In Defense of Lana Del Rey
It’s been a moment since I’ve blogged. I stepped away from blogging because my last post received considerable backlash. I recognize now how important it is to continue to speak out about things about which you are passionate, so I’m back to talk about something that is really important to me. Let’s discuss music and culture.
For those who haven’t yet heard, Lana Del Rey posted something that many have taken to be incendiary on her Instagram page on Thursday. You can find the post here, but I also have it transcribed below:
Question for the culture:
Now that Doja Cat, Ariana [Grande], Camila [Cabello], Cardi B, Kehlani, and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating, etc. – can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money – or whatever I want – without being crucified or saying that I’m glamorizing abuse??????
Im fed up with female writers and alt singers saying that I glamorize abuse when in reality I’m just a glamorous person singing about the realities of what we are all now seeing are very prevalent emotionally abusive relationships all over the world.
With all of the topics women are finally allowed to explore I just want to say over the last ten years I think it’s pathetic that my minor lyrical exploration detailing my sometimes submissive or passive roles in my relationships has often made people say Ive set women back hundreds of years.
Let this be clear, I’m not not a feminist – but there has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me – the kind of woman who says no but men hear yes – the kind who are slated mercilessly for being their authentic, delicate selves, The kind of women who get their own stories and voices taken away from them by stronger women or by men who hate women.
I’ve been honest and optimistic about the challenging relationships I’ve had.
News flash! That’s just how it is for many women.
And that was sadly my experience up until the point that those records were made. So I just want to say it’s been a long 10 years of bullshit reviews up until recently and I’ve learned a lot from them
but I also feel it really paved the way for other women to stop ‘putting on a happy face’ and to just be able to say whatever the hell they wanted to in their music –
unlike my experience where if I even expressed a note of sadness in my first two records I was deemed literally hysterical as though it was literally the 1920s
Anyways none of this has anything to do about much but
I’ll be detailing some of my feelings in my next two books of poetry (mostly the second one) with Simon and Schuster. Yes I’m still making personal reparations with the proceeds of the book to my choice of Native American foundations which I’m very happy about. And I’m sure there will be tinges of what I’ve been pondering in my new album that comes out September 5th.
Thanks for reading
Happy quarantining
I will be upfront about the fact that I am a fan and admirer of Lana Del Rey (born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant). Some may see this as something that could stand in the way of evenhandedly addressing this situation. But I see myself as uniquely positioned to give an account of what Grant is talking about in her post, as I have followed her career very closely since 2011. I would be surprised if there exists some criticism of Grant that I haven’t heard before.
This post proceeds in three sections. First, I will offer a sketch of what I take to be the trajectory of Grant’s music and public persona since the beginning of her career as Lana Del Rey. I will be doing a lot of editorializing here, but nonetheless think that, as somebody who has followed her music and career closely, I am able to offer some insight about the ways in which Grant has branded and rebranded herself as a musical artist. Then, I will talk about some scandals that Grant has run into over the course of her career to illustrate some of the forces that were at play in profoundly changing Lana del Rey. In this section, I will also explain why I believe these scandals for the most part attracted undeserved negative attention. Finally, I conclude by examining the relationship between Grant’s past, post, and panners in the remaining section of this piece. I ultimately hope to shine light on the importance of at the very least respecting Grant’s work, and to show how our culture refuses to respect the work of Grant in particular for what seem to be extremely arbitrary reasons.
From “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra” to Mainstream Collaborator
Prior to becoming Lana Del Rey, Elizabeth Grant performed as Lizzy Grant, Lana Rey Del Mar, Sparkle Jump Rope Queen, May Jailer, and Lana Del Ray. This piece, however, is concerned with making sense of Lana Del Rey’s rise to prominence and evolution. So I will catalogue, to the best of my ability, the twists and turns that characterize Lana Del Rey’s music by beginning with her first, notoriously wistful single entitled “Video Games” and showing how she became the artist who would end up putting out a collaboration with former Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus and the reigning princess of pop, Ariana Grande, entitled “Don’t Call Me Angel.”
“Video Games” (2011)
Those who were even only somewhat plugged into the pop culture machine in 2012 will remember what people had to say about Lana Del Rey’s performances of “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans” on Saturday Night Live even if they don’t remember the songs themselves. Most notably, Kristen Wiig impersonated Grant on SNL only weeks after she performed on the show, portraying the artist who had just recently released her first studio-length album as “stiff, distant, and weird.” Entertainment Weekly asked their readers if Lana Del Rey was the “worst SNL musical guest of all time.” Vocally, neither performance was strong for the singer-songwriter. But beyond that, I think Grant’s musical stylings were not the kind that SNL viewers would be interested in to begin with.
“Video Games,” in particular, is a record that, from its start, is littered with the chimes of a distant bell-tower, emotive piano chords, weepy strings, and the melodramatic pluckings of a harp. It’s a cinematic love ballad in which Grant professes her undying love for a man who is lovable even when he’s just lounging around, drinking beer, and playing video games: “it’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you – everything I do. I tell you all the time – heaven is a place on earth with you. Tell me all the things you want to do. I heard that you like the bad girls. Honey, is that true?” She goes on to remark that others “say the world was built for two” and that life is “only worth living if somebody is loving you.”
