You know how I like to keep you
informed with
everything Lana Del Rey, so here it’s a third article (read the
first two
here) about our favorite song bird. A lot has happened lately
– so there is much to report!
The last year and a half has been
full of both success and storms for her. Since the release of self made music
video for Video Game she has been on
everybody’s mind, succeeding to rise from total obscurity to worldwide fame.
She has received tons of mixed
reactions from people: she is loved, mocked, obsessed over, hated, criticized
and idolized at the same time - to the point of becoming literally exhausting.
The Lana Del Rey media fire is
still focused on her physical metamorphosis – mainly the visible change in her
appearance (although not confirmed, is speculated she had her lips, and maybe
nose done before reinventing herself as Lana Del Rey).
Some believe that by
transforming herself into every boys dream and every girl’ standard she has
chosen the easy path, deciding that her old self (Lizzie/Elisabeth Grant) and
the road to stardom trough hard work, talent and dedication is not the way to
go. I for one call those people hypocrites, is not like she has no talent to
speak of!
Maybe she made it big relaying a
great deal on her image, but remember, we live in a society where sexualization
has been and is largely used to sell music and pretty much everything else. Is
the way of the business and it’s the way of things! The truth is we live in a
world where talent and hard work are sadly not enough. Still, let’s face it, at
the end of the day, her songs are the ones stuck in our heeds. If she needed to
change some things about her for that to happen, I’m not going to label her a
sellout for as little as that.
Don’t get me wrong! I don’t deny
all the commercial support that Lana has received in order to become the
success that she is, but to dismiss all of her based on solely that, is pure ignorance. The speculations about Lana Del Rey’s alleged plastic
surgeries seem to have no end.
Yes, she looks different now compared to the
time she was known as Lizzy Grant. But what I see analyzing the before and
after Lizzie Grant/Lana Del Rey pictures is more the result of a complete
makeover than anything else.
Besides, the before pictures are few and not the
greatest quality and the ones after are from big magazines and show us a star
in full hair, makeup and expensive wardrobe, so the comparison is pretty unfair.
I’m not a plastic surgeon and I have no expertise in the field but, I don’t
really see a massive change in her features, is more about the hair style,
makeup and clothes. She does have a great stylist!
The best "before" pictures I could find!
What I do know is that, when asked if she had anything done,
she completely denied it. Here's what she said in an interview she gave to Complex:
"I haven't had anything done at all. Anyone who's known me will tell you
that. I'm sorry, but I was living in a trailer park for a few years. I didn't
even have enough money to buy Cocoa Puffs. It's not like I crawled from under
the bridge and got surgery. I'm quite pouty. That's just how I look when I
sing."
In another interview, this time for T magazine, she added this about her lips: "They're real lips, I mean. In real life my lips don't look that
big. I think because I cartoonized the footage of myself in the video for
"Video Games" things look exaggerated.” Unfortunately she did not
convince a lot of people and there is still a lot of gossip regarding the possible lip implants.
I don’t find that to be the big deal that everyone
is making it to be, I mean, who cares if she had her lips done or not, she looks
and sounds great and that it’s the most important thing.
Despite all of this Lana has sold
over 2.8 million copies worldwide, she received a BRIT Award for “International
Breakthrough Act,” an Ivor Novello award for excellence in music writing, more
then 20 million people have watched Video Games on YouTube, her album has
been number 1 in 11 countries and she received the GQ Award for “Woman of the
Year”.
- Lana Del Rey height is 1.69 m
- she’s 26 years old and
- she’s really good friends with actress Jaime King (Lemon from Hart of Dixie)
- this is Lana Del
Rey’s twitter account
The last time
we discussed Lana
the media was talking about her performance on SNL and it was almost a
consensus that she was terrible. But time has passed and things happened. Lana had great success in the U.K, even more than in the US and the haters were
keen to vocalize that maybe the British didn’t heard the SNL disaster. But wait…
Lana went on
Later… with Jools Holland and her performance wasn’t much better than the
one in the USA and now the Brits have their own version of that bad performance.
Performing live is not Lana Del
Rey’s strong point; she seems to crumble under the pressure sometimes which
leads to some poor performances mixed in with great ones. These inconsistencies can
actually be explained otherwise as well: her recorded songs employ vocal
multi-layering, double tracking and overlays that are hard to replicate live
without backing singers or perfect conditions to create the mood.
But don’t be too harsh on Lana, remember she’s a
human being with real feeling that can be hurt and she admitted she suffered
after her SNL performance was so criticized: “It didn’t affect my
writing, but it affected my happiness,” she said. “I became depressed.”
To celebrate the
crazy success she had with her album, Lana has re-released it under the name Born
to Die: The Paradise Edition, an emotional roller coaster
that includes all the original tracks from the initial album and nine new tracks.
The new tracks are just what you will expect from her, an exploration of the
initial songs, somehow darker, but still ethereal and sexy, the kind of
songs that suit her voice so well.
