There are isolated moments that sound like they could’ve been something more “Dark Paradise” and “Summertime Sadness” at least hint at the syrupy majesty of “Video Games.” But the whole thing is just a godawful mess. Neither does Del Rey’s persona with bonus tracks, the songs come off like 15 different variations on a drunk chick at the bar trying to convince someone to come home with her. Those tinny canned orchestral strings are on every song, and they don’t exactly find anything new to do. The tempos rest on weird cheap electro beats that sound too cheap and too expensive all at once. (On “National Anthem”: “Money is the anthem / God, you’re so handsome.” Yeek.) Most of the songs are just hideously under-written. Other songs try that same combination of sex and regret, but they do it with all the subtlety of a cinderblock to the face. Plenty of people were suspicious of Lana Del Rey from start, but those early songs have a trashy, glamorous power that makes them stand out starkly in the context of the rest of the album. It’s bad in ways that “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans” and even “Born To Die” in no way predicted. Unfortunately, with Born To Die, we’ll soon find out what might’ve happened if Apple had given us “Shadowboxer” and “Criminal,” and then the rest of Tidal had been fucking bullshit.īecause Born To Die is bad.
(Not to make light of eating disorders, but excessive skinniness was the ’90s equivalent to lip injections.) Both are unsteady live presences remember the noise surrounding Apple’s Roseland meltdown? And both made excellently languid fucked-out early singles that touched on ideas about obsession and sex-as-transaction. Both of them land a little too closely to the standards of beauty of their day. Superficially, they’re ridiculously similar. To put all the waves upon waves of Lana Del Rey backlashes and frontlashes into proper perspective, let’s all try a thought experiment: Imagine what might’ve happened if Fiona Apple, the closest cultural antecedent for LDR’s first few singles, had emerged in the blanket-coverage internet age.
0 kommentar(er)