Despite its overly saccharine, gushy character, the single was first released in 2011 to great reception, particularly from Grant’s fanbase in Europe. Although it never made it onto the Billboard Top 100 in the United States, it did reach top-10-status in many European countries. I think this is due in part to the fact that Grant’s writing was unique. She did not shy away from characterizing love as an infinitely vulnerable, codependent enterprise where she, as a woman in love, wanted to do everything she possibly could to bring her man happiness.
Sonically, the record is unapologetically cinematic in a way that the music of 2011 was not. Singles that topped the Billboard Top 100 at the end of 2011 included songs like Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” and Katy Perry’s “Firework.” All of these songs, though very different from one another in a great many ways, are united by the fact that they are upbeat, anthem-type songs that were emblematic of the energetic interests of the popular culture. “Video Games,” on the other hand, is a song that sounds like it is under the influence of Ambien – it weighs heavily on its listeners and is dreamily depressing.
All in all, Lana Del Rey established herself as an out-of-the-box artist with weird thematic interests and musical tendencies after releasing “Video Games” in 2011. This reputation would only become more fitting for her as time went on.
Born to Die (2012), or “The Start of Hollywood Sadcore”
Weeks after her publicly-scorned SNL performance, Elizabeth Grant released her first full-length studio album as Lana Del Rey entitled Born to Die. The album cover art depicts Grant gazing piercingly at her viewer while standing in front of a pickup truck, hair and makeup done immaculately. And on the cover of this album, she does not smile – and you understand why the more you listen to it.
The album’s title track tells a story about a fiery love between two lovers whose reckless behavior destines them to die young. The record is string-heavy, which, at this time in Grant’s musical career, is considered signature Lana Del Rey. But there is something included in this track that was absent from “Video Games”: a strong hip-hop influence. This influence becomes more apparent in the second track on the album, “Off to the Races,” where Lana Del Rey showcases her ability to cutesily flow over cinematic beats in a half-singing-half-rapping kind of way: “And I’m off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers chasing me all over town ‘cause he knows I’m wasted, facing time at Riker’s Island and I won’t get out.” This song oozes so much hip-hop potential, in fact, that Joe Budden sampled the track in his “Off 2 The Races.”
Lana Del Rey continues to try her hand at rap-singing in other tracks, too – tracks like “This Is What Makes Us Girls” and her cult classic, “National Anthem.” In the latter record, she takes her commitment to hip-hop so far as to entertain the respect for hustling and money-making which characterizes the genre: “Money is the anthem of success so before we go out, what’s your address?” But even when she doesn’t rap, one can tell that Elizabeth Grant is deeply inspired by hip-hop music because her music from Born to Die, though laden with illustrious musical instrumentation that is characteristic of orchestral pieces, is almost always underlaid by trappy beats. Examples include the chorus of her criminally underrated “Radio” and “Diet Mountain Dew.” Many YouTubers (like this one) who have reaction channels on the platform have reacted to Born to Die for the first time and have commented on how central hip-hop seems to be to her music.
Nonetheless, Born to Die is thematically dreary. “Dark Paradise” relates the inner monologue of a woman who obsesses over the death of her beloved and simply cannot move on, “Carmen” is the story of the plight of a young sex worker, and “Summertime Sadness” (which would go on to be made into a remix that would peak at #6 on the Billboard Top 100) is an ode to a friend of Grant who committed suicide in the summer. After the success of Born to Die, which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 in February of 2012, Lana del Rey established herself as a musical artist who delicately threaded together somber thematics, poetic and memorable lyricism, orchestral instrumentation, and heavy beats to create a distinctive sound and persona.
But there was one other trait people came to associate with the singer: glamor. Her hair was always pressed like a pin-up girl’s, she wore extravagant accessories like pearls or diamonds regularly, and she was almost always seen wearing sultry winged liner on her doe eyes. Many of the lyrics to her songs from Born to Die harken to the 50’s and 60’s, as in “Off to the Races” (references Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, published in 1955) and in “Body Electric” (“Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend,” a lyric found on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition), which people take, in tandem with her seductive singing voice, as an invitation to compare her with the Hollywood starlets of that time – Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn. Even Grant’s stage name, Lana Del Rey, feels reminiscent of old-school Hollywood.
Grant, during this time, called herself a “self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra,” which seems somewhat appropriate no matter how problematic. She forged a unique path for herself where she was able to make a distinctive contribution to the growing genre of sadcore music by masterfully working breezy beats into her discography while posturing as a contemporary Hollywood starlet. Lana Del Rey marks the beginning of, and perhaps solely comprises the only extant version of, Hollywood sadcore with the release of Born to Die.
THE PARADISE EP And Born to Die: The Paradise Edition
Shortly after the release of Born to Die, Grant released an EP entitled Paradise. The few tracks on this EP would go on to be included in a re-release of the Born to Die album as Born to Die: The Paradise Edition. For the most part, Paradise is a natural extension of Born to Die – sonically and thematically. What marks Paradise, however, is its provocative lyricism. Lana Del Rey is notorious for having penned lyrics like “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola” (“Cola”) and “In the land of gods and monsters, I was an angel looking to fucked hard” (“Gods and Monsters”). In this EP, Grant also spotlights a thematic obsession with older men: “You can be my full time, daddy” (“Ride”), “Just like a baby, spin me ‘round like a child” (“American”), “Let me put on a show for you, daddy” (“Yayo”). This furthers Grant’s exploration of the complex relationship that exists between submissiveness, fragility, femininity, and love. What does it mean to be in love with somebody who never gives? How do our twisted desires relate to character traits they stem from? Is co-dependence consistent with human happiness? These are some of the questions Lana Del Rey sets out to answer in Born to Die: The Paradise Edition.
