Interscope
For those who have no idea who Lana Del Rey is, or have never heard of her music, you should.
The cover art makes me want to turn another cheek. She stands stern with fixed eyes taking a step forward with a housewife-like hairstyle while wearing a white button up. However, do not judge this album by its cover.
Her popular single, “Born to Die” deserves no popularity at all. I started the song and after a minute and a half I questioned why I was listening to this. It was a rather dull track for something so popular. “Off of the Races” is a track that contains a series of hiccups of the suffix “-ets.”
For example, in the chorus, the word scarlet and starlet are sung with the suffix having the most emphasis. It’s sung an octave higher than the prefix of the word. “I’m your little scarlet/Starlet/Singing in the garden.” It makes me want to finish the line with “harlot.” The song is about love and how she’ll love her man forever. It was a sweet sound of romance that was shot down by the chorus. I liked everything about the song up until that point.
Her singing is fairly authentic, however. I did find a decent track I didn’t get bored by. In the song “Dark Paradise” her voice reminds me of an attempt to sound like Florence Welch, lead singer from Florence and the Machine. It could be because of the spiced up background vocals and the drums that remind me of resilient determination. It is the kind of song you hear in a romantic movie, when the guy realizes he let the girl of his dreams go, but then chases her to the airport before she leaves him forever.
I guess the lyrics can also support the vivid imagery that plays in my head, “It’s like a dark paradise/No one compares to you/I’m scared that you won’t be waiting on the other side.” She means the other side of the terminal, right? Because if so, that is the most heart wrenching set of words I have read. Not really. But, you get the idea; love sucks.
Lana Del Rey straddles the fence here. I don’t know if I completely hate her because that’s the mainstream thing to do or if I love her because whoever wrote the song paints vivid images in my head. I would recommend listening to this album just for the sake of finding out who she is.
