets her backup singer take the lead for the repetition of the word “blue” at the end as she just kind of stands there and makes an ethereal arm gesture. As for the inclusion of “Arcadia” (the only song from Blue Banisters to make an appearance), one can’t help but think that it also plays into her theme for the night: fuck the critics. After all, this is the song with the lyrics, “They built me up three hundred feet tall just to tear me down/So I’m leavin’ with nothing but laughter, and this town” and “I’m leavin’ them as I was, five-foot-eight Western belt, plus the hate that they gave/By the way, thanks for that, on the way, I’ll pray for ya.” The religious undercurrent there also ties into that billboard—and Del Rey’s Catholic upbringing in general. One that, like Madonna, so often finds her at war with the sacred and profane.

    A prime example of that, lyric and imagery-wise, is “Candy Necklace” featuring Jon Batiste on piano. His appearance onstage brightens Del Rey’s spirit before she biffs the vocals on that, too, often sounding like a dying animal and frequently forgetting to hold the mic up to her mouth (one would suggest she might try wearing a headset, but that’s just not her style). All of that can be forgiven by the audience when she takes her swing on the pole—this entire segment smacking of Christina Ricci as Layla in Buffalo ‘66. 

    To keep the cameos coming, Billie Eilish follows Batiste’s appearance for a poetic duet made all the more so as they each performed their first singles, respectively, “Ocean Eyes/Video Games.” At the end, the two mutually praise one another, with Eilish announcing, “This is the reason for half you bitches’ existence. Including mine.” That statement tied in nicely with Del Rey’s thesis of the night, which was: despite her critical onslaught, she was responsible for shaping a new era in music, influencing an entire generation (a.k.a. mainly Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo).

    Leaving her pièce de résistance for the ending portion of the show, “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it” is where Antonoff appears on piano. Del Rey, however, does not. Well, not really. Instead, she pulls a Simone and projects a hologram of herself onstage while wearing a frock that reimagines her SNL number as she deliberately twirls for the majority of the performance (that first 2012 twirl becoming a long-standing meme). Her symbolism is clear: she’s fulfilling the critical belief that she was entirely manufactured. To perform one of her most lyrically ambitious tracks is meant as a “fuck you” to that belief.

    As the show winds down, she delivers the chorus to “A&W” (which formerly opened her shows before she traded it for “Without You”) a few times before singing the true finale, “Young and Beautiful.” This seeming to be a very profound choice in terms of her directing it at fans (as she did for “Without You” at the kickoff). However, her fans, through all the critical ups and downs, have showed no signs of ever ceasing to love her (their devoutness only appearing to strengthen instead). Even now that she is “old,” by Gen Z’s ageist standards (and apparently, even by Del Rey’s, who sings, “When you’re old, you’re old, like Hollywood and me” on “Margaret”). This is precisely why she answers her own question, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” with “I know you will, I know you will, I know that you will.” The critics, on the other hand, not so much. But that’s clearly not who this show was aimed at. No, Del Rey was tapping into the lore of her past solely for the benefit of fans. And maybe singing kind of badly and off-key was a deliberate troll on her part. Del Rey can have an ironic sense of humor like that sometimes. Or maybe, just as it was after her SNL debut, she thought, “I looked beautiful and sang fine.”

    As for her “evolution” as a performer, it seems to mirror her millennial fanbase’s own evolution. Or lack thereof. Still, in many ways, trapped in the past without being able to fully evolve. Perhaps a result of being traumatized too early on in life (9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, Britney being 5150’d, etc.). But that doesn’t mean she (and her fellow millennials) haven’t picked up some new tricks along the way to build on their tried-and-true shtick.

    This extends to Del Rey’s procession of motorcycles that she once again employs to ride off into the moonlight, leaving behind her F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque horn ensemble to play the audience out, back into a world of similar decay, but without as much glitter and glamor. “Manufactured” or not.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Harry Nilsson Being the Devil on John Lennon’s Shoulder Doesn’t Prevent Lana Del Rey From Saying “I Just Wish I Had A Friend Like Him”

    Harry Nilsson Being the Devil on John Lennon’s Shoulder Doesn’t Prevent Lana Del Rey From Saying “I Just Wish I Had A Friend Like Him”

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    Lana Del Rey is no stranger to name-checking white male musicians from the 60s and 70s in her music. It’s become something of a barometer for whether or not the song in question is truly “Del Rey-crafted.” From Bob Dylan to Dennis Wilson to Crosby, Stills and Nash, Del Rey has exhibited her reverence for these white male “gods” time and time again. With no signs of slowing up, either. For two of her recent singles, “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” (also the name of her ninth record) and “The Grants,” each refers to Harry Nilsson and John Denver, respectively. While the latter is a slightly “purer” soul (mainly because of his humanitarian efforts), Nilsson was nothing if not “problematic” by today’s standards. But everything was so much more forgivable back then when one was a “genius.” A word doled out far too easily for people who spin a poetic turn of phrase more effortlessly than the average.

    Of course, a person’s underlying “badness” can’t truly be invoked without some sort of catalyst. In Nilsson’s case, that was John Lennon in the years of 1973 and 1974. Or maybe it was Nilsson who brought out the worst in Lennon—it depends on who you ask. Having descended upon L.A. after a rift with Yoko Ono, Lennon would later refer to that eighteen-month period as his “Lost Weekend.” But it didn’t take him very long to find a constant companion in Nilsson, a man as fond of drinking as most British “working class heroes.” Along for the ride was Yoko Ono’s former personal assistant, May Pang, given the sanction by Ono to be Lennon’s de facto concubine. Night after night, it was Pang who bore witness to the duo’s social gracelessness/enjoyment of the privilege that came not just with being a white man, but a famous white man. For few other sects of humanity could have gotten away with their brazen hijinks, most of which occurred at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.

    The collision of Nilsson and Lennon was perhaps first decided by the Fates in 1967 when Nilsson attracted the attention of The Beatles’ publicist, Derek Taylor, with his song, “1941,” which Taylor heard on his car radio while waiting for his wife to finish shopping in a supermarket. Compelled to buy “a case” of the album from which “1941” hailed, Pandemonium Shadow Show, the four Beatles were among the recipients of the record that Taylor felt obliged to distribute as an unasked advocate for Nilsson. Fittingly, Nilsson had covered two Beatles tracks on that album: “You Can’t Do That” (incorporating other songs from The Beatles’ oeuvre to make for the first “mashup” before anyone knew what that was) and “She’s Leaving Home” (the original from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band being released in May of the same year as Nilsson’s cover). 

    From the moment The Beatles heard Nilsson’s music, his status as the “the American Beatle” was all but assured. Especially for John, who was looking for someone to lean on while Yoko insisted he sow some oats away from her for a while (she being the “progressive” one between them and all). Nilsson was only too happy to accommodate Lennon’s need for a jovial “good-time boy.” But that didn’t come without its worrisome caveats. As Larry Kane, the writer of Lennon Revealed wrote, “Harry drank, a lot. But Harry was the type of guy that if you go out drinking with him, he’d be sure at the end of the night that there would be a big brawl and that you are the one who’s in trouble, even though he started it. Harry would keep feeding John drinks until it was too late.”