“Young and Beautiful” (2013)
Anybody who owned a radio in 2013 knows about Lana del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful,” which was Grant’s contribution to the Great Gatsby soundtrack that peaked at #22 on the Billboard Top 100 in 2013. Sonically, the song abandons Grant’s previous reverence for hip-hop and instead leans into her fascination with angelic string instrumentation and resonant timpani drums. Lyrically, Grant pontificates about the anxiety that young people have about maintaining love even when their superficial beauty fades over time – a theme that is deeply reminiscent of Born to Die. And visually, the “Young and Beautiful” music video continues to show us how Lana del Rey was importantly glamorous: she dons Swarovski crystal hoop earrings the size of a fist, blood-red lipstick, and two tear-shaped gemstones beneath her eyes.
Ultraviolence (2014), or “The Era of ‘Teen Mom Suicide Pact Music’”
Seeing as how Grant received acclaim for contemplating things that, on any reasonable interpretation, are simply dreadful, – like heartbreak, obsession, suicide, and mortality – it only seems fitting that she would produce a sophomore record that explores these themes in greater detail. But, as every artist does, she would have to do so within bounds she set for herself by branding herself in the way she did while also stepping outside of those bounds enough so as not to be deemed unoriginal and repetitive.
Grant released Ultraviolence in the summer of 2014, and this record is arguably the reason that she developed a reputation for being an angsty, cigarette-smoking, depressing anti-pop-star. After the release of Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey was titled “pop’s darkest and most polarizing mainstream star.” During this time, she gave an interview with the Guardian where she boldly told her interviewer, “I wish I was dead already.” She said this while discussing the premature deaths of 27 Club members like Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain. As shocking as this may seem to somebody who hasn’t listened to Ultraviolence, this all is characteristically Lana to the person who has consumed the sumptuous meal that is Lana Del Rey’s sophomore studio album.
The album opens with “Cruel World,” an almost seven-minute-long introduction that swells with intoxicating reverb and dolorous vocal-layering. From the get-go, Grant wants us to know that hip-hop is no longer part and parcel to her brand. Lana Del Rey can certainly rap, but she doesn’t have to; she can also wail over distorted, alt rock instrumentation. She abandoned hip-hop beats for psychedelic guitar licks and garage band drums. We see this in every track on the album, but especially in songs like “West Coast” and “Pretty When You Cry,” the second of which culminates in an epic guitar solo that is as weepy and emotive as the lyrics of the song itself: “All the pretty stars shine for you, my love. Am I the girl that you dream of? All those little times you said that I'm your girl. You make me feel like your whole world.”
These lyrics are illustrative of the fact that, even if she has undergone an evolution sonically, Lana Del Rey has clung to her fascination with dependency, heartbreak, and melancholy. Ultraviolence’s title and title track are evocative of Anthony Burgess’s novel and Stanley Kubrick’s film, A Clockwork Orange, where the term “ultra-violence” is used to classify a violent act that is committed simply for the thrill. In this track, Grant discloses details of a love infected by domestic violence: “Jim raised me up. He hurt me but it felt like true love. Jim taught me that loving him was never enough.” Presumably, we as listeners are to gather that Jim would abuse the character that Del Rey is portraying for no good reason, and she could not resist staying in love with him. Seeing as how Burgess’s novel was published in 1962 and Kubrick’s film released in 1972, it is clear that Grant is interested still in situating herself somewhere in times past.
This preoccupation with any-time-before-now is present elsewhere on the record, too. In “Brooklyn Baby,” Grant sings about beatnik poetry and Lou Reed, while in “Sad Girl,” she references Bonnie & Clyde. The whole album is steeped in nostalgia, whether it is sonically or lyrically. But it is more precisely steeped in nostalgia for a past that lacks the pleasant reminiscence characteristic of most nostalgia. In what I take to be the album’s most poignant and emotional track, “Old Money” (which interpolates a melody from “A Time For Us” from Romeo & Juliet), Grant expresses nothing but whole-hearted, unwavering dependence upon a man who clearly is not interested in her: “But if you send for me, you know I’ll come. And if you call for me, you know I’ll run. I’ll run to you, I’ll run to you, I’ll run, run, run.” It’s tracks like these from the Ultraviolence era of Lana Del Rey’s career that give her critics ammunition to ridicule and belittle her music as “teen mom suicide pact music.”
Honeymoon (2015), or “The Experiment”
Fourteen months after the release of Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey releases Honeymoon, a record that, to my ear, could not be any more different from Ultraviolence than it is. None of the tracks on the album preserve the integrity of the alternative/indie rock sound that was meticulously cultivated in Ultraviolence. In fact, it seems as though Grant throws sonic cohesion to the wind as she puts together the track listing for Honeymoon. (This is not meant to be read as a criticism of this album. Honeymoon is, at times, my favorite Lana Del Rey record to listen to. I merely say this to show how different Honeymoon is from Ultraviolence).
