There has been much speculation as to exactly when Del Rey teamed up with her current label Interscope and how much influence their savvy marketers might have put into her original emergence. People were suspicious of the way Grant's failed album, and all her social media websites, appeared to have been scrubbed from the internet just before Del Rey appeared. Rather than being an outsider struggling for recognition, Del Rey is in fact the daughter of a millionaire father who has backed her career. Her stage name was chosen by her management. A few critics began to wonder if, far from being some organic wunderkind, the transformation from Grant to Del Rey had been planned all along.
She won the Next Big Thing prize at the Q awards. Del Rey's few live gigs suddenly sold out. The follow-up, Blue Jeans, with a similar feel, netted 6 million views. It currently has a staggering 20 million views on YouTube. Del Rey's amazing voice crooned the haunting song against a backdrop of grainy out-takes of home movies and Hollywood scenes. When Video Games first went viral it became an underground sensation praised for its authentic feel. Some people feel victims of an immense confidence trick.
That revelation has made Grant/Del Rey one of the most controversial figures to emerge in US music for years. Of course, Lana Del Rey and Lizzy Grant are the same person. "It's a place that has inspired so many of my videos and influenced a lot of my visuals," she said through a mouth now framed by pouting, bee-stung lips. In an interview recently shot poolside at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, Del Rey explained her attraction to the notorious celebrity haunt. She married her music to a mysterious image, self-styled as a "gangster Nancy Sinatra", that paid homage to 1960s fashions and seedy showbiz glamour. After first appearing on the internet last year with an apparently home-produced video of a song called Video Games, she became a cult hit. Her soaring vocals and melodies, reflecting genres as diverse as hip hop and indie music, have won millions of fans. It is over-the-top and wildly eccentric.īut that suits Del Rey's sound. By the end of the video, she is covered in blood, wearing only a red bra. The short film begins with her posing half-naked with a tattooed, shirtless man in front of the stars and stripes, then shows her sitting on a throne in a figure-hugging white dress flanked by two tigers. The video for her new song, provocatively called Born to Die, is slick and lavishly produced. And she can hardly complain about the subject matter: she'd been talking about her icons all dying young, she named her debut album Born to Die and had spent much of the 50 minutes previous to this point telling me how miserable she was.Del Rey's image is nothing like Grant's.
It's not pleasant asking a pop star if she thinks the idea of dying young herself is attractive – it's a dark question, but it's not a leading one. As for the rather vague “sinister ambitions” she claims I had – well, my colleagues sadly refused to comment on how sinister I am, but they were all adamant that I'm “not in the slightest bit ambitious”. I was not “masked” as a fan, I genuinely like her music and really liked her too – her life story is fascinating, she was refreshingly open when answering even the most difficult question and she seemed completely in love with music. She may well have not wanted to do the interview but it certainly didn't seem like it – she was delightful company for the 70 minutes we spent talking, and was happy to continue over the allotted time when the PR knocked on the door, an hour in, and asked how we were getting on.
Cue an army of enraged Lana Del Rey fans bombarding my Twitter feed with constructive criticism geared towards helping me improve my writing (“drink shit” “I will fly to England and hurt you”) and posting deranged abuse on my Instagram page underneath – bizarrely – a picture showing the current league standings of my five-a-side football team (terribly disrespectful to the orange and maroon shirt of DisOrient FC, I'm sure you all agree, although given that we lost 10-3 to Blighty Coffee on Tuesday it might just be the kick up the arse we all need).īesides the fact Lana doesn't remember who actually interviewed her, there are a number of things about her statement that sound a bit iffy to me.
0 kommentar(er)