    This included the illustrious Brandy Alexanders that Lennon was supposedly introduced to by Nilsson on their apex night of “acting a fool in L.A.” The combination of milk and alcohol in the beverage perhaps made Lennon and Nilsson feel like it was an especially fun idea to heckle the Smothers Brothers at their show at the Troubadour on March 12, 1974. This was after Lennon had already been embarrassed on a recent evening out prior to this random Tuesday, so drunk out of his gourd he emerged from the bathroom (presumably the women’s) of a Santa Monica restaurant with a Kotex pad stuck to his forehead. The lore goes that it managed to stay on all the way through to the next stop of the night: where else, the Troubadour.

    Varying accounts purport that Lennon snapped at the server either at the Troubadour or the one at the first restaurant where he had initially placed the Kotex on his head. Whatever the milieu, that server called him out for not leaving a tip, prompting Lennon to growl, “Do you know who I am?” She allegedly retorted, “You’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head.” But that was positively dignified compared to March 12, 1974, when the heckling of the Smothers Brothers prompted both Nilsson and Lennon’s ejection from the club. Lennon would later defend, “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders, that’s brandy and milk, folks. I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn’t get as much coverage as me, the bum. He encouraged me. I usually have someone there who says ‘Okay, Lennon. Shut up.’” Presumably, Yoko would have been that person, but she was taking a break. Lennon also added, “So I was drunk. When it’s Errol Flynn, the showbiz writers say: ‘Those were the days, when men were men.’ When I do it, I’m a bum.”

    Talking of the days “when men were men,” as men clinging to the past like to call it, these are the very ilk that someone such as Del Rey still can’t help but romanticize in her music (not to mention manifest in real life with her dating track record, e.g., Sean Larkin, Jack Donoghue). Drawn to the “bad men” that make for such interesting lyrical fodder, Del Rey has also allowed that to bleed into her work via the name-checking of musical icons with polarizing personal backgrounds. Incidentally, she never had to mention John Lennon because she effectively did so by collaborating with his (more beloved) son, Sean, on 2017’s “Tomorrow Never Came.” Oh, the sting Julian must have felt to be further reminded that he was somehow the “bastard” child despite being Lennon’s legitimate firstborn.

    Bearing all of this in mind, Del Rey is a former alcoholic. And the last thing she would probably need is a friend like Nilsson. Despite expressing on the aforementioned, “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” “Something about the way he says, ‘Don’t forget me’/Makes me feel like I just wish I had a friend like him, someone to get me by/Leaning in my back, whispering in my ear, ‘Come on, baby, you can drive.’” Likely encouraging her to do so while she’s drunk. The “Come on, baby, you can drive” line may allude to Nilsson’s cover of the Shirley and Lee song, “Let The Good Times Roll,” from his seventh studio album, Nilsson Schmilsson, during which he sings, “C’mon baby, let’s ride some more/C’mon baby, let the good times roll.” Or even “Driving Along,” from the same record, for the only thing honorary West Coastian Del Rey loves more than a white male reference is a reference to cars and driving.

    As for the song by Nilsson that Del Rey specifically talks about, “Don’t Forget Me,” it was on the Pussy Cats record, produced by none other than Lennon and released during the duo’s ignominious year of 1974. The title of the album itself was undeniably tongue-in-cheek, designed to negate the rowdy, perpetually inebriated image they had cultivated during their numerous nights of debauchery over the course of that infamous “Lost Weekend.” That might not have come across, however, if the label had allowed them to keep the album’s original title, Strange Pussies. Luckily, even back then, corporations had no gumption when it came to letting artists run amok with their creative decisions. The same way Del Rey’s original creative decision for titling Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd was reworked from Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd Pearl Watch Me on Ring a Bell Psycho Lifeguard. Like, whaaaat? There’s being an esoteric genius and just being full-stop esoteric for the sake of it. This, effectively, is what Nilsson and Lennon decided to be for almost two years as they caroused together through L.A.’s nightlife like a pair of garish vampires.

    Once more, the question arises, was Nilsson truly the “bad influence”? Or was Lennon just so ready to let the dark side take hold that he only needed the excuse of a “bad seed” of a friend to allow him to let loose? One must admit it was fairly convenient for Lennon to say, as a defense to evade personal responsibility, “It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders, and they tasted like milkshakes. The first thing I knew I was out of me gourd. Of course, Harry Nilsson was no help feeding them to me, saying ‘Go ahead, John.’” Sure, on the one hand, each of us is culpable for the choices we make, yet on the other, Del Rey saying, “I just wish I had a friend like him” sounds incongruous, especially if it had been soundtracked against these nights of drunken spiraling and touching the lowest depths of one’s emotional nadir.

    The irony of Nilsson singing, “Don’t forget me,” of course, is that he probably forgot just about everything as he delved further into a relationship with Alcoholism. Perhaps the same might have happened to Del Rey had she not been a millennial, and her parents had the good sense to send her to boarding school to dry out at the age of fourteen. Del Rey would reflect in 2012 of her kicked addiction, “My parents were worried, I was worried. I knew it was a problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else. I was like, ‘I’m fucked. I am totally fucked.’” As was Lennon with Nilsson at his side, and vice versa—the two fueling each other’s darkness under the guise of “having a good time.”

    Del Rey would add in the same NME piece, “Like, at first it’s fine and you think you have a dark side—it’s exciting—and then you realize the dark side wins every time if you decide to indulge in it. It’s also a completely different way of living when you know that…a different species of person. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.” Which leads one to inquire as to whether or not Del Rey put much consideration into wishing for a friend like Nilsson to “get her by” when, in all likelihood, the two would have been as bad for each other as Lennon and Nilsson were in those “Lost Weekend” months.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lana Del Rey Fully Embraces Her Cosplaying Hickdom By Releasing a Cover of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”

    Lana Del Rey Fully Embraces Her Cosplaying Hickdom By Releasing a Cover of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”

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    It’s only appropriate that Lana Del Rey should opt to make her latest cover song (of which there are already many, including that live performance of “Unchained Melody” for the Christmas at Graceland special) none other than John Denver’s 1971 hit, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Not merely because it’s on-brand for Del Rey to pay homage to 60s and 70s-era white male titans of the music industry, but because it was only just this year that the U.S. Library of Congress selected the song for inclusion in the National Recording Registry. 

    Like the National Register of Historical Places (which includes Graceland, as Del Rey reminded people by taking a photo in front of the sign during her trip down to Memphis for the Christmas special), the National Recording Registry similarly seeks to preserve/credit songs deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Songs that “inform or reflect life in the United States” at one time or another. Perhaps if there was one song that could encapsulate the U.S. at the dawn of the 1970s, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” might very well be the best choice (apart from “Baba O’Riley”). After all, the post-hippie daze of the 60s was starting to become a more distant (even if still bad) hangover. To that end, it was at the outset of 1971 (January 25) that Charles Manson, hippie cult leader extraordinaire, was found guilty of murder. In line with hippiedom falling out of fashion, a “return,” of sorts, to the “good ol’ salt of the earth” American way of life seemed to be coming back in vogue (reaching a zenith when a peanut farmer became the president in the late 70s)—even as the awakening to the extent of what a sham America was kept progressing. This included the initial publication of the Pentagon Papers in ’71 and the imminent approach of the Watergate scandal that would occur in 1972. 