Some songs, like the album’s title track and “The Blackest Day,” are reminiscent of the stringsy instrumentation from Grant’s Born to Die era. Other songs appear to function as testaments to Grant’s reverence for jazz music and the role that it has played in shaping her musical sensibilities, as in the case of “Terrence Loves You” and "Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which is a cover of the song made popular by Nina Simone. But there are some tracks that explore uncharted territory for Lana Del Rey. Particularly, songs like “Art Deco,” “Freak,” and “High by the Beach” signify the beginnings of Grant’s inclusion of synthesized, electronic instrumentation in her discography.
Honeymoon does not only signify a change in the sonic character of Grant’s music, but also in the thematic interests which it explores. Or more precisely, Lana Del Rey explores the themes that have always interested her in a manner that is more superficial and palatable than in her past projects. When she expresses love for a love interest in the song “24,” Grant articulates nothing like the feelings of irrevocable and destructive dependence that she did in Born to Die or in Ultraviolence: “There's only 24 hours and that's not enough to lie like you lie or love like you love.” In fact, there are some tracks, like “Music To Watch Boys To,” in which she is concerned with appreciating the men she is infatuated with at a remove from the trauma they have caused her: “I like you a lot. Putting on my music while I'm watching the boys…Playing their guitars, only one of my toys.”
When Grant does get despairingly contemplative on this album, she does not discuss the trials of love in the way she was previously interested in doing so. Rather than richly detailing the interiority of a fragile woman’s psyche, Grant appeals to an impactful (albeit somewhat obvious) analogy that superficially draws parallels between love and religious worship: “You’re my religion, you’re how I’m living…When I’m down on my knees, you’re how I pray.” Sometimes, the deepest cuts on Honeymoon have nothing at all to do with love and vulnerability, as is the case with “God Knows I Tried.” In this track, Grant intimates the general hardships she has endured as a woman in the music industry, and by the end of the song she implores God to “let there be light” in her life.
Despite these drastic sonic and thematic shifts in her music that took place with the release of Honeymoon, Lana Del Rey was able to preserve an atmospheric quality to her work that marked it as her own. And because of her careful branding and artistry, Honeymoon peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 in October of 2015.
Lust for Life (2017), or “The Great Rebranding”
In July of 2017, Grant dropped her fourth full-length studio album entitled Lust for Life. In the cover art for the album, you will find Lana Del Rey standing in front of the very same pickup truck that is pictured in all of her other album covers – but this time, she is smiling. She is in a white dress, with flowers in her hair. Anybody who was familiar with Lana Del Rey’s work up until this point in her career would have probably expected that there would be a significant tonal shift in her music at this point, especially since Honeymoon signified the beginnings of a move away from sadcore music with some of its tracks.
While Born to Die and Ultraviolence are decidedly pessimistic in the outlook they portrayed and Honeymoon is an ambivalent project that at some times exudes strength but at others embraces weakness, Lust for Life is a decidedly optimistic and hopeful project. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t, at times, explore unpleasant emotional states. Indeed, Grant still pines for love in tracks like “13 Beaches” and “Tomorrow Never Came.” And she continues to detail her feelings about men (though, from a standpoint of frustration rather than one of adulation) in tracks like “Cherry” and “In My Feelings.” But she changes her style in ways that I think make it fitting to refer to Lust for Life as Lana Del Rey’s great rebranding moment.
First, Lust for Life is political in ways that Born to Die, Ultraviolence, and Honeymoon simply are not. Grant’s earlier works are written from a first-person perspective and explore hardships experienced by particular individuals. Whether she is writing from the perspective of a character or from her own perspective is at times unclear, but she is nonetheless a staunch individualist when it comes to the subject matter of her earlier music. She answers questions like, “What does it feel like to experience the death of your beloved?” and “How does it feel to be trapped in abusive relationship?” In Lust for Life, however, Grant also answers questions like, “How do we, as a society, prepare ourselves for and instantiate meaningful social change?” (“Change”) and “What is to come of America in the midst of all this political change surrounding us?” (“When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing”). At this point in her career, Grant’s music is no longer singularly concerned with the plight of the individual, but has broadened its scope to consider how music might address problems that plague society.
Just as Grant steps outside of herself in the subject matter of her music, so too does she step outside of herself in the songs themselves. Lust for Life is the first album where Lana Del Rey includes other featured artists on her tracks, and she decides to include five. Abel Tesfaye (better known by his stage name, The Weekend) features on the album’s title track, A$AP Rocky features on “Groupie Love” and “Summer Bummer” (the latter of which Playboi Carti also features on), Stevie Nicks duets with Lana on “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems,” and Sean Lennon (yes, that’s John Lennon’s son) features on the track “Tomorrow Never Came.”
