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What happens khổng lồ a dream fulfilled? More specifically, an American dream fulfilled, rags turning to riches with the snap of a manicured finger, kissing James Dean in Gatsby"s swimming pool, getting played on the radio. This is a central question animating Lana Del Rey"s Born khổng lồ Die. Our heroine has all the love, diamonds, & Diet Mountain Dew she could ask for, yet still sings, "I wish I was dead," sounding utterly incapable of joy. To paraphrase Liz Phair, if you get everything you wish for & you"re still unhappy, then you know that the problem is you.
Given the waves of hype và backlash over the last six months, it can be easy khổng lồ forget that we"re here, first & foremost, because of a song. "Video Games" struck a nerve not just because it was an introduction lớn Del Rey"s captivating voice but because it seemed to lớn suggest something as-yet-unarticulated about the way we live today. Whatever her intention, as a metaphor about disconnect và detachment from our own desires, "Video Games" felt frank, pointed, và true, & it had a chord progression & melody lớn match. The ultimate disappointment of Born to lớn Die, then, is how out of touch it feels not just with the world around it, but with the simple business of human emotion.
The singer born Elizabeth "Lizzy" Grant may have made her mark with a grainy homemade đoạn clip that brought to mind other grainy homemade videos in the indie sphere, but the slick sound and sentiment of "Radio", Born to lớn Die"s most straightforward statement of purpose ("Baby love me "cause I"m playing on the radio/ How bởi you lượt thích me now?"), places it firmly within the realm of big-budget chart pop. Born khổng lồ Die was produced by Emile Haynie, whose credits include Eminem, Lil Wayne, và Kid Cudi, and the album"s impressively lush atmosphere might be the one thing that will unite its detractors & apologists.
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The album"s recurring themes ooze out of every note: sex, drugs, and glitter hover in the yawning atmosphere around Del Rey"s breathy vocals. There are strings and trip-hop beats và bits of 1950s twang, và the melodies, assembled with assistance from hired-gun songwriters like Mike Daly (Plain white Ts, Whiskeytown) và Rick Nowels (Belinda Carlisle"s "Heaven Is a Place on Earth") are built khổng lồ stick. But for an album that aims for fickle radio listeners, many of its pop signifiers feel stale & ill-fitting. On "Million Dollar Man", Del Rey drawls like a highly medicated Fiona Apple, & "Diet Mountain Dew" & "Off to the Races" aim for chatty, sparkling opulence, this singer doesn"t have the personality lớn bring it off.
The album"s point of view-- if you could hotline it that-- feels awkward and out of date. Whether you take a line lượt thích "Money is the reason we exist/ Everybody knows that it"s a fact/ Kiss kiss" with a 10-carat grain of salt is up to lớn you, but even as a jab at the chihuahua-in-Paris-Hilton"s-handbag lifestyle, it feels limp and pointless (unlike, say, Lily Allen"s mock-vapid but slyly observant 2008 single "The Fear"). Still, the dollar signs in its eyes aren"t an inherent strike against Born khổng lồ Die: Even in the wake of an international debt crisis and the Occupy movement, it was hard not khổng lồ fall for Watch the Throne. But that"s because Jay and Kanye made escapist fantasy sound so fun. Del Rey"s gem-encrusted dreamworld, meanwhile, relies on clichés ("God you"re so handsome/ Take me lớn the Hamptons") rather than specific evocations. It"s a fantasy world that makes you long for reality.
And speaking of fantasy: The conversation surrounding Lana Del Rey has underscored some seriously depressing truths about sexism in music. She was subjected to the kind of intense scrutiny-- about her backstory và especially her appearance-- that"s generally reserved for women only. But the sexual politics of Born lớn Die are troubling too: You"d be hard pressed khổng lồ find any tuy vậy on which Del Rey reveals an interiority or figures herself as anything more complex than an ice-cream-cone-licking object of male desire (a line in "Blue Jeans", "I will love you till the kết thúc of time/ I would wait a million years," sums up about 65% of the album"s lyrical content). Even when Del Rey offers something that could be read as a critique ("This is what makes us girls/ We don"t stick together "cause we put our love first"), she asks that we make no effort khổng lồ change, escape, or transcend the way things are ("Don"t cry about it/ Don"t cry about it.") In terms of its America-sized grandeur and its fixation with the emptiness of dreams, Born lớn Die attempts to serve as Del Rey"s own beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy, but there"s no spark & nothing at stake.
The critic Ellen Willis once wrote of Bette Midler: "Blatant artifice can, in the right circumstances, be poignantly honest, và she expresses the tension between image và inner self that all of us-- but especially women-- experience." But Born to lớn Die never allows tension or complexity into the mix, và its take on female sexuality ends up feeling thoroughly tame. For all of its coos about love and devotion, it"s the album equivalent of a faked orgasm-- a collection of torch songs with no fire.