    Despite the gradual unraveling of the American dream and its glamor, Denver, like many, chose to stay optimistic about the nation (how Del Rey-esque). By focusing on one of the most “impressive” things about it: its roads and associated car culture. So it is that his “optimism” about America is ultimately belied by his wistfulness for a version of the U.S. that no longer exists. Just as many other Americans (especially white ones), he seemed to yearn for a better, simpler time characterized by lyrics such as, “Dark and dusty, painted on the sky/Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye.” This type of description, with its evocative word choices, is, of course, very Del Reyian. For she did study under men like Denver and Bob Dylan when it came to songwriting. While she’s already referenced the latter plenty of times in her music (e.g., “​​All I hear is music, like ‘Lay Lady Lay’” on “Religion,” “Lay, lady, lay, on that side of paradise” on “Tomorrow Never Came” and “The way I roll like a rolling stone” on “Off to the Races”), her first sonic mention of Denver occurred this year via “The Grants,” the opening track for Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.

    The nod to Denver in that particular song is a sentimental one that relates to her uncle, David Grant, who died in 2016 after climbing the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. So it is that Del Rey croons, “I’m gonna take mine [memories, that is] of you with me/Like Rocky Mountain High/The way John Denver sings.” Grant’s death was, in fact, a suicide, with Del Rey alluding to that in another song from Did You Know… called “Fingertips,” during which she states, “Give me a mausoleum in Rhode Island with Dad, Grandma, Grandpa and Dave/Who hung himself real high/In the National Park sky.” 

    Denver’s synonymousness with Colorado (complete with his last [stage] name and being well-known for “Rocky Mountain High”) makes him an obvious choice for why Del Rey would intertwine him with her uncle. And why she would choose to cover a song by him to further honor the memory of Dave. While some might wonder why she wouldn’t cover “Rocky Mountain High” as a means to do that, perhaps that song is too grimly on the nose…even for Del Rey. What’s more, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is in keeping with Del Rey’s increasing fondness for what coastal folk call the “flyover states.” Not to mention her love of “on the road” life. Something Denver was also able to freely wax poetic about before the 1973 oil embargo made it all but impossible to afford enough gas for any country road to be able to take one home. So he’s lucky he came up with that song just shy of when it would have been “in poor taste” to release it. Even if it’s still in poor taste now to romanticize the use of fossil fuels.

    In any case, Del Rey cemented her own bond with the Deep South earlier this year when a photo of her in a Waffle House uniform in Alabama went viral (no one seeming to be offended by the “cosplay” element of Del Rey feigning “slumming it”). Her tour for Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd was also certain never to veer off the path of “bumfuck nowhere” milieus like Huntsville, Alabama, Brandon, Mississippi, Burgettstown, Pennsylvania and, yes, Charleston, West Virginia. The very state that gets name-checked so frequently in “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

    And while Denver’s original version is more upbeat and acoustic, Del Rey naturally renders her interpretation with more than just a dash of somberness…and piano. To boot, the accompanying album artwork features her in the middle of a generational pile, if you will, with her younger sister, Chuck, placed on top and Chuck’s daughter/Lana’s niece, Phoenix, placed at the bottom. The brand of the boat they’re sitting in, “Phoenix,” is also prominently displayed to, er, drive home the meta nature of the name of the next generation in the Grant line. Though Phoenix will not so easily be able to claim being a “simple country girl” with such overt financial backing. Del Rey herself continues to have trouble making that claim, try as she might. Indeed, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” appears to be another defiant bid to prove that she is not some garden-variety Hollywood rich girl (though Del Rey did have her Old Hollywood glamor phase for a while there, too). She knows where the “real” people are. And they’re not in California or New York.

    Del Rey’s aesthetic and musical “pivot” toward what the latter populations, as mentioned, derisively deem the “flyover states” started, not coincidentally, when she began her romance with Sean “Sticks” Larkin. A.k.a. the cop guy that “Shades of Cool” could have easily been written about had she known him then. Larkin’s ties to Tulsa, Oklahoma undeniably inspired the tone and content of Chemtrails Over the Country Club—what some might call the “runoff” from Norman Fucking Rockwell—complete with tracks like “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” “Let Me Love You Like A Woman” and her down-home cover of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free.”

    Despite dating Larkin for under a year, Del Rey clearly soaked up her “era” in that part of the country, seeking to spend more time in it as the residents unspokenly declared, “We accept her, one of us. We accept her, one of us.” As they likely will with even more enthusiasm upon hearing this official release of an iconic “hick” anthem. Maybe next she’ll even do an official release (as opposed to just a live cover) of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” too. It’s all part and parcel of the Del Rey metamorphosis into a “bona fide” country bumpkin. In truth, however, she’d be more suited to writing an original composition titled “Beverly Hillbilly,” while authentic “hayseed” Britney Spears might actually be the better fit for covering a single such as this.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Perhaps Lana Del Rey Needs A Reminder of What Having “Absolutely No Money” Means

    Perhaps Lana Del Rey Needs A Reminder of What Having “Absolutely No Money” Means

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    Lana Del Rey has long been “accused” of being the daughter of a rich man. From the outset of her success, there were speculations that Robert Grant had “bought” her career, including her initial bum deal with 5 Points Records (which eventually cost Del Rey plenty of money to buy back the rights to the songs that were released on Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant, ergo eschewing an eventual need to release Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant [Lana’s Version]). In the first year after “Video Games” was released, there was no shortage of venom directed at her vis-à-vis her “authenticity,” or lack thereof. And part of that stemmed from a vehement belief that Del Rey was yet another case of privilege being the key to success. For whatever reason, Del Rey has sought to set the record straight after over a decade of letting “the narrative” perpetuate. And yet, what she had to say about being “poor, or whatever” (as Madonna would call it) doesn’t exactly scream, “Struggle!” 

    Citing growing up in Lake Placid as the height of her “poor girl legitimacy,” Del Rey does little to assuage the contempt of those who would seek to remind her that poverty—real poverty—is not what she endured. At worst, she endured the white girl version of poverty that Andie Walsh in Pretty in Pink had to by being called white trash and having to work a part-time job. In fact, she says the real rich kids at her boarding school used to call her “WT from LP” (white trash from Lake Placid). An “epithet” that actually sounds like an on-brand song title for Del Rey. 

    Somebody trolling in the comments section (via the sarcastic, “It’s so depressing to grow up rich. And then get even richer. Omg what will she ever do?”) was what finally set Del Rey off enough to post a video (and then delete it) about having “absolutely no money” as a child. She started by saying, “I wanna make this video really short and sweet [at over five minutes], just ‘cause the conversation that keeps coming up about coming from, me coming from money and my family having money and this whole thing. I just wanna say, like, coming from the most rural spot inarguably, one of the most rural spots in America, that was not a wealthy town, um, and having gone to a boarding school where I didn’t even know I was going or didn’t have any concept of and got financial aid for because my uncle worked in the administrative building and also being completely alienated from all the kids who already knew each other from New York City. I had such a tough time there because everyone knew how much money everyone had.” Apart from the incomplete sentences, there are many holes to poke in all of those statements. For a start, there are far more rural places in America than Lake Placid, and it is certainly not known for being a poor town. Indeed, it was co-opted by the wealthy after the founding of the Lake Placid Club in 1895 led to the “discovery” of the upstate milieu as a place where the affluent could “retreat” (as though their already cushy day-to-day existence was something that needed to be “escaped”).

    Dewey Decimal System creator Melvil Dewey was at the helm of the aforementioned social club known for its racist and exclusionary practices. Complete with a membership policy that stipulated, “No one will be received as a member or guest against whom there is physical, moral, social or race objection, or who would be unwelcome to even a small minority… This invariable rule is rigidly enforced. It is found impracticable to make exceptions for Jews or others excluded, even though of unusual personal qualifications.” So fearful of a Jewish “infection” near his precious Lake Placid Club was Dewey that he even bought the plot of land adjacent to the club so that no Jewish person would. 