All of these collaborations contributed to the distinctive tone of the album as compared to Grant’s other records. The songs on which A$AP featured have much more energy in them than songs you would find on, say, Ultraviolence. And songs like “Lust for Life” are uncharacteristically optimistic for Lana Del Rey: “'Cause we're the masters of our own fate. We're the captains of our own souls…And a lust for life keeps us alive.” But even on tracks where other artists are not featured, Grant communicates hopefulness if not downright cheerfulness through her music. The album opens with “Love,” which blissfully celebrates being “young and in love” and closes with “Get Free,” an easy bop in which Grant repeatedly tells her listener that she wants to move “out of the black” and “into the blue.”
While all of this may read like Lana Del Rey in some way “sold out” with the release of Lust for Life, she did not. This is evident in the way that she preserved the sonic integrity of all the sounds she has tinkered with over the course of her musical career. On a single album, she melded together in some cohesive manner the sounds we all came to love from Born to Die, Ultraviolence, and Honeymoon alike. The trappy beats of “Cherry” and “Summer Bummer” are reminiscent of the hip-hop influences present in Born to Die; “Heroin” and “White Mustang” call to mind the trippy production from Ultraviolence; and songs like “Change” remind the avid Lana fans of the stripped-down opening track of Honeymoon. With Lust for Life, Grant was able to change what she was saying without drastically changing how she was saying it. And this resulted in the album peaking at #1 on the Billboard Top 200, and being nominated for a Grammy for best pop vocal album (the first Grammy nomination Grant ever received for a full-length studio album).
NFR (2019)
Grant’s fifth full-length studio album, Norman Fucking Rockwell (NFR), shows us that she misses something about her older work, because we see a return to interiority and vulnerability in her music. She has no features on this album and makes no sort of obviously political statement in the way she did on Lust for Life. In “Fuck it I love you,” Grant sings about finally admitting that she is in love with somebody whose touch she constantly craves. In “Love song,” she tells a lover something that is just so quintessentially Lana Del Rey: “You know that I’d just die to make you proud.” And in “Cinnamon Girl,” we hear dismalness and hopelessness of the kind that we once heard in Born to Die and Ultraviolence: There's things I wanna say to you, but I'll just let you leave. Like, ‘if you hold me without hurting me, you'll be the first who ever did.’ There's things I wanna talk about, but better not to keep. Like, ‘if you hold me without hurting me, you'll be the first who ever did.’” “How to disappear” and “Happiness is a butterfly” are characteristically wistful tracks, too.
Still, Grant does not make a full return to exploring only those thematic interests present in Born to Die and Ultraviolence. She remains pissed off with men in the spirit of Lust for Life, as in NFR’s title track, which opens with the iconic – “Goddamn man-child, you fucked me so good I almost said, ‘I love you.’” And sometimes on NFR, Grant makes a point of showing that she is a strong woman who is capable of leading a man (“Mariner’s Apartment Complex,” “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – and i have it”). The album also houses a couple of vibesy, easy-listening tracks like “Venice Bitch” and “Doin’ Time” (a cover of Sublime’s hit).
Despite being tonally schizophrenic in some ways, NFR offers us sonic cohesion that has been absent from Lana Del Rey’s discography since Ultraviolence. Guitars, pianos, drums, and extravagant, layered vocals culminate in a sound that is nothing but West Coast road trip. Sometimes the instrumentation is bluesy, other times it is beachy, and other times still it is stripped-down and ballad-esque; nonetheless, it all gels together and makes sense in the context of NFR as a cohesive whole. It is perhaps partially because Grant went back to her roots while crafting NFR that it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Top 200 and was nominated for 2 Grammys.
“Don’t Call Me Angel” with Ariana Grande & Miley Cyrus
Most recently, Lana Del Rey collaborated with Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus on a song called “Don’t Call Me Angel” for the Charlie’s Angel soundtrack in September of 2019. Even though it is branded as a sassy pop song, Grant’s contribution to the track is paradigmatically Lana Del Rey: sultry, sensuous, and slow-tempo. With this collaboration, we see Grant’s desire to be a part of the musical community.
A “Problematic” Past
Somebody could look at the timeline I just laid out of Lana Del Rey’s musical career and reasonably believe that it follows some kind of natural progression that she likely very much wanted to follow. Her work is at first ominous, then decidedly dark, slightly more optimistic, hopeful, and has – most recently – modestly explored some topics that are not obviously “safe” from the culture’s perspective. It makes sense to think that Grant deliberately charted this course, to tell a story with a complex, rich narrative arch that signifies both growth in her personal life and in her art. However, this neglects the role that critical reception plays in altering an artist’s relationship to her art.
There are at least two kinds of critical reception one can receive as an artist: sensibility-centered criticism and character-centered criticism. The former kind of criticism involves remarking on, in the case of music, things like what about the music sounds nice, what instrumentation is successful or unsuccessful in a record, or anything that has to do with the aesthetic merits of a song or album. When I say that Lana Del Rey has, over time, learned how to master the art of vocal layering, I am giving a sensibility-centered criticism of her work. Character-centered criticisms, on the other hand, focus on the ethical implications of a work of art. When I say that Lana Del Rey’s music is problematic because of certain themes it explores, I am giving a character-centered criticism of her work. While both of these kinds of criticism can certainly have an effect on the manner in which an artist will create art, I think it is relatively uncontroversial to assume that successful character-centered criticisms are more likely to change art over time. This is because character-centered criticisms often implicate the reputation of the artist as a person rather than as a mere content creator, which often motivates an artist to change her art so as to save face.