In case you are wondering about her tattoos, they say: trust no one (right hand) and paradise (left hand). She has 3 more tattoos: a letter M on her left hand that (probably)
stands for her grandmother “Madeleine”, die young on her ring finger (of the right hand) and finally “Nabokov Whitman” on her right arm standing for writer
Vladimir Nabokov and poet Walt Whitman that are a constant inspirations in her lyrics as shown in two of her song: Lolita and I Sing The Body Electric.
She even released a video/short film for the lead
single on this new album: Ride, the emotionally-charged track, with
lyrics like: “Been trying hard not to get into trouble / but I’ve got a war in
my mind.”
The video is ten minutes long and tells the story of her relationship
with a leather-clad biker and has gotten a lot of reactions, both good and bad.
For the good part, people are enchanted by the lyrics and melody and the
cinematography is beautiful, also Lana looks amazing. The bad part is that she
kind of romanticizes prostitution; also she does some culturally inappropriate
things like dancing in a Native American headdress. I’m not even going to go
there – I just fell some people take things way too seriously.
The new songs on
the album are:
"American," "Cola," "Body
Electric," "Gods and Monsters," "Yayo," "Bel Air",
and
"Blue Velvet" (a cover after Bobby Vinton)" which is being used as
part of her H&M ad campaign.
Another track
that got a lot of attention is
Cola where Lana made a very personal comment with
the opening line being:
“My p***y tastes like Pepsi Cola / My eyes are wide
like cherry pies”. With a start like that do I need to explain further? Yeah,
that’s what I thought!
Lana Del Rey by Richard Davies
She
also had lots of concerts lately. The general impression is that while her general
persona and her image in her music videos is that of a overconfident, bad girl,
getting high and exploring all the dark places, her presence on stage is somehow off sync with her music/lyrics, appearing more like a goody too shoes or a
retro prom queen.
Lana herself admits that she is shy in front of
an audience: “The way that I look on stage in front of thousands of people is
not really my thing but I do my best."
From everything
I read about miss Lana, I could gather that she had some crazy teenage years;
she was a bit of black sheep, having serious problems with alcohol at only 14 which
resulted in her being shipped to boarding school to solve the aforementioned
problems.
She admitted in an interview:
"I was a big drinker at the time.
I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was
so fucking cool. A great deal of what I wrote on Born to Die is about
these wilderness years. My parents were worried, I was worried. I knew it was a
problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else. I was like, 'I'm
f***ed. I am totally f***ed'."
Her love life seems to go
great as she has been dating Barrie-James O'Neill since February 2012. Lana Del Rey’s boyfriend
is a rocker in the band named Kassidy (very popular in Scotland).
You might have also noticed that Lana became the face of the
Fall/Winter campaign for H&M (the huge banners everywhere might have
served as solid clues). I know Lana’s hair is the stuff of legend, but I wasn’t
in love with that campaign, they failed with the whole styling - making her
hair look like a scary beehive and all that.
You don't mess with Lana
Del Rey's hair - much like
Samson's,
her power resides in there, we all know it, those extensions are sacred.
But what got even
more attention was one pictorial that she did, namely the one where she posed
naked on GQ front cover after being named the magazine's 'Woman of the Year'.
The British GQ
launched its Man of the Year issue with five alternative covers featuring Tinie Tempah, Robbie Williams, John
Slatter, James Corden and Lana Del Rey. But while all the men are dressed in suits
and matching bow-ties, Lana isn't wearing anything at all (if you don’t count
the magic red hair).
As expected, the cover attracted a lot of criticism from all around the
web with people calling it "internalized sexism". And if you are
wondering whose hand is that in the pictures (grabbing her b**b) wonder no
more, Lana herself has clarified that: “Paul, the creative director, was very
hands on with the shoot”. I do get the sexism part but from a pure aesthetic
point a view, she does look amazing on the cover and in the spread.
Let’s not forget the fact she signed a six-figure deal with
Jaguar becoming the face of their new sport car - Jaguar F-Type. Her song
Burning
Desire was chosen as
the soundtrack to a short film which was created
by Jaguar in association with Ridley Scott Associates to promote the car.
In the fashion field she worked
with Mulberry who designed a bag for her, the “Del Rey” bag (a Lana Del Rey’s Mulberry Bag is worth $1000). She was also signed by Next model
agency.
Another big thing was the fact
that she was named the Most Popular Woman on the Web in 2012 according to
Google. The search Lana Del Rey got over 722,000,000 results.
For 2013 Lana Del
Ray plans to tour the UK to support the
release of her new album.
Despite or maybe because of all
the controversy and the backlash that she received, she keeps on going on, becoming
more and more successful and proving that all her detractors are wrong.
Lana Del Rey artwork by Helen Green
I hope some of you actually got to the end of this article in one piece and can share your opinion! Is it love, is it hate, do you even care?
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