    So yes, Lake Placid, one could argue, was a haven for the white and racist (often synonymous with wealth) early on in its history, and perhaps that’s where Del Rey has gotten some of her propensities for tone deafness (e.g., the “question for the culture,” posting videos of people without their faces obscured during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, saying she’s not racist because she’s fucked some “rappers” [though which ones besides the white G-Eazy remains unclear]). Del Rey also freely admits to the perks of nepotism, which most non-privileged people have no access to whatsoever, by stating her uncle’s administrative position at the Kent School helped give her a leg up. And yet, she clearly doesn’t see it that way. All she sees, essentially, is being the Dan/Jenny Humphrey of her boarding school, looked upon as “less than” in such a way as to make her eventually sing, “Money is the reason we exist/Everybody knows it, it’s a fact/Kiss, kiss.” For those without “real” money to spend in here (as Vivian Ward announced at the Beverly Hills store where she was previously rejected) genuinely don’t “exist” to those with the proverbial big bucks. This, as Del Rey admits, further compelled her toward the path of fame and fortune so that no one could ever call her trash again. Though, of course, no one outside an uber-wealthy circle probably ever would have. 

    Elsewhere, Del Rey remarks, “My parents were arguing about money every single day, and my dad working as a woodworker and in real estate and my mom working in special education. Like, although he bought domain names later on, it doesn’t mean that they were worth anything until more recently.” What she fails to mention is that both worked at renowned ad agency the Grey Group in NYC before moving to Lake Placid once Del Rey was born (to die). Grant was a copywriter, while Hill was an account executive. Neither of those salaries would be anything to turn one’s nose up at. And obviously, they had enough money for the move upstate and to buy a house where they would raise the rest of the Grant family. Nonetheless, Del Rey claims to have felt scarcity during her youth. And yet, how scarce could it have all really been once Robert and Patricia got Lana and her sister Chuck’s modeling career for Ford Models going (hence, the constantly resurfacing photos of Lana from random-ass photoshoots like the one with Lindsay Lohan for Abercrombie & Fitch)? Pimping them out like the Spearses with Britney, as it were. Maybe some of that money even helped with LDR’s tuition for the notoriously expensive private university that is Fordham in the Bronx. Del Rey, conveniently, didn’t mention how that was afforded. 

    Though she was sure to add that, while in New York, “I really didn’t know what to do, and depended on the boyfriends that I had to let me stay with them all that while.” Steven Mertens and Josh Kemp are then name-checked, the way Madonna might be forced to give Dan Gilroy or Camille Barbone some credit for furnishing her with the basics in life while she focused on her music. As a matter of fact, while performing in London for The Celebration Tour, Madonna made a similar, blunter comment about needing to rely on boyfriends upon moving to New York City, and away from her own middle-class family in Michigan: “I had no way to take a bath or shower… So I would actually, um, date men who had showers and bathtubs. Yep, that’s what I did… Blow jobs for showers.” Del Rey could say the same, but that wouldn’t suit her vision of herself. 

    Nor would it to admit that taking any kind of vacation is a privilege, no matter how “ghettoly” executed. So it is that she also declared, “Even on our monthly [a word she didn’t seem to mean within the context], like, spring break vacation every year, we drove to Daytona. Not flew ‘cause it was too expensive.” This is where she comes across like that model in the season one episode of Sex and the City (or Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids saying, “Help me, I’m poor”) who says, “I’m really very literary. I read. I’ll sit down and read a whole magazine from cover to cover.” Del Rey’s version of that is, “I’m really very poor. I had to go to boarding school and Fordham on financial aid” and “Oh my gawww, we had to drive to Daytona instead of flying.” Bitch, do you know how many actual poor people can’t go goddamn nowhere?

    Still, she concludes her woe-is-me speech with, “It’s so sad that I can’t own coming from this, like, beautiful rural mountain town.” No one ever said she couldn’t own that. But to call herself poor (while her parents’ huge wedding announcement in the New York Times circa 1982 also suggests otherwise as poor people simply don’t do that kind of shit) is, let’s just say it, a bit extreme and absurd. Granted, in the present, being middle class (even upper) is little better than being outright poor (in terms of how far a dollar will stretch), and certainly entails far fewer (if any) governmental benefits…replaced instead by greater tax burdens. But Del Rey ought to at least somewhat remember, in her life before fame, that poverty is not something she ever actually experienced, nor was she at risk of it. Especially after her father did cash in on those domain names in the 2000s. Even so, it better suits the “lore of Lana,” particularly with her small-town predilections of late, to announce that not only was she not a rich kid, she was a poor kid. But with poverty like hers, who needs food stamps?

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Rob Grant and Lana Del Rey Provide A Freudian Wet Dream in “Lost At Sea”

    Rob Grant and Lana Del Rey Provide A Freudian Wet Dream in “Lost At Sea”

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    When it comes to Lana Del Rey’s “Daddy,” for once it actually refers to her real father. You know, the man who “gave his seed” to create her. Literally as opposed to metaphorically. Though many are still of the belief that Rob Grant’s “web domain money” helped bankroll Lizzy Grant’s early musicianship attempts (along with her expensive education at Fordham) and “mold her” into what she would become circa 2012. But, per Del Rey on “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing,” “I know they think that it took thousands of people/To put me together again like an experiment/Some big men behind the scenes/Sewing Frankenstein black dreams into my songs/But they’re wrong.” In other words, Del Rey maintains her “persona” has always been entirely her own. And perhaps if anyone is trying to create one right now, it’s her, um, Daddy.

    More specifically, Rob Grant has, for whatever reason, decided it’s his time to shine musically. Leading one to believe that perhaps this was part of the Faustian pact Lana made with him to get him to give up the cash necessary to support her 00s dreams of being a singer. If that’s the case, she seems only too enthusiastic to pay up, offering her vocals to “Lost At Sea,” the first single from Grant’s debut album of the same name. But Grant seems anything but lost in his determination to “rebrand” himself for his septuagenarian era. This after already relishing former careers as a copywriter (for the well-known Grey Group), a “rustic” furniture hawker, a restaurant owner, a real estate daddy and a web domain investor. It was the latter career with which he made some surprisingly big bucks (and still is). And that “entrepreneurial spirit” seems to endure with his approach to stardom, as he told The Face, “I went out and registered the domain nepo​dad​dy​.com. And we’re going to come out with a whole line of merch that’s Nepo Daddy-branded… I’m all for Nepo Daddy. And I also registered nepomommy.com. You know, I’ll listen to what the kids are saying… in the comments on Instagram or Twitter. I just crack up. Another one is ​Robert Fucking Grant!, after Norman Fucking Rockwell! So I went and registered that name, too.” Clearly, the man knows how to develop careers.

