The Glory in Defiance: An Analysis of The Success of Lana del Rey

Last week,  I was sitting on the bus, travelling to see my love again. We had been having some difficulties, especially in communicating our wishes and desires, causing us to clash. I was very anxious about what seeing him again was going to be like, yet full of desire to hold him again. So, in my bittersweet mood, I plugged in my earbuds and started listening to Lana Del Rey.

Her music was strengthening my state of mind and I felt that typical rush of excitement you get when you really feel music. At the same time, I remembered some of the commentaries I read about her songs, so I started to listen more carefully. During my inspection, I realized her music was certainly characterized by overly dramatic vocals and slightly cliché and pretentious lyrics that reminded me of the poems I wrote when I was 15. Yet, for some reason, the combination of it all was appealing to me.

I am not the only one who feels this way. One could view her as part of YouTube/Vevo royalty, with her Instagramesque videoclip Born To Die nearing 115 million views as we speak. Keeping in mind that she has landed several modeling jobs for industry leading magazines like Vogue, she has clearly become something of a celebrity. Why does this woman and her music, speak so vividly to the imagination of the public eye?

Lana Del Rey operates in a period of time in which extremely dramatic performing by pop stars is appreciated when done right. Think about the likes of Lady Gaga and her numerous copycats. However, Lana  doesn’t have to put on a dress of meat in order to put the drama back into pop culture. She makes nostalgically reminiscing and embracing the pains of puberty and the gloriousness of being deviant relevant again for a larger public through sound, vision and personality.

Born To Die was released in a time of societal pandemonium caused by the current global economic climate. Large economic restructuring doesn’t only influence the contents of our wallets, but also influences our mental and physical experiences of everyday life. Her music embraces its violence, its aggression and its all pervasiveness. By drawing  on familiar pains of having loved and being lost and combining them with the modern hurtful societal experiences of the recession, her music speaks appealing volumes.

Through singing about wanting to live on the road, being wild and free, and her pussy tasting like Pepsi Cola she uses explicit but poetically veiled erotica resembling the older vampire literature of Anne Rice. By  drawing on icons like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Jim Morrison, she uses symbols of stereotypical American (pop) cultural heritage to create recognition and authority. The dichotomies that she builds (like Gods and Monsters) aren’t at all clever but are so obvious one wouldn’t think of them. By artistically and agentively transforming these pop symbols by rearranging them, by putting them in new but familiar contexts, she spins a web of authenticity.

She couldn’t have reached her popularity through creating music that fits within the current sociocultural climate alone. She had to have a persona for her to seem sincere , a persona that corresponds with the message of her music.  She has been living that self representation quite successfully, I think, always behaving like a character of a postmodern novel. Often, her photoshoots invoke the same feeling as her texts do. Her beauty is fashionable, nearing the average of a certain standard of white, thin, pale beauty, while simultaneously diverting from it through emphasizing her larger than normal lips. Lana Del Rey’s performance is consistent  inside and outside of music; always working within the accepted frames of reference but making it her own by always giving a slight twist.

How genuine her beautiful deviousness really is, remains to be argued,  if needs  to be emphasized constantly. Of course it is all part of a (commercially driven) performance, but doesn’t the fact she so deeply feels the need to do this make her especially and genuinely broken?

I could go on with this attempt at an analysis for a while; exploring her obvious daddy issues that shine through her lyrics and ask the question whether this all isn’t the product of the pretty damn powerful music industry, but a blog might not be the right forum for such an essay. I’ll leave attempts at producing such writings for my upcoming year as a graduate student. Oh, and by the way, for those who wonder; luckily, being reunited with my love wasn’t at all bittersweet. I even forgot my earbuds on my way home.

Love,

J