The May Jailer record, in its web form, is 15 tracks of airy finger-picking anti-folk. Vocals and guitar only. We can hear where current-Lana got her affinity for personal, affective lyrics. "My dreams are bigger than your junky pride," she coos defiantly in "Pride." There's even a song about how she and her momma don't get along--aptly, "My Momma." It's all appropriately confessional: Lana likely was a teen writing these songs, and her observations of adolescence seem charmingly mature.
The 2010 album that was pulled from iTunes (Lana has since come out to say that she's "not ashamed" of these songs, as it was previously presumed by her critics, and that it would be re-released this summer!),* Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant*, is another series of confessional stories that segue to current-Lana. There's more instrumentation and production value, albeit super low-budget, and the lyrics are more abstract. It's here that we see the roots of her now-signature Hollywood vampish sexuality: songs like "Mermaid Motel" are shrouded in a Coney Island cigar-lounge haze (sample lyric: "You call me sunshine/ You say take it off"), while "Little Girls" offers a, um.... creepier? take on femme-fatale noir ("C'mon, you know you like little girls"/ "You can be my daddy").
And now at current-Lana LP, Born to Die, we have a richly orchestrated array of dark tales about dangerous, down-and-out romance. As her first major release on Interscope Records, it's been widely dismissed as derivative (Like, um: hello, what art isn't derivative in the history of ever?) and dubbed as artificial as its creator. And this is my favorite album of the three; I see it more as a progression from where she's come from than a label-engineered regression. I find much of the record hauntingly beautiful, and if you listen to the other two albums before this one, the progression to Born to Die isn't unfathomable.
And assuming artifice were present on this album and in Lana's constantly changing image, isn't that kind of the whole deal with pop music? Aren't all of our current pop stars selling something, playing pretend? Don't all of them have backstories?
All of the above considered, no one is more or less sketchy than anyone else, and in pop music, everybody's got their somethin'. So why do we charge Lana Del Rey for artificiality when that's the name of the game, especially as one pursues major label success, as she has? Regardless, we as a culture still buy whatever's selling, even if that means "controversy," or stuff leaked to the internet, presumably recorded in a teenage girl's bedroom.
What do you guys think of Lana Del Rey? Will you be listening to her pre-Born to Die records? What's the big fuss over, anyway? Discuss, and don't hold back.
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