    And his latest is, per his Twitter bio, “pianist/composer.” Del Rey is happy to help secure his transition by lending her vocals to not one, but two tracks on the album, including another called “Hollywood Bowl,” which serves as the finale. She was also on hand to give Daddy Grant (a.k.a. Papa Del Rey) some advice on how to pose for his first big magazine feature in The Face. But, based on “Lost At Sea,” it would seem Del Rey has spent most of her life taking her father’s advice (despite certain betrayals). As evidenced in the lyrics, “Once you told me/Look for the north star, then you’ll see/Heavenly, I hear/Found my way to the beach /And there were waves over me/I was lost at sea/Till you found me, till you found me/Ha-ha-ha-ha, happily/Happily, happily I was found lost at sea.” For Del Rey, being “found lost at sea” can allude to so many moments in her life, not least of which is being found lost in a sea of alcohol during her early teenage years—prompting the decision for her to be “sent away” to boarding school (yes, it’s all very Serena Van Der Woodsen).

    A decision, it appeared, that was mostly backed by Del Rey’s mother. And yes, both of Del Rey’s parents have proper, important-sounding names (from a white world perspective): Robert England Grant and Patricia Ann Hill. It was Patricia whose opinion served as the most clout-laden one in “transferring” young Lizzy to the Kent School in Connecticut (thanks to some help from Lana’s uncle in the admissions office). Patricia likely wanted Lizzy out of the way more eagerly than her husband as a result of Lizzy “acting out” toward teachers and skipping school. The school where Patricia also happened to be a teacher as well. And, if we’ve gleaned anything from Del Rey’s lyrics, it’s that Patricia was and is a woman very concerned with image. Hence, her choice to swiftly exile Del Rey to boarding school rather than trying to understand what was causing her daughter’s behavior or attempting to seek help for it with her still at home.

    With Patricia’s slight, Del Rey felt similarly slighted by her father who didn’t step in to protect her. Ergo, the lyrics on “Wildflower Wildfire” that go, “My father never stepped in when his wife would rage at me/So I ended up awkward but sweet.” Traces of her contention with Mother are peppered throughout her discography, including on the works that were “pre-Lana Del Rey,” namely “My Momma” (“Me and my momma, we don’t get along”) and “Raise Me Up (Mississippi South)” (“I can talk what I want, how I wanna/I don’t have to talk taste for you, mama”). Then there’s her references to the coldness she was met with as a youth on “Bare Feet On Linoleum” from Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. Del Rey recites, “Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great American homecoming I never had?/Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculptures take the place of the warm embrace I’ve never got?” One can feel that lack when she described how, even in the summer, when boarding school was no longer in session, she was still forced to stay away from home. The summer of her sixteenth birthday she was sent to live with a host family in Spain, recalling, “I wasn’t allowed to come home so I went straight to Spain, to Santander. I remember on the plane ride there they gave me a little cake that said ‘Sweet 16’ because I’d turned sixteen in the air. And I was like, ‘This is cool’ but it’s also like, ‘Am I ever, like, gonna go home?’” Alas, as Thomas Wolfe warned, “You can’t go home again.” Especially not when your mother is a bit frigid and doesn’t want to deal with your Lolita ass.

    The resentment that would brew within Del Rey over her mother’s callousness reached another crescendo in 2020, as she made mention of “rifts with blood mothers” on Mother’s Day and further announced, “I am the way I am because of the women along the way who have taught me everything I needed to know and loved me unconditionally. I’m also the way I am because of the women I have encountered in this life who have put conditions on their love and are steely in their nature.” Major shade. In the meantime, Del Rey had long ago made amends with Daddy Grant, who perhaps did funnel some dough into her career kickstart out of a sense of guilt for casting her out of the house due to the “peer pressure” of his wife. While Del Rey has clearly forgiven her father, she remains openly icy in any allusion made to her mother. For example, “I’m not friends with my mother, but I still love my dad” on “Black Bathing Suit” or “What the fuck’s wrong in your head to send me away never to come back?/Exotic places and people to take the place of being your child” on “Fingertips.”

    And so one can surmise that whatever “healing” transpired between Lana and Rob obviously hasn’t happened between her and Patricia. As for the Daddy issues Del Rey has suffered over the years, “Text Book” addresses it all pretty comprehensively in lines such as, “I guess you could call it textbook/I was lookin’ for the father I wanted back” and “Then there was the issue of her/I didn’t even like myself, or love the life I had.” This again coming across as a thinly veiled dig at her mom. In contrast, her father is characterized as warmer and more understanding, particularly when Del Rey sings, “And there you were with shining stars/Standin’ blue with open arms.” Of course, when Del Rey is potentially speaking to a romantic interest in this song, she could also just as easily be talking to her father. Because when it comes to Del Rey and Rob Grant, things are nothing if not Freudian.

    Del Rey’s closeness with her father has now only been further cemented via their shared passion for music, complete with filming a video for “Lost At Sea,” directed by none other than Chuck Grant. And where else could it be filmed but in the waters of Marina Del Rey? Wherein their shared passion for sailing (if the aesthetic for Norman Fucking Rockwell was any indication) is also showcased. A moment Grant characterized as “an extraordinary experience filming onboard a 55-foot ketch in the Pacific in extremely rough seas and high winds.” In short, the metaphorical embodiment of the rocky relationship he had with Lana in her youth. While on the boat, we see scenes of Grant doing “hot daddy” things like taking control of the wheel and tying knots with his big, strong arms. Effectively, being the protector steering Lana’s ship safely to harbor that she always wanted him to be back when it might have spared her from a fate like teenage exile.

    Grant additionally opts to include home movie footage featuring him and his children (Chuck and Charlie, in addition to Lana). Notably scant in that footage, of course, is Patricia. Surely not a coincidence. In any event, Grant stated, “The final video is very personal and interspersed with rare family footage of the Grant family growing up (including images that have never been seen before).” When that isn’t happening, Del Rey and Daddy Grant are giving faux-wistful smiles to the camera as though to indicate their relationship has transcended to a new level. One that hasn’t quite exonerated LDR from being accused of having something of an Electra complex. This also made evident in a line from “Text Book” where she asks, “Do you think if I go blonde, we could get our old love back?” For it was when she was still blonde as a little girl, as shown in Grant’s “From the Vault” home movies, that he hadn’t yet “turned against her” with her mother. Now, even as a brunette, it appears Del Rey has gotten that “old love” for her father back and then some.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lana Del Rey Returns to Her Church Choir Roots With “The Grants,” A Rumination on Memory and, More Subtly, Plath’s Fig Tree

    Lana Del Rey Returns to Her Church Choir Roots With “The Grants,” A Rumination on Memory and, More Subtly, Plath’s Fig Tree

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    With a recent interview in Billboard noting that Lana Del Rey found herself figuratively going back to Lake Placid as she wrote Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, that much seems apparent on her third release thus far from the record: “The Grants.” For those who aren’t more than just cursory fans, the title refers to her true last name. Born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, Lana Del Rey only transformed into her stage name around 2010 (though, back then, it was spelled “Del Ray”). One year later, her “Video Games” single would launch her into the international spotlight. A vastly different space than small-town Lake Placid, which, up until Del Rey, was only really on anyone’s radar because there was a horror-comedy movie named after it (though it’s not actually set in Lake Placid at all).

    The speculations about Del Rey’s background were (and are) rampant upon the debut of Born to Die in 2012—her father had bought her career, she came from money and was getting off on slumming it in a trailer park, she had a fuck ton of plastic surgery, etc. With “The Grants,” if one was hoping Del Rey might clear up some of the rumors about her background, there’s no allusion to any such light-shedding as she proceeds to talk about, essentially, how all the money and the fame don’t mean shit, etc. What matters is family, and the memories you make with people who are important to you (including, of course, romantic love interests). Just as she referenced a white male singer (Harry Nilsson) on “A&W,” she opts for John Denver on this particular track, making mention of his most famous single, “Rocky Mountain High.” Specifically, “I’m gonna take mine of you with me/Like ‘Rocky Mountain High’/The way John Denver sings.”