Certainly, character-centered criticisms of artistic works can be necessary. If somebody is using music to galvanize people to act violently, for example, we ought to critique their music on these grounds. However, some kinds of character-centered criticisms are inappropriate in that they identify a problem with an artist’s art that, in fact, does not exist. Consider, for example, some female musician from the 1940’s or 50’s who used her music to speak to other women and discourage them from unquestioningly conforming to gender roles. If a music critic were to lambast this musician for using her art in this way and suggesting that because she does this she exhibits a crucial character flaw, we would reject that his character-centered criticism was sound. Still, even if it is not sound, his criticism will likely affect the way the artist produces art later in her career because she will want to speak to people through her music inasmuch as she can.
I am going to detail some of the character-centered criticisms that people have levied against Lana Del Rey over the course of her musical career. I will show to the best of my ability why I think they are inappropriate. Then I will suggest that perhaps these criticisms have wrongfully restricted Lana Del Rey’s autonomy as an artist. This is particularly worrisome since she is female in a male-dominated industry.
Cultural Appropriation
“RIDE” (2012)
In 2012, Lana Del Rey released a video for a single from her Paradise EP (an EP that would later be re-released as part of the Born to Die: the Paradise Edition LP) called “Ride.” The music video is a ten-minute-long short film that opens with illustrious instrumentation and a beautiful monologue which is followed by the song “Ride” accompanied with clips of the life of a woman that Lana Del Rey is portraying. The music video closes, as it begins, with spoken word poetry and music. For what it’s worth, this is probably the most beautiful music video I have ever seen.
Many had a problem with the video, however, because at one point the character Grant portrays wears a Native American headdress. This, to Grant’s critics, is supposedly an instance of cultural appropriation, wherein Grant co-opted an aspect of Native American culture for the sake of capitalizing on it for personal gain with no view to the significance of the cultural relic. This criticism of Grant, however, fails on two counts. First, the character that Grant plays in the music video does not make the best life choices. She links up with members of a biker gang, has public sex, gets intoxicated often, and has a short temper. That she wears a Native American headdress is not to be seen as some kind of endorsement of the act; in fact, one may not be far-gone to believe that Grant hoped to satirize her character’s carelessness. Second, Lana Del Rey is demonstrably compassionate toward Native Americans and those political causes that are generally important to them. Recently, for example, she has donated proceeds from her spoken-word poetry sales to help preserve the rights of Native Americans or to help keep their land intact.
Tropico (2013)
Tropico is a 2013 concept film that Lana Del Rey released as a way to promote some of her music – specifically, it includes “Body Electric,” “Gods and Monsters,” and “Bel Air.” Some have remarked that Grant made reference to inappropriate stereotypes of Latin American gangsters. She was taken to task by this author at Jezebel for “bearing many of the stylistic hallmarks associated with Latino gangster culture (right down to the teardrop tattoo).” But anybody who has watched Tropico knows that every element constituting it was chosen with care. There are cultural, artistic, and political references strewn about the film, which still generates discussion amongst Lana Del Rey fanatics about the meaning that is imparted onto the film with every reference to a cultural, artistic, or political icon. So we should consider that Grant may either have chosen to represent what appear to be stylistic hallmarks associated with Latino gangster culture but actually are not, or to represent those stylistic hallmarks for good reasons that enhance our understanding of Tropico as a work of art. This does not appear to be the kind of callous cultural appropriation that we see by music artists of the early 2000s.
Glamorizing Sadness, Abuse, & Daddy Issues
The Born to Die Era
During this era in Grant’s career, the artist explored many dark themes in her music. She explored lyrically what it is to be trapped in unhealthy patterns of behavior – whether it’s pining for older, aloof men, abusing drugs, or self-harm. She also did not shy away from expressing the extent to which she finds herself reliant upon other men for her happiness. The thought of being without a man sometimes involved a lyrical exploration of suicide, and the role that killing oneself could play in quelling heartbreak as a form of euthanasia. While she sings about issues that are so dark and twisted, Grant’s critics note that she is always done up to the nines, and ultimately unaffected by what she is singing about. At live performances, she coolly pulls out a cigarette and takes a deep drag in the middle of her set as she sings about going so far as to destroy herself for a love interest.
Critics of Lana Del Rey have noticed this juxtaposition between the thematic interests of her earlier music and the general disaffection of her public persona, and have claimed that this juxtaposition is evidence that speaks to her glamorization of sadness and daddy issues. But what does it mean to “glamorize” these things? Does it mean that an artist is making sadness seem prettier than it really is? If this is what it means to glamorize sadness, then doesn’t every successful pop ballad do this? Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away” (which peaked at #3 on the Billboard Top 100), for example, talks about the pain of losing your true love and hoping to reunite with them “in another life.” Regardless of whether you are a Katy Perry fan, it is hard to argue that the song is very touching and, many would argue, beautiful. The instrumentation is affective, ethereal, and unexpectedly percussive. Perry’s voice soars over the conclusion of the song and really tugs at the heartstrings. She transforms a concept that is indubitably sad into art that is gut-wrenchingly beautiful. But does the mere act of making sadness seem prettier than it really is in this way constitute the glamorization of sadness? And if so, would people really object to artists glamorizing sadness?
