So, yeah. Things are getting a little heated between Ross and Brandon. Lana’ll do that. In fairness, Brandon did manage to eek out about 100 words on the actual album. Actually, looking back, this entire week’s dialectic feels like a meta-exercise in the PR plight of Lana Del Rey, an artist for whom people will write thousands of words on her lips but can barely spare a couple hundred on her actual music. Sorry, Lana. We tried. Well, not that hard, but still.
Lana Del Rey – “Video Games” (On German TV!)
Dude. German TV is exactly how I imagined!
From: Ross Angeles
To: Brandon Hall
Brandon,
Thank you for preceding my column with an attacking pre-amble and following it up with an undercutting post-script. Really making it a welcome place for other voices. In the interest of defending my own words allow me to say the following:
I’m sure all of your Brooklynite, vegan friends who clog couches at coffee houses are well aware who Lana Del Rey is. I’m sure they’ve known her for over a year, “liked her early stuff”, and can bore us all with a story about spotting her at Magnolia Bakery. What I’m also sure of is that LDR is not well known outside of the folks who read every Gawker post. Her initial success bubbled up off the internet with virtually no marketing support and her most notable appearance was a two song performance that began after midnight on a show that Nielsen ratings indicate is four times less popular than Betty White’s 90th Birthday. In general, it’s not all that hyperbolic to think that there are medium-sized towns scattered between New York and Los Angeles where no resident is aware of who Lana Del Rey is.
On the second point, Lana Del Rey may have charmed part of an audience with her early internet singles, but virtually all of the initial praise has become twisted and bent. You can do the research – go out there and find me one piece written in the past month that was unflinchingly optimistic on the topic of LDR. The only stuff I can find are vitriolic blog posts, caustic tweets and the occasional magazine puff piece that was paid for by her handlers. Can you find one established critic who is a devout LDR apologist?
Also, the difference between LDR and your typical pop-culture pariah is that she lacks a bomb shelter. When Britney Spears was being ripped apart by the media there were still legions of oblivious tweens bopping along to her sugary pop music. When Jessica Simpson was under fire there were horny, single men still willing to turn into her show. There is no adoring legion of fans who are dyed in the wool LDR supporters. She hasn’t cultivated a a sturdy support base. The very demographic that she was courting has now savagely turned against her leaving virtually no one to publicly support or defend her.
“The road is long/We carry on/Try to have fun in the meantime”
Ross
***
From: Brandon Hall
To: Ross Angeles
Well, first of all, where is Magnolia Bakery?
In regards to demographics and public awareness, the exercise seems futile and moot. Most Americans probably don’t know who The National is, either, but they still sell out huge venues. LCD Soundsystem’s last show sold out Madison Square Garden but I doubt either of my parents have any idea who the band or James Murphy is, even though I’ve definitely played them some of his music. Lana Del Rey is relevant enough to be discussed here at length, as well as to be booked on Saturday Night Live, to be featured on ESPN’s Bill Simmons’ Grantland, and basically talked about everywhere. If Bill Simmons is talking about you, you done made it. I feel pretty confident more people know who Lana Del Rey is than know who the National is, and that is a stain on our country but a post for another time. Point is, I think calling her a “relative unknown” overstates the fact and is far more applicable to just about anyone else in the indie rock world, of which she happens to be a member simply based on the fact that those are the people listening to and talking about her.
As for your challenge to “go out there and find me one piece written in the past month that was unflinchingly optimistic on the topic of LDR,” I challenge you to find a piece that is “unflinchingly optimistic” about anything! Such a thing doesn’t exist if you want to have any credibility as a writer or journalist. And because of the intense backlash, it’s impossible to find an article about her that doesn’t at least mention said vitriolic faction, which doesn’t mean the author is being at all negative, rather simply acknowledging the divisive nature of the subject of the article.
Furthermore, what do you mean when you ask if I know of any critic who is a “devout LDR apologist?” What is there to apologize for?
There are lots of critics who fawned over her first two singles and remained anxious to hear more right up until the release of her album. Here. Here. Here. Here. That’s just two sites, but I wanted to keep writing. Most people loved the first three singles, have been mixed since then, and everyone, like me, is just fascinated by the hate. Also, just about everyone finds her album to be pretty mediocre. I can hardly find anyone who completely trashes it, though no one is calling it a gift from the pop music gods, either.
I’m not exactly sure what your point is. Because you can’t find any rock critic who fawns obsequiously over her, she must be irrelevant and/or untalented? She’s a singer/songwriter who released a couple fantastic songs and followed it up with a few shaky performances and a mediocre album. For the majority of people, that’s all there is. Beyond that, there is a small, vocal faction – the LDR Tea Party – who are calling for her to be burned at the stake. If you can’t see beyond those nincompoops, I fear you may be wearing blinders.
However, in your last post, you failed to explain where exactly your hatred comes from. You started by saying you never promised to make me love Lana Del Rey, but I wasn’t asking for that. I want to know what it is about her that makes you say things like, “she’s not a valid musician. At the end of the day she’s Rebecca Black with a better song, slimmer figure and larger PR team.” I mean, your piece began as a critique of the public’s lambasting of this artist, and within that critique, you senselessly pummeled her into a bloody pulp with no explanation as to whence your act of critical violence came.
You just hate her for no reason. And it seems like a lot of people do. That’s what I don’t understand. Where is that coming from?
One final point in response to your last post. I know you, Ross. You’re not that old. I suppose, technically, you fall into Generation X, but as has been discussed previously on this site, you’re actually a member of Generation Catalano, along with me. Lana Del Rey falls just outside of Generation Catalano, but she is in no way emblematic of the future generation. I’m afraid that she is much more our peer than our progeny. I don’t know what personality traits our children will embody, but looking at Lana Del Rey is actually much more like looking in a mirror than peering into the future. She is the now, my friend, and we are her.
Okay. Quickly. About the album. Very mediocre, yes. My biggest issue with it is that Lana Del Rey casts herself as a weak, besotted, and passive girl (she hardly seems to meet the qualities necessary for me to use a word like “woman”) desperate for the love and attention of disinterested, aloof, or wealthy men. Nearly every song is pathetically maudlin in its yearning for the love of a man, while often pied with rap quotables, which makes much of the album rather gag-inducing. The reason I mentioned a couple days ago that the album tarnished “Video Games” for me is that, initially, the somber orchestration of that song seemed to belie the lyrics, exposing a much more cynical and sardonic message. “Open up a beer/Say get over here/And play a video game…It’s you/It’s you/It’s all for you…Heaven is a place on Earth with you/Tell me all the things you want to do…” Initially, I thought this was beautifully subversive and cutting. Taken in the context of the whole album, it feels very much on the nose and unfortunately earnest. Then, of course, she confirms my fears by saying, “Video Games has a melancholic feel, but the lyrics are happy.” /sad face
So I feel like “Video Games” was an accident, which really bums me out, and makes me wish artists would not talk about their songs, just in case they accidentally do something that feels ambiguous and awesome. Here’s hoping Lana Del Rey actually stops writing her own songs, so she can vamp and croon to some professionally written, interesting shit! You know, like this. /wink
“Diet Mountain Dew, baby, New York City/Never was there ever a girl so pretty,”
Brandon
Born To Die is out on Interscope.
AudioVole 
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