    She never elaborates on what (or even the way), exactly, it is he sings, but one can surmise it has to do with the lyrics, “And they say that he got crazy once, and he tried to touch the sun/And he lost a friend, but kept the memory.” For Del Rey’s own lyrics on “The Grants” go, “My pastor told me, ‘When you leave, all you take/Uh-huh, is your memory’/And I’m gonna take mine of you with mе.” The “I’m gonna take mine of you with me” part of the chorus comes into focus immediately at the beginning, with an intro featuring a singer correcting the “choir” (it’s a trio) she’s instructing before they proceed “for real. At first, the trio, consisting of Melodye Perry, Pattie Howard and Shikena Jones, mistakes “I’m gonna take mine of you with me” for “I’m gonna take mind of you with me.” It loosely goes back to Del Rey’s form of wordplay on “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” when she says, “It wasn’t quite what I meaned, if you know what I mean.”

    As for Del Rey’s own personal choir of three, each woman was featured in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom—perhaps Lana’s nod to being a “backup singer” herself in the church choir…except that she was the cantor. Even so, as the “chief singer,” she undoubtedly knows that you’re nothing without good backup (and that’s kind of what a family is, too). Seeing as how the choir life was part of the past Del Rey is reflecting on, it also makes sense that she can’t help but look to her future as well. Will it consist of “furthering” the family line, or will it be a life of quiet devotion to art? Either way, Del Rey wants to assure listeners that she’ll be spending “Eternity” with the Grants. Even if she’s convinced they might actually live forever (as all rich people think they will). For her real Daddy, Rob Grant, has been staying attuned to the scientific research surrounding the “extinction of death” for years. As Del Rey said in her Rolling Stone UK interview, “Why not have that be the focus: self-preservation. Just to stay around and see what happens, you know?” How vampiric (in fact, “Vampires” is an album concept Del Rey has surprisingly not tapped into).

    Eerily enough, it also speaks to something Del Rey said early on in her rise to fame: “When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.” Maybe she still can’t—and doesn’t have to if this whole “extinction of death” thing is workable. Which would be a load off Lana acolyte and fellow family lover Billie Eilish’s shoulders too. Even if it would make her a liar for putting out a song called “Everybody Dies”—for that reality is actually more of a comfort to her than a phobia, remarking of the track, “I don’t know why [but] I’ve talked about it since I was a kid. It makes me happy that all things end. It’s also very sad and sentimental. This song is really just about knowing that you only have so long to do what you want, so just do it. Enjoy your life.” Del Rey is ultimately saying the same thing on “The Grants,” albeit in a far rosier package.

    With regard to others before her who couldn’t fight the reaper and “stay around,” the callouts of Harry Nilsson and John Denver on these past two singles bear an especial significance considering that the former was born in New York (i.e., Brooklyn) and had major commercial success without much touring or regular radio airplay and the latter was a lauded folk singer-songwriter billed as an emblem of the American West. Del Rey has certainly become that in the years since she correctly decided to defect from NYC in favor of Los Angeles. More and more, it’s difficult to remember a time when she could have ever been branded as a “Brooklyn Baby,” with so much of her work rooted in the inspiration she’s derived from L.A. and its outlying areas (e.g., Arcadia, Rosemead, Newport, Long Beach, et al.).

    Still, her nostalgic look at her family lineage undeniably forces her to recall that period of her existence, along with, most especially, the early years spent in a town of roughly a thousand, where, per Del Rey, “the trajectory was: school, junior college, trade school… get married?” Del Rey still has yet to cross that particular threshold, though it’s not for a lack of trying. Her trail of boyfriends far outweigh any body count Taylor Swift has, yet she manages to fly under the radar on this front largely for possessing a “mystical ordinariness,” as Rolling Stone writer Hannah Ewens calls it, that figures heavily into this particular single. A track that most other artists probably wouldn’t have chosen to be a single. And where that has served her well in the past with lengthy numbers like “Venice Bitch” and, more recently, “A&W,” it doesn’t quite carry off without a hitch in this instance.

    This is likely because of its decidedly “Christian” timbre (it’s giving “This Little Light of Mine” for sure). In point of fact, it’s the type of song one could categorize as part of the “Katy Hudson” school of rock…except far more passable as secular (and mainstream chart-ready). Because, without question, pop music is no stranger to accommodating religious tones and themes (just look at most of Madonna’s work). And Lana, too, has frequently incorporated Catholic motifs and images into her songs (and “aesthetics”) in the past. Yet something about “The Grants” is schmaltzier than all the others. Most likely attributable to the specificity of Del Rey talking about her family of origin—which is probably a topic she thought would resonate, based on another recent quote from Rolling Stone, in which she noted, “Everyone has these nuanced but specific stories that are so universal to people…” But not quite so with “The Grants.” Maybe because, in actuality, Del Rey doesn’t get specific at all, offering general terms like, “My sister’s firstborn child/I’m gonna take that too with me/My grandmother’s last smile/I’m gonna take that too with me.” Then there’s a very “Easter eggy” nod to her uncle, David Grant, who died climbing the Rocky Mountains (thus, the name-check of the John Denver song). Apart from these mentions, nothing about “The Grants” are really acknowledged, least of all their source of income prior to Lana’s fame (where’s the callout to Rob being a domain developer, huh?).

    But as for the concept of someone’s memory living on with you once they’re gone (whether through death or simply extricating themselves from your life), well, that’s fairly sweet—another song title on the record, by the way. Or maybe “bittersweet” is the word, especially for Del Rey in this case, whose now ex-boyfriend, Mike Hermosa, co-wrote the song with her. Along with another tragic number about loss and memory, “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.” It’s almost as if she knew it was going to end between them, based on these tracks alone. And maybe turning every relationship into a song/album is one surefire method of ensuring she can never truly be forgotten—not by her exes or the public.

    As for the reason why the subject of romantic love more often than not creeps into her work, Del Rey commented to Ewens, “Everybody finds themselves in a different way. Some people really find themselves through their work, some people find themselves through travelling. I think my basic mode is that I learn more about myself from being with people, and so when it comes to the romantic side of things, if you’re monogamous and it’s one person you’re with, you just put a lot of importance on that.” In short, she really is The Love Witch that her face is so often being superimposed over (much to Samantha Robinson’s annoyance). So it is that even on a track supposedly about her nuclear family/lineage, Del Rey references her failed relationships in lines like, “So you say there’s a chance for us/Should I do a dance for once?/You’re a family man, but/But…”

    The incompleteness of that sentence touches on Del Rey’s Sylvia Plath-oriented fear/metaphor about the figs on the fig tree. If she chooses the life of wife and mother, will she be forced to lose her career? The thing that drives her, ostensibly, more than anything. And yet, knowing that fame is fickle, at best, Del Rey increasingly wonders if she should secure her legacy in some other lasting way—by continuing the Grant lineage. This, too, is addressed on “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” when she asks, “When’s it gonna be my turn?” A bold demand for any white person to make, in their inherent position of privilege, but Del Rey seems to be suggesting that the sight of all friends and siblings making their own families has her pondering when (or if) she’ll be next. To that end, it becomes harder to be so “choosy” about her boyfriend du moment, asking whoever it is, “Do you think about Heaven?/Do you think about me?” (because, apparently, Del Rey views herself as Heaven—e.g., “Say yes to heaven/Say yes to me”).

