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Tag: Lana Del Rey Priscilla Presley

  • Lana Del Rey “Redeems” Her Absence on the Priscilla Soundtrack With Somewhat Lackluster “Unchained Melody” Performance for Christmas at Graceland

    Lana Del Rey “Redeems” Her Absence on the Priscilla Soundtrack With Somewhat Lackluster “Unchained Melody” Performance for Christmas at Graceland

    Lana Del Rey’s love for Elvis Presley is, by now, well-established. Which is why so many were surprised to learn she wouldn’t be in some way participating in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla. Especially since the director outright asked her to (twice). Claiming the convenient stock excuse of “schedule conflicts,” Del Rey seemed to have no issue dragging herself to Graceland with her usual family-filled entourage. Apparently, only a direct line to Elvis himself could conjure her presence, and that was Riley Keough a.k.a. Elvis’ granddaughter and the new custodian/sole owner of the property in the wake of Lisa Marie’s death. To that end, “lineage” is definitely something Del Rey can get behind honoring (it’s a subject of particular consequence on Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, though she also mentions her “karmic lineage” on Blue Banisters). Accordingly, as a means to build anticipation for the Christmas at Graceland special, she posted a picture of her niece, Phoenix, running around with Riley’s daughter, Tupelo (yes, the same name as the small Mississippi town where Elvis was born). 

    As though borrowing from her “How To Disappear” lyrics when she sang, “I’ve got a kid and two cats in the yard,” she stated of the photo, “Riley has been kind enough to let the kids run all around the yard.” Hmm…is it a “kindness,” really, to let kids play in a massive backyard? Evidently when you’re as legendary as Keough is by proxy. Del Rey’s caption of the photo also noted how seeing these two kids together felt “like nothing short of magic.” Maybe because now, Del Rey’s bond with Elvis and the rest of the Presleys is firmly cemented. There’s a connection forged between the next generation that makes it entirely possible that Del Rey will keep hanging out with Elvis’ progeny. After all, if she couldn’t live during the same time as the icon himself, then this will have to serve as the next best thing. 

    So, too, does paying homage to him during the special, aired after the Christmas in Rockefeller Center tree-lighting one (a detail Del Rey was also sure to call out on her Instagram account, though failed to highlight Cher’s presence at the event…and yes, Cher also cameos [along with her contemporary, Dolly Parton] with an Elvis anecdote during Christmas at Graceland). After all, Christmas officially starts right after Thanksgiving these days, as there’s no time to waste in getting people into the “holiday” (read: buying) spirit. Del Rey wasn’t necessarily “of that bent” when she chose to sing The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” one of Elvis’ favorite songs to cover. And, considering Del Rey is something of a “cover queen” herself (hear: “The Other Woman,” “Once Upon a Dream,” “Doin’ Time,” “Season of the Witch,” “Blue Velvet,” “Summer Wine,” “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “For Free” and, most recently, “Take Me Home, Country Roads”—the list truly does go on), the selection made sense.

    And so did going down to Graceland a few days early to get “into character,” so to speak (though Del Rey will tell you, “Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will”). To absorb some of that “mystical Elvis energy” (including snapping a touristy photo in front of Graceland’s National Register of Historical Places sign) in time to sing for the show, commenting, “…you know you can count on me to more than likely have the somber [performance], so I’ve got you covered with that.” For someone who once declared, “Elvis is my daddy,” perhaps it’s fair to say she’s in tune with the underlying sadness within Elvis and many of his songs, thus the “somber” song choice. One that is introduced (second in the lineup after Lainey Wilson’s hoedown interpretation of “Santa Claus is Back in Town”) by none other than Keough herself as she invites the cameras in through the front door while saying, “Welcome to Graceland.” She then guides viewers through the dining room and kitchen as she gushes with a faintly Drew Barrymore lilt (and look, for that matter), “It’s so special for us to have music back in the house and I’m so excited to introduce this beautiful performance by Lana Del Rey.” The camera whip pans to the right to show the singer in question, wearing a dress fans recognized from her Norman Fucking Rockwell! Tour days. A dress that is, of course, appropriately “60s.” And so is her hairstyle and eyeliner, clearly made to give a nod to the woman whose biopic she wouldn’t contribute a song to. 

