IN THE POURING RAIN

(February 2012 - since I wrote this post, Lana Del Rey has become a sort of national punchline. In writing this post during the fall, I think I failed to recognize that she was becoming something significantly bigger than a blogosphere curio. Anyway, the biggest bandwagon jump with LDR seems to be in deriding her, damning her for some of the points I raise below and others of even less significance. In retrospect, I wanted to clarify that my disappointment with LDR stemmed from the fact that there was a kernel of greatness in "Video Games". Mostly, her rise and her recorded output reminded me of a now-moot relic in the history of music fandom: that disappointment of buying a record for the hit single, only to discover 10 lump-of-coal songs surrounding the diamond. We always want to find greatness, that's what spurs our undying love of music; its the long and frequently unrewarding search for greatness that gives rise to our persistent pessimism.)

I was enamored with the song “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey. It was stuck in my head – toeing that line between welcome obsession and sheer annoyance – for weeks. She exists wholly (for now) on the internet – and in the rumors and speculation heard through the (perhaps purposely) unreliable grapevine of that world, I’ve felt a little conflicted about different things I’ve learned about Miss Del Rey. On one hand, I’ve read that LDR herself compiles and edits her cut-n-paste videos which (in the case of “Video Games”) combine a perfect amount of vintage film/ cartoon/ whatever snippets with disparate tabloid footage of a drunk Paz de la Huerta and stock footage of young lovers, presumably outtakes from an American Eagle Outfitters commercial. On the other hand, I’ve read rumors of “handlers” – some black hand launching an insidiously premeditated and secretly well-funded viral “Most Popular Girl in School” campaign on behalf of Del Rey’s career.

In part, her buzz reflects my broader concerns about blog-generated popularity: that style beats substance every time. You get a few people to repeat your carefully-curated talking points and soon enough they’re being repeated as an organic, free-wheeling, and compelling truth.

I find Lana Del Rey’s empowered/ aggressive/ frank ( /fan-boy-fantasy-embodiment) sense of sexuality a little dull. A little contrived A little predictable. Its not unsettling and it doesn’t feel genuine – its calculated, fabricated; launched from a internet marketing standpoint. Ultimately, that makes it unsexy. It’s a little sad seeing her live performance of “Born 2 Die” linked on Pitchfork and captionedwith the breathless, artistic-merit-negating subheader “Skip to 1:24 or 3:07 for this choice line: "Let me fuck you hard in the pouring rain, you like your girls insane." Yeah, yeah, of course – here’s the real draw: just skip ahead to the pretty girl saying she wants to fuck you.

Watching the video, even she seems a little afraid or embarrassed to sing the line. Perhaps its just a bit of stage fright; a young artist finding her live performance footing. But – living that fear myself – I think its because of some failures to really nail her own formula with “Born 2 Lose”:

(A) For starters, it is a mediocre crib of her own “Video Games” lyric of: “Heaven is a place where you/ tell me all the things you want to do/ I heard that you like the bad girls/ Honey, is that true?” Bad girls are presumably or at least occasionally insane, and on the list of Things I Want To Do, most of us – by crassly and lovingly treating our paramour as a sex object – want to fuck or be fucked or mutually fuck/get fucked, hard (and soft, piano, forte, with crescendos and glissandos), by them. To that end, “tell me all the thing you want to do… I hear you like the bad girls” is a subtler and dirtier come-on than the bald proclamation of “I want to fuck you hard”. Though it is certainly direct, and direct expression has its own charm and cache, but not in this case not in this song. It’s a misstep: a calculated expression of desire that comes across as toothless.

(B) However much we all want fuck/get fucked/mutually fuck, hard, doing so “in the pouring rain” is just plain old cheeseball lyrical flop. Its lame. On some level maybe it’s slightly clever to combine the “I want to fuck you hard” lyric with a such a stock, toss-off, Cole-Porter-would-never-touch-it romantic prepositional supposition as “in the pouring rain” – a contrast of the unexpectedly crass and the banal cliché. But I think LDR was just lazy; she failed to take the time to consult a Haiku collection and find a different five syllables. Every songwriter or lyricist writes a lazy line and has to forgive themselves, and as a listener, you can hear when someone doesn’t nail it – you can hear their failing and personal disappointment in not finding something better. Sometimes a songwriter can rely on forward momentum, on the impatience of the listener to get them through, on the transitional, fleeting essence of any song. And I’m sometimes genuinely exasperated listening to songwriters like Stephen Merrit or John Darnielle pile one clever couplet on top of the other. But in this case, LDR just fell short – and I can hear her disappointment and, in the video, see it in her body language. Since very little sex is candlelit, rose-petaled, and vanilla-scented, and she’s making the compelling effort to say so, she only undercuts her blunt lyrics by invoking banality from the “Sex-Scene-in-Top-Gun” cookbook.

(C) On her third and final stumble through this lyric, she changes it to “let me kiss you hard…” – perhaps revealing that she is uncomfortable with the preceding variation, hasn’t gotten it quite right, and feels a little vulnerable expressing it – to the point that she changes it. She’s declawing the sentiment, changing a single word and reducing the entire chorus to the diet, sinless, sugar-free version. Then there isn’t a tooth left in the entire jawbone of this chorus.

I haven’t made up mind about Lana del Rey. On one hand “Video Games” really was in my head for about three weeks straight, in a good way, fulfilling every piece of good press her performance received: laconic and sexy, perverse, successfully evoking modern context while delivered with Capitol-era Sinatra melancholy. “Video Games” was simultaneously a come-on and a kiss-off. Conversely, most of her other songs are obvious, seams-exposed pastiches of a carefully manicured retro-vintage aesthetic developed for iPhone apps and Facebook distribution and Internet music-blog buzz. Her subsequent music (especially “Born 2 Die”) seems like the most calculated attempt to cash in and recreate on what she’s done well, instead of expanding and building on it as a departure point.

I wrestle with my own snap judgment of “This song ‘Video Games’ is great; too bad the singer is so 'hot' – that totally undermines her credibility” – because what kind of nonsensical and ultimately sexist statement is that? Lana Del Rey can’t help her good looks and has every right to use them for all they’re worth – especially if it gets Pitchfork’s career-making blood up. She pointedly seems to be using the bloggy, fan-boy kneejerk response and the coupling of female sexuality and genuine talent to her advantage. Good for her: for the past 30 years indie/alternative/underground/whatever music has been blatantly sexist and simultaneously afraid of women. But from a musical perspective, however, I fear that “Video Games” is the fluke – the gem amongst the filler in Del Rey’s repertoire – and the fingerprints of a coldly-calculated marketing scheme seem too obvious to dismiss. Considering “Lana Del Rey” is an invention to begin with might just protect her from that particular criticism. Her real name is Lizzy Warren – she grew up a couple hours from me, near Lake Placid NY, and I rather hear her write about getting drunk in the woods at fifteen, which is how you pass the time in Upstate NY, instead of her fake switchblades & trailer parks & bourbon guise. But that invention protects and emboldens her as an artist. Perhaps she’ll deliver on that boldness; perhaps she’ll merely sound "handled". Considering the forgettable “Born 2 Die” is the lead single and title-track on her forth-coming album, that leaves me with low expectations. And as a rule, you shouldn’t use “2” for “to” unless you’re Prince and its sometime before 1989.