    And yet…obviously, she remains particular as ever. Perhaps it’s all part of the latent eternal commitment to/battle with art over family (see: The Fabelmans). More precisely, the obligation most feel to perpetuate their family line. But because of Del Rey’s unique position as a “cultural icon,” she’s already technically done more than any of her other breeding siblings possibly could to ensure “eternal” clout. Or has she? For the only thing that means more to society than fame, particularly where women are concerned, is spawning. That is, indeed, why more and more pop icons are doing just that where once it never would have been a consideration that they could “have both”—the family and the career. The expectation formerly being that once a woman reaches “a certain age,” she hangs up fame to have kids. Not so anymore. Hence, the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé expanding their broods, as the latter sings things like, “My great-great-grandchildren already rich/That’s a lot of brown churrin on your Forbes list/Frolickin’ around my compound on my fortress.” But one gets the sense Del Rey wouldn’t be as “gung-ho” about continuing with singing if she surrendered to la vita di famiglia. That she would instead devote herself entirely to said “purpose.” And, lest anyone forget, she did once claim, to Kim Kardashian of all people, that if she hadn’t become a singer, she might have pursued becoming a doula (because, sure, that’s the natural fallback career).

    With Del Rey entering a new decade in a few years, however, perhaps the thought of losing out on her chance to have children is on the brain more and more. And how it might ultimately be more “fulfilling” than persisting in relying on “artistry”—ergo, fame—alone. Incidentally, it’s Kesha who freshly wrote as her bio, “There’s a fine line between famous and being forgot” (these being lyrics to an upcoming song of hers). With a child or two, being forgotten becomes impossible. And when Del Rey sings, “I’m doing it for us” on “The Grants” (having already noted as much on “Get Free,” when she announced, “I’m doing it for all of us”), one ponders whether she means she’s holding fast to her career for the sake of the “us” that comprises herself and her fans in a parasocial relationship with her, or if it refers to the “us” that comprises herself and the rest of the Grants, in terms of choosing to “propagate their species.”

    Whatever she ends up “choosing” (or perhaps having it all), the self-reflection process is made apparent on that road to deciding via “The Grants.” But that still doesn’t make the track “single-worthy.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • On Lana Del Rey “Raising A Generation” (And Whether Or Not That Was Necessarily A Good Thing)

    On Lana Del Rey “Raising A Generation” (And Whether Or Not That Was Necessarily A Good Thing)

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    For whatever reason, when Lana Del Rey first arrived onto the scene, she appealed endlessly to the ten through twelve-year-old set. Like a “goth” version of Britney Spears, this chanteuse’s talk of obsessing over boys and/or being broken-hearted by them spoke to a generation of girls who had yet to even “snag” a boyfriend. Among that generation was Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, both of whom have come forward of late to declare their unwavering love for Del Rey (despite Rodrigo being far more of a Swiftie). Eilish’s gushing has been markedly more consistent (e.g., “Lana raised us”) than Rodrigo’s, who seemed to become a fangirl in time to present Del Rey with an award at the Billboard Women in Music Awards.

    The award in question was the “Visionary Award.” Something that one would think might actually require a bit more…vision. At least in terms of not reiterating the same tropes about “he hurt me, I love him still” (a.k.a. “he hit me and it felt like a kiss”). Del Rey herself is the first to admit that, when it comes to the “world building” (as she and everyone else is suddenly calling it) of her albums, “boyfriends!” are the key inspiration behind it all (cue Swift saying, “Hey, that’s only okay when I do it!”). So no, few of Del Rey’s songs are capable of passing the Bechdel Test. And few people can say that perpetuating this motif of obsessing over men is a “good thing” to imbue in subsequent generations. Even so, Del Rey, despite a “low-key presence” overall, has saturated “the culture” with her “visionary” status. A branding that feels somewhat ironic when considering that all Del Rey has done, fundamentally, is raise another generation of women who fixate on men, their opinions of women and what women can do about it to claim vengeance (e.g., write a song about the jilting—though not everyone gets that luxury). Eilish has her series of such songs, from “Wish You Were Gay” to “Happier Than Ever” to “Lost Cause.” And, naturally, Rodrigo’s entire debut album, Sour, is directed at (supposedly) one boy in particular: Joshua Bassett.

    So yes, perhaps Del Rey effectively did “raise” a generation (even if Taylor had a record deal years before Del Rey achieved mainstream success). Indeed, that’s just it: there’s no denying her influence in the music of the moment. And while that influence has been championed as a boon for female musicians being able to show their “sad girl” vulnerability without shame, it’s really caused a reversion to the usual tropes of twentieth century feminine capitulation to male dominance. Which, to be sure, is very paradoxical when taking into account that there’s never been a time in the music industry when women have been so “at the center of it.” Yet now that they are, the one thing they still want to talk about, despite all the “progress” we’ve made as a society, is: men.

    Del Rey’s overall conservative views on relationships (complete with how they ought to be monogamous) provide insight into why Gen Z musicians like Madison Beer (also name-checked by Del Rey at the Billboard Women in Music Awards), Eilish and Rodrigo are still parroting back the same tired sentiments. Eilish, at least, throws in the occasional reference to Gen Z anxieties, according opioid addictions and a general disaffection vis-à-vis the end of the world’s imminence (in short, Euphoria is a Billie Eilish song). Del Rey is instead all about the undercurrent of decay that belies the shiny veneer of Americana from the era she’s most inspired by: the 1960s. Alas, that decade also favors the aforementioned “he hit me and it felt like a kiss” “philosophy” on heteronormative relationships. Take the abuse, glamorize it and repeat when one relationship ends and a new one begins. Of course, Del Rey has mentioned being accused of glamorizing abuse in a “trailblazing” sort of way—as though she “forged the path” for women like Ariana Grande, Doja Cat and Cardi B (as if), each of whom are mentioned in her illustrious “question for the culture.”

    That question resulted in an expected backlash about her racially specific list (save for the blackfishing Ariana) that also included Camila Cabello, Kehlani, Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé. She would later backpedal on why she chose to mention these women by insisting they were her favorite singers. Though, patently, at least one fellow white woman named Billie Eilish should have made the list if we’re talking bona fide preferred musicians. Now, conveniently, Del Rey actually is playing up Eilish—along with Rodrigo and Beer—as her true “favorites.” Perhaps because it’s actually “safe” to say that she paved the way for them (without causing a “race war”). Even if Beer is obviously more of an Ariana Grande knockoff with a pre-plastic surgery Megan Fox aesthetic.

    As for the aesthetic that made Del Rey famous circa 2012 (incidentally, when Beer was just starting out), she took the stage at the Billboard Women in Music Awards in an approximation of that looQue. Arriving in front of the mic with said “persona” (though Del Rey would vehemently deny ever having one) faintly recognizable from the 2012 era—complete with a vague beehive, liquid eyeliner and false eyelashes—Del Rey herself mused, “I don’t exactly have a long-term vision at all.” Clearly…for if she did, she might have been able to see that continuing to tout the same lyrical themes for the past decade has had one pronounced effect overall: “Seasons only change/It’s always been the same.” This being a quote from Madison Beer’s song, “Showed Me (How I Fell In Love With You).” Del Rey, in the end, didn’t “change” the game, just played it a bit more “offbeatly” at a time when retro wasn’t as “in”—what with Amy Winehouse releasing Back to Black about two years before Lizzy Grant began her attempts at making it as a professional singer.