    Before diving into her cover, Del Rey remarks, “We particularly like his performance at Rapid City, so we’re gonna channel that and we hope everybody has a really great Christmas.” Of course, while condemnations about Del Rey’s own “fat period” have been ongoing of late, it would be impossible for her to truly channel the agony of that Rapid City performance in June 1977, just a couple of months before Elvis would die. Breathing heavily and drenched in sweat, it was plain to see that years of these live performances (paired with a steady and lethal combination of drugs) had taken their toll. And yes, he didn’t seem to care how he looked or felt once he got on that stage and was revived by the audience’s adulation. So it was that he performed “Unchained Melody” while playing a piano riddled with Coke cups (filled with water or Gatorade, it’s been said) as someone else held the microphone up to his mouth. And from the moment he began to sing, it was as though all perception of his physical appearance melted away while his voice, rich and dreamy as ever, transported the audience to another place. 

    The same can’t quite be said of what Del Rey does with the cover while performing it among the safety of a pre-taped show with no live audience. She never seems to reach that moment of truly belting it out with the pain and agony Elvis so readily conveys. Indeed, her performance is soft, controlled…subdued. Everything Elvis’ cover of “Unchained Melody” is not. There are even times when her declaration of “I need your love” sounds more like a question than an earnest insistence. What’s more, her decision to use a trio of backup singers for the performance is not in keeping with Elvis’ stripped-back rendition in Rapid City. Perhaps the closest she gets to “channeling Elvis” is by employing an all-Black supporting band (namely, the piano player and backup singers) for the song. While Elvis grafted from Black culture for his music, Del Rey lately seems to be relying on Black talent to “jazz up” her performances, live or otherwise. A glaring example of this occurred on “The Grants,” the opening song for Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. Armed with a choir of Black women to chant, “I’m gonna take mine of you with me,” Del Rey returns to the church-y, gospel aura of her early life. Rooted in Roman Catholicism and all the devotion (mixed with opulence) that entails. Elvis had his own love of gospel a.k.a. “church” music thanks to being a Southern Baptist. A religion with, yes, decidedly more “Blackness” to it than Catholicism. 

    Alas, Del Rey leaning into that form of Blackness doesn’t manage to translate “Unchained Melody” into the mimicking tour de force she hoped it would be for this Christmas special. Nor does her “intimate conversation” with Keough about what their family traditions are for Christmas (she being the only performer bestowed with that kind of overt preferential treatment) do much to inspire awe. Though, at the very least, “Unchained Melody” is not as much of a botched attempt as Alanis Morissette singing “Last Christmas” in front of Elvis’ private plane, the Lisa Marie. A backdrop that did, however, offer more drama and production value to Morissette’s performance than Del Rey’s.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Meaning of Lana Del Rey Snubbing the Priscilla Soundtrack

    The Meaning of Lana Del Rey Snubbing the Priscilla Soundtrack

    Practically since the “dawn of Lana Del Rey,” a.k.a. the Tumblr era, there’s been that image circulating around that features her head Photoshopped (this was before AI manipulation as we currently know it, after all) over Priscilla Preseley’s. Specifically, the image of her wedding photo with Elvis. Where they’re sitting down and he’s holding her hand. The aesthetic connection between Del Rey and Beaulieu (lest anyone forget that was her maiden name) is not a coincidence. Like most of the iconography Del Rey has pulled from, it’s very calculated. Plus, it’s no secret that Del Rey is an Elvis stan, even writing a song called “Elvis” at one point that eventually served as part of the soundtrack for 2017’s The King. Then, of course, there was her 2012 declaration on “Body Electric” announcing, “Elvis is my daddy.” Lisa Marie would beg to differ. 

    In fact, Lisa Marie would beg to differ with a lot of things about the “Priscilla project” in general. Maybe not least of which is a soundtrack that doesn’t offer a contribution from Del Rey (or even her father, for that matter, as Sofia Coppola wasn’t able to buy the rights). But, more than that, she was vexed with Coppola (per some recently released emails) for “making” her father “seem” like a predator when it came to his pursuit of an extremely underaged Priscilla. Except, obviously, it goes without saying that Elvis was a predator; Coppola doesn’t need to do much work to make that translate on screen. Especially since she’s using Priscilla’s own 1985 biography, Elvis and Me, as the source material. Material that covers everything from being raped by Elvis (a scene that also shows up in the 1988 TV movie adaptation) while they were married to his rampant affairs, most famously with Ann-Margaret. The book conveyed such a toxic master-slave “bond” that it inspired Depeche Mode to write the beloved single, “Personal Jesus,” a song about “how Elvis was [Priscila’s] man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships. How everybody’s heart is like a god in some way.”