The Ultraviolence Era
Some might argue, however, that to glamorize something is not only to make it seem prettier than it is, but it is also some kind of endorsement of the questionable behavior that is being glamorized. This kind of criticism, I think, is best articulated by critics of Grant’s Ultraviolence era. If Born to Die was a sad album, Ultraviolence was downright depressing. Not only this, but it was interested in exploring the darkest corners of the human condition. In the album’s title track, Lana Del Rey catalogs an abusive relationship: “He hit me and it felt like a kiss…it reminded me of when we were kids.” She writes from the perspective of a young woman trapped in a relationship where she is constantly beat, but confuses the aggression for affection. Because of this, she stays in the relationship and continues a cycle of intergenerational trauma that found its origins in her childhood. Needless to say, this is some pretty dark stuff.
Lorde has mentioned in an interview with Fader that she believes there is something problematic about Grant’s musical approach because “it’s so unhealthy for young girls to be listening to, you know: ‘I’m nothing without you.’ This sort of shirt-tugging, desperate, don’t leave me stuff. That’s not a good thing for young girls, even young people, to hear.” Time Magazine has similarly claimed that Lana Del Rey is glorifying, or promoting, vulnerability and victimhood. By singing about domestic violence from the perspective of an abused woman, does Elizabeth Grant glamorize, or endorse, the submission characteristic of these gender-inegalitarian relationships? I think not.
In 1965, Billie Holiday sang a song called “Strange Fruit,” where she lyrically depicts the horrors of lynching. She does not, however, use any sort of evaluative language in the song. You will find a transcript of the lyrics below:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar treesPastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning fleshHere is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop”
Does Billie Holiday glamorize the act of lynching by crooning over brassy jazz chords about “black bodies swinging in the southern breeze”? No. In fact, she seeks to elicit a visceral, emotional response in her listeners – one that might motivate them to make some drastic changes to the way they treat black Americans. Some have gone so far as to say that the American Civil Rights movement would be incomplete without the existence of a song like “Strange Fruit.” It is evident that we can produce elegant, exalted music that treats a perturbing subject matter without endorsing the subject matter; indeed, we can create the music to condemn the subject matter.
Similarly, it is very likely the case that Lana Del Rey sings about domestic violence not to endorse it but to elicit a strong emotional response in her listeners that encourages them to think critically about their position in their own relationships.
Skepticism of Feminism
FADER (2014)
In a 2014 interview with Fader, Grant proclaimed that, for her, “the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept.” She says this to an interviewer in the middle of a conversation about whether her music is consistent with the aims of feminism. Some feminists have argued that Lana glamorizes powerlessness and servitude (see above section), while others “appreciate her fluid embodiment of different identities, as well as her candor about both her desire and her weakness.” Many have interpreted Grant’s comment about how feminism is uninteresting to her as a condemnation of feminism. This, however, need not be the case.
The textbook definition of feminism – a movement that aspires toward social, economic, and political equality between the sexes – can be, and should be, distinguished from the actualization of this definition in the real world. There are certainly better or worse ways of being a feminist. I would venture to guess that most feminists would want to distance themselves from the minority of feminists who want to kill all men or are hostile toward protecting the rights of transgender persons. And despite the fact that these groups are minorities, they are quite loud and make conversations about feminism more difficult and confusing than they otherwise would be. Because of this, it does not seem antifeminist to claim that feminism, as it is interpolated into culture, is uninteresting. This is because one can hold this view while simultaneously being committed to bringing about the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes. Grant, in the same Fader interview, says that her “idea of a true feminist is a woman who feels free enough to do whatever she wants.”
Indeed, her music illuminates many ways in which women do precisely what they want, whether it’s playing the system to “fuck their way up to the top” or being docile and submissive. If we want women to have the authority to make choices in their lives, we should also protect even those choices that women make which seem to exhibit feminine servility.
Lana’s Autonomy
It should come as no surprise that the music industry is dominated by men. Because of this, it is not uncommon for female artists to capitulate to their male higher-ups when creating music, so that they can continue to keep their platform and make highly visible art. When social pressures act on women so as to make them succumb to making choices that, in the absence of such strong social pressures, they otherwise would not make, we view these pressures as being limiting. Specifically, these kinds of strong social forces which, if ignored, produce undesirable consequences for women limit the autonomy of women.
Consider the following scenario. A female musician wants to release a song about her past struggles with an eating disorder. The song is in the midst of production and is slated to release in a few months. The musician’s publicity team has not yet announced the release date of the song. Her higher-ups who happen to be male, however, want the musician to scrap the eating disorder song, and instead write and release a song about self-love. They tell the musician: “It is ultimately your choice, but people will cease to take you seriously. The public will think that you are glorifying eating disorders, and will believe that you are disingenuously capitalizing on struggles that people with eating disorders regularly face. Releasing a song like the one you are planning to release is likely going to ruin your career. And if you start losing us money, we are going to have to reconsider the terms of your contract from the upcoming year. You should strongly reconsider releasing the song. But, like we said, it’s ultimately up to you whether you do or not.”