    Just how little things have really changed under the guise of having done so is indicated in the fact that there even needs to be a “Women in Music” Awards put on by Billboard. For it speaks to the persistent love of division in America, centered on the identity politics (for fuck’s sake, Idris Elba can’t even say he doesn’t want to be hemmed in by the label “Black actor”) that sow these “partitionings.” Nonetheless, Del Rey and her acolytes are convinced that she’s a visionary when, in truth, her messages have been maintainers of the status quo with regard to male-female power dynamics. At another point in her acceptance speech for being a “visionary,” she added, “I’m so grateful to be in the best company I’ve ever been in,” alluding to the new generation that will ostensibly persist in placing far too much emphasis on male views and acceptances of women.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Miley Cyrus Heavily Imitates Lana Del Rey Stylings in Teaser for Endless Summer Vacation

    Miley Cyrus Heavily Imitates Lana Del Rey Stylings in Teaser for Endless Summer Vacation

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    Along with announcing that her next album will be released March 10th, the same day as Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Miley Cyrus also seems to be giving a nod to Lana in other ways with the teaser for her forthcoming eighth record, Endless Summer Vacation. The title itself smacking of Del Rey’s rolodex of stock vocabulary for many of her CA-themed songs. Indeed, she even had a tour in 2015 called Endless Summer, with Courtney Love and Grimes as the openers on varying legs of the North American crusade to promote Ultraviolence. But, of course, like that latter title taking from something else in 60s and 70s-era pop culture (i.e., A Clockwork Orange), so, too, does Endless Summer have its roots in the name of a greatest hits album from The Beach Boys. And, yes, anyone who knows Del Rey’s work on even the most cursory level is aware that she’s just about as “goo-goo-eyed” over California as The Beach Boys. As such, she’s become something of the unofficial spokesperson for the state in a way that said band used to be—giving it an update with her darker motifs pertaining to decay and ruin (though she’s all for finding beauty in that as well).

    Seeming to inuit the weight of taking up the mantle for a band that wrote a Golden State anthem as untouchable as “California Girls,” Del Rey finally had to name-check a Beach Boy in Norman Fucking Rockwell’s “The Greatest,” singing of “Dennis’ last stop before Kokomo” as a reference to his 1983 death after the preceding line, “I miss the bar where the Beach Boys would go.” In this instance, “Kokomo”—the paradisiacal (and fictional) island off the Florida Keys—is meant to represent Heaven, where Del Rey would like to imagine that Dennis went after drinking all day on December 28th and then jumping into the water in Marina Del Rey (how appropriate for another Lana connection). His drunken stupor led to his drowning and, much later, immortalization in a Del Rey song. In fact, the entire crux of “The Greatest” expresses a deep yearning and nostalgia for the music of the past (in the spirit of The Beach Boys), and even the way the music industry used to be (replete with free-wheeling sexual predators and all).

    Miley isn’t exactly conveying that sentiment (not yet anyway) in her Endless Summer Vacation teaser, but she is performing the whole “California myth” shtick, going so far as to deem the album “a love letter to Los Angeles” (what Billie Eilish also called her filmed-for-Disney concert at the Hollywood Bowl—literally: Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles). One can imagine Del Rey internally commenting (in the style of Janis Ian in Mean Girls) of Miley saying such a thing, “Hey, that’s only okay when I say it.” And it’s true, Del Rey was the one who jump-started California’s shift back toward being the apple of the U.S.’ eye, even amid all of its many and increasing climate disasters ranging from fires to floods. She being the one to remain consistently committed to it while other musicians only dabble (even California native Katy Perry, who tried to one-up The Beach Boys with her own “California Gurls”).

    But it isn’t just that Miley is serving up “California as a concept” vibes for Endless Summer Vacation that reeks of Del Rey. She’s even taken to adopting the ethereal spoken word manner of Del Rey that first materialized on Honeymoon’s “Burnt Norton,” wherein she recites the T. S. Eliot poem of the same name. A manner that was ultimately a precursor for releasing a spoken word album of her poetry book, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. The album itself offers fourteen of the thirty poems from the book spoken by Del Rey, with musical accompaniments by her usual bitch, Jack Antonoff. Among the offerings was the, you guessed it, “L.A. love letter” called “LA Who Am I To Love You.” The answer to that being: a native of the state of New York who rightly turned her back on NYC and the East Coast in general by fleeing to the West. Miley, too, fled the East in favor of the West, but being from Tennessee makes it slightly less “traitorous” by East Coast standards. Especially New York ones that perpetually champion that eponymous city as the “greatest” in the world despite kind of being the shittiest.

    Maybe that’s why Miley feels that she can also try her hand at bringing “profundity” to L.A. with some spoken word verses in the Endless Summer Vacation teaser that include, “We met each other on the neon dinghy. Past the manta rays and palm trees. Glowing creatures beamed down from great heights. Electric eels in red venom. In the sky, we could see the riders on horseback.” It sounds like a lot of acid and/or weed-induced nonsense, which continues with, “On comets, coming toward us kicking up with laughter” (side note: the way she says “On comets” briefly makes one think she might just continue with, “On Cupid, on Donner, on Blitzen…”). Throughout this entire time, we’re shown “impressionistic” imagery that so often gets associated with California, namely a pool, paraded again toward the end of the teaser in spotlighted darkness next to empty outdoor furniture. As the Bret Easton Ellis-inspired (think: Less Than Zero) musical ambience continues, Cyrus gets even more faux poetic with the lines, “My friend Big Twitchy rode the boat to the light, surfed the north break. We danced until there was nothing left. Just me and Twitchy. ‘Cause that’s all we knew.”

    Having commenced the teaser with a close-up on a clear, blue pool that harkens back to the “Slide Away” single cover, we’re reminded of a visual like “Blue Jeans,” where Del Rey firmly established her California aesthetics in music video format. Another scene in Miley’s teaser includes a looming, blurred-out helicopter that correlates to Del Rey’s “High by the Beach” video motif. Shaky camera work trying to focus on a bleach blonde, cherry red lipstick’d Cyrus wearing black shades adds to the DIY/“found footage” look she’s going for. Of the very variety that Del Rey repopularized with “Video Games.” Elsewhere, an image of a 5G cell phone tower posing as a palm tree additionally evokes the dystopian feel Del Rey has also cultivated in her lyrical portrayals of Los Angeles and California. Not to mention highlighting the “ersatz” quality L.A. and CA are frequently mocked for. And yet, for as maligned and made fun of as this milieu still is, it seems to keep inspiring. Even if much of that inspiration appears to be yielding similar statements and visuals. All of which can now be linked back to Del Rey kickstarting the “California trend” with her sophomore record (heralded by “West Coast” being the first single from it).

    In any case, it is said that all great artists inspire imitations (e.g., Easton Ellis ripping off Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays for Less Than Zero). And Del Rey herself is but an imitative pastiche of so many California-centric bands and musicians past. So perhaps there’s no harm done, per se, by Miley emulating the chanteuse she once collaborated with on “Don’t Call Me Angel” (which seems to be crying out for a follow-up single from just the two of them entitled “Call Me City of Angels”). She might even have something slightly new to say about the state. But don’t get your hopes up on that front. Only time—and California—will tell.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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