    If there’s one chanteuse who’s an expert in creating that effect (apart from Taylor Swift), it’s Lana Del Rey. Or at least it was…when we were in the era of Ultraviolence Lana Del Rey. This being the album wherein she freely filched the controversial Crystals’ line by annoucning, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss.” Priscilla knew that feeling too. But perhaps not as well as Elvis’ final “lady friend,” Ginger Alden, who wrote her own memoir detailing the propensity Elvis had for casual gunplay as a psychological mindfuck. Indeed, everything about Elvis screams “cult leader,” of the sort Del Rey was talking about on “Ultraviolence” when she sings, “‘Cause I’m your jazz singer and you’re my cult leader/I love you forever, I love you forever.” These lyrics are just as easily envisioned coming out of the mouth of Priscilla as she roams the empty halls of Graceland in the midst of yet another one of Elvis’ extended absences. In fact, it would be completely on-brand for Sofia Coppola to feature a scene just like this using that song (see also: her implementation of The Strokes’ “What Ever Happened?” in Marie Antoinette). But, for “whatever reason,” Del Rey’s inclusion on the Priscilla Soundtrack is nonexistent. Though it wasn’t for a lack of trying on the director’s part, who reached out at least twice to try to make something happen. 

    As Coppola told E! News, “We were hoping she could do a song for it, but it didn’t work out with the timing.” This, to be sure, is always a bullshit excuse for being able to get out of something you’re not all that passionate about. Nor was Del Rey all that passionate about attending the premiere of the film, which Coppola also invited her to. Even if she was rather late to the party on apprehending the internet’s long-standing connection between Lana and Priscilla. For, as Coppola admitted, “I’m learning that people really connect Lana Del Rey and Priscilla and I didn’t realize that, but I got a lot of requests with, ‘How is she gonna be a part of the movie?’” The answer, clearly, is that she’s not. And maybe part of her overt snubbing under the guise of “schedule conflicts” has something to do with her own vague awareness of the ick factor that comes with being associated with a narrative like this in 2023. Even if Del Rey isn’t exactly known for being anything other than tone deaf about what she calls “the culture.” 

    Nonetheless, something about her willfully missing the opportunity to be part of a pop culture moment so tailor-made for her “brand” appears to indicate that maybe she’s attempting, in her own small way, to move on from the “toxic romance” label that has followed her from the outset of her career. Just as it did Amy Winehouse. The singer who more truly embodies the “Priscilla spirit” not just in her beehive coif and constant application of heavy, garish eyeliner, but in her assessments of love. One such example being, when she said of The Crystals’ “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss),” “There’s only a certain percentage of people that would understand what that’s about. Most people would be like, ‘How dare you promote domestic violence?’ But to me, I’m like, ‘I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.’” So did Priscilla, and so, as she herself claims, does Lana. Yet copping to that understanding has become increasingly problematic (especially in the years that have gone by since Winehouse ruled the charts, and could more effortlessly bill this rhetoric as something like “beautiful and tragic”). Even for somebody who has typically been rather blasé about her largely anti-feminist body of work. Try as many might to position her “world-building” as an “authentic” exploration of what it is to be simply: a woman in a relationship. And a “fragile” one, at that.

    But fragility has never stopped a man from roughing a “dame” up, as Priscilla found out. Incidentally, “Ultraviolence,” the song from Del Rey’s canon that most reminds one of the Priscilla and Elvis dynamic (particularly as LDR dons a wedding dress in the accompanying video), is something she’s become more averse to in recent years, telling Pitchfork in 2017, “I don’t like it. I don’t. I don’t sing it. I sing ‘Ultraviolence,’ but I don’t sing that line anymore. Having someone be aggressive in a relationship was the only relationship I knew. I’m not going to say that that [lyric] was one hundred percent true, but I do feel comfortable saying what I was used to was a difficult, tumultuous relationship, and it wasn’t because of me. It didn’t come from my end.” Though a lot of internalized misogyny still does seem to come from (and out of) Del Rey’s end. However, this “schedule conflict” of hers with regard to participating in Priscilla might mean there’s hope for her “re-pivoting” away from such “predilections” in the future. Even if Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd isn’t necessarily a harbinger of that.

    Genna Rivieccio

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