If the female musician trusted those she worked with and genuinely believed her career as an artist was in jeopardy, she would almost certainly suspend her eating disorder project. Effectively, her ability to release music that is meaningful to her can be heavily restricted by her male higher-ups, provided that they offer the right kinds of justifications for why they believe she should not do something. These justifications would place great emphasis on the negatives associated with a particular artistic choice, and neglect the benefits associated with it. Moreover, these negatives are made out to be so grave that the well-being of the musical artist is called into question. The female musician who is pressured by her industry peers to abandon a project that is meaningful to her is pressured by them in such a way that I would argue amounts to a wrongful restriction on her autonomy as an artist.
Similarly, it may be the case that Lana Del Rey has had her autonomy as a musical artist wrongfully violated because of the criticisms unsophisticated, uncritical critics have lobbed at her over the years about cultural appropriation, the glamorization of abuse, and feminism. Since Tropico, Lana Del Rey has not released a narrative short film. Since Ultraviolence, she has not investigated themes of abuse, violence, and self-loathing in her music. And also since Ultraviolence, she has neglected to portray feminine docility in her music. I don’t think that these changes in Grant’s music were accidental, or a part of the plan from the beginning of her career.
This is not to say that Elizabeth Grant had no say in the trajectory of her musical career. In fact, I am quite confident that she has had considerable control over her career. But I do think it is safe to say that there is some level at which Grant was pressured by cultural critics who did not take the time to understand her discography into changing her art. Once she realized that people would have a problem with her music being dismal in the way it was during the Ultraviolence era, she likely felt like she had to make the following choice: Either I lighten up my music, or I become a cultural pariah. And thus, an iconic female singer-songwriter relinquishes some of the control she has over her artistic narrative. Those same individuals who purport to have an interest in giving a voice to women contribute to a cultural script that effectively lessens the extent to which a specific woman – Lana Del Rey – is able to use her voice.
What It All Means
Let’s now connect all of this to Lana Del Rey’s Instagram post. In the first sentence of her post, she says: “Now that Doja Cat, Ariana [Grande], Camila [Cabello], Cardi B, Kehlani, and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating, etc. – can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money – or whatever I want – without being crucified or saying that I’m glamorizing abuse??????”
Many read this as an attack on these artists, but this could not be further from the truth. First of all, Lana followed up her post with another post where she clarifies that she is a fan of the artists she listed. She references them only to make a point of how they can all write songs that push the envelope for women in 21st century America, these songs can be wildly successful, and that the women who wrote the songs can all be in the public’s good graces and generally well-loved despite the fact that they are writing about things like sexuality and infidelity so openly. In no way do I mean to discount the public criticism that some of these artists have received for being hypersexual. Examples of these kinds of criticism or people referring to these kinds of criticism can be found here, here, and here. I think it is nonetheless important to note that there are strong, united cultural responses (especially in the media) when an individual claims that a female performing artist is “too sexual.” These kinds of responses do not exist when an individual claims that a female artist is “glamorizing sadness.”
In her Instagram post, Lana is just exasperatedly asking: If Doja, Ariana, Camila, etc. can write music about culturally uncomfortable stuff, does that mean that Lana Del Rey will be able to return to her macabre roots and explore the full extent of her fascination with death, violence, and abuse in her music? Or is NFR the furthest she will be able to go while remaining somewhat in the good graces of the public?
While I would like to think that Grant would be able to explore what she wants to write about in music, I have reason to believe that she will continue to be stifled in her creative projects. Consider the case of 18-year-old anti-pop-star, Billie Eilish. About a year ago, Eilish released her debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Eilish, like Grant, uses her music to explore really difficult topics. Whether it is the solitude one feels when they are the only person they know who doesn’t do drugs (“xanny”) or the need to see a beautiful skyline before finally going through with the decision to commit suicide (“listen before i go”), Eilish is interested in shining a light on the darkness of humanity. Even when the production on her tracks (“all the good girls go to hell,” “my strange addiction”) has an infectious beat, they discuss things that we normally wouldn’t be comfortable talking about at the dinner table.
Billie Eilish, like Lana Del Rey, has been criticized for glamorizing sadness. You can find examples of these criticisms here, here, and here. Admittedly, Eilish has not received the kind of criticism that Lana Del Rey has received, but this is likely because of the fact that the former has only been involved in the music industry for about five years whereas the latter has been involved for over a decade. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Eilish starts altering her sound and the subject matter she sings about, in part because she is deemed by some of her critics as partially responsible for teenaged girls cutting themselves. (Though, she may not since, unlike Grant, Eilish has won five Grammys for her debut project). Eilish’s career in particular aside, it is interesting to point out that there seems to be a problem with expressing “a note of sadness” (as Lana puts it) as a woman in popular music. At least, there seems to be a problem with writing about depression, violence, and abuse from a female perspective that doesn’t exist when somebody writes about sexuality, infidelity, and lust from a female perspective.
All of this is to say that Lana Del Rey gets at something in her post that is likely very true: people arbitrarily seek to silence women like her when they try to use their voices to explore despair in their music. And we can see that people seeking to silence her on this front has at least played some role in shaping the overall trajectory of her musical career over the past decade. Is this something we want? Especially since she has made some really important contributions to music, both as a woman and artist?