The album’s highest points arrive in succession, beginning with “National Anthem,” whose sinister string section swells against a sordid narrative of excess and social ascension offered by Del Rey’s “Jessica Rabbit” character. For those who were present for its initial release, the latter track may sound especially “of its time,” its classic melancholia undercut with references to its own generation’s resignation. “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” both key entries, continue the opening track’s doomed Bonnie & Clyde-esque saga. The suite-like “Off to the Races,” arguably Del Rey’s finest song, features the singer cycling, as on her aforementioned SNL performance, through multiple vocal techniques, including “chatting” and her signature “baby-doll voice.” Here, Del Rey unveils her “Lolita” persona, quoting Nabokov’s novel and portraying herself as bikini-clad and poolside, a much older man admiring her, loving her “with every beat of his cocaine heart.” Among the album’s most intricate cuts, “Off to the Races” showcases producers Patrik Berger and Emile Haynie’s gritty soundscape, rich in dance-ready beats and dreamy orchestration. In assimilating with Born to Die’s epic scope, the track’s sickly sweet apocalyptic tendencies are juxtaposed with Del Rey’s lachrymal sense of alienation, best embodied in the timeless confession, “I feel so alone on a Friday night.” Her unwavering faith that, despite the raw, intermingled sense of codependent devastation, the best is somehow yet to come for herself and her Luciferian lover adds yet another layer of tragedy, rendering Born to Die consistently intriguing from start to finish. The opening title track-retrospectively named among Billboard’s 100 songs that defined the ’10s-frames with shimmering strings the first of Del Rey’s characteristically cinematic proclamations-“Come and take a walk on the wild side/Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain”-effectively introducing her smokily despondent vocal style, as well as the album’s melodramatic narrative. Presently, Born to Die possesses even more relevance than it did a decade ago. Likewise, she paraded across each track on Born to Die in disguise, her various personae having been described as Dolores “Lolita” Haze, if “lost in the hood,” a “gangster Nancy Sinatra,” Jessica Rabbit, and, perhaps even more elusive, herself. This creative philosophy was echoed in her controversial Saturday Night Live appearance earlier that month, during which she appeared to stumble through her performance, seemingly impersonating as many major artists as possible. Possessing a great deal more cult appeal than many pop releases of its time, the aptly titled Born to Die unlocked a new door in music, while ultimately summarizing the spirit of the early ’10s, with Del Rey’s theatrical lyrics and existential dramatics accentuating its brash Americana imagery, retro fixations, and transparent longing for intimacy and stimulation.Ī popular culture skin-walker in the tradition of Bob Dylan and David Bowie, Del Rey initially attempted to mystify her origins to skeptical critics. Perhaps, at least in hindsight, it took the major-label debut of singer/songwriter Elizabeth Grant, aka indie pop sensation Lana Del Rey, to ultimately embody this sometimes aspirational, often wistful Millennial condition.
#Born to die lana del rey album movie#
This lone shadow empire-of streetlights and vacancy signs, of movie theaters, cigarette smoke, and twilit porches cast in hazy citrine light-stood upon a vast ocean of swirling longing and nostalgia: a collective reimagining of modern history, at the hands of a generation so often condemned to fates of useless degrees, menial existences, and unrealized desires. The present was slow, the future bleak, and a romanticized, misty past held inevitable allure. Once upon a time, not so long ago, the prospect of an alternate America nurtured an offshoot of modern youth, estranged, through crystalline fantasies of virtue and discovery, from an era of continued cultural decadence.
0 kommentar(er)
