NEWS
EVENTS
Lana Del Rey - Born to Die
Indie | Tuesday 31st January 2012 | Osh
Opening an album with four of your most well known tracks is a ballsy move, but from the start Lana Del Rey has never made things easy for herself. Coming from (seemingly) nowhere, Del Rey's homemade vintage clips for her YouTube hit, Video Games quickly made her the darling of music blogs around the world, the video at press currently has more than 24 million views. Then came the backlash, the blog HipsterRunoff exposed Lana Del Rey and her reality-defying lips as actually being Lizzy Grant, a singer whose 2010 release Lana Del Rey A.K.A. Lizzy Grant was shelved quickly after its release. HipsterRunoff continued its slaughter of the starlets persona, questioning her self-proclaimed title of “Gangster Nancy Sinatra” and whether record execs just decided to repackage Grant into the glamorous Lana Del Rey.
And in the midst of all that backlash came Del Rey’s release, Born To Die. The album opens with the title track, an epic, swelling, romantic track about her endless love. It opens the album well, but from there, the tracks begin to sound the same. With the highlights being (unsurprisingly to anyone who’s followed her work) Off To The Races, and the impossible to escape, Video Games. After Video Games the album is unfamiliar territory, and you can tell. It keeps up the epic string choruses, the hip-hop beats and stories of intense love. There is no denying Del Rey's voice but the same themes and similar sounds merge together and while it is good it starts to become unremarkable.
Because of all the hype and backlash surrounding Lana Del Rey it feels as if it’s been forgotten that this is Del Rey's debut album, that kinks will need to be worked out and more dimensions added to her musical identity. For a first album it is good but it will be what happens next that truly defines her.
