Born To Die

I'd never really paid much attention to Lana Del Rey before the album release, having only heard a remix of Video Games that didn't do the original justice. I looked at what the internet was saying and the reviews seemed oddly mixed between those who said every track was great and those who seemed to have some sort of a grudge against her that no-one could properly define. I made my own mind up, and very quickly joined the ranks of those who love every track.Born To Die is a strong opener and, in similar tones to Video Games, meshes haunting melody and lyrics with a gritty, torch song quality, oddly verging between dirge and pop. Off To The Races continues the haunting theme with an offbeat love song that may at first seem like a celebration of being shallow but very quickly reveals maturity and depth, and once listened to is difficult to forget. Blue Jeans is a beautiful pop song slowed down to a pace where it almost feels like a ballad. Video Games is simply the most beautiful song of the last year. Diet Mountain Dew is a breezy almost nonchalant pop song.National Anthem is a playful song that on the surface has some lines that might make you think it's a clumsy way of celebrating the money and fame worship you hear in some other singers' songs, but the OTT way it's done and some of the lyrics, once closely listened to, clearly show it's a send up. Dark Paradise, a beautiful ballad about loss, is like an Evanescence song without the operatics. Radio is one of those guilty pleasure songs - a laid back pop song with a chorus that, if played on radio, would require much editing, and yet still manages to remain sounding innocent and beautiful. Carmen is a warning tale of the sad effects of Hollywood. Million Dollar Man is an old time dirge ballad with an undercurrent of sadness, and is extremely classy. Now comes one of my favourite new pop songs - Summertime Sadness. At this point you may think there is a theme of depression sinking into the songs, but this song is hard to describe because it somehow manages to be downbeat and uplifting at the same time. Ending the main album is This Is What Makes Us Girls, which is another one of those songs that could appear to be glamorising shallowness, yet at the same time has very knowing lyrics and manages to hook you into the story it's telling.The three extra tracks don't stray too far from the winning formula of the main album. Without You is a heartfelt ballad that it is hard to believe was left off the main album. Lolita is a playful song that perhaps is a bit too much Avril Lavigne in her unconvincing bratty stage to fit too well with the other songs, yet isn't what you'd call bad. Lucky Ones is definitely the song that should end the album, a gentle ballad that slips comfortably into the silence at the end of the CD.

There seems little point in reviewing an album that has already been reviewed by so many people, but a few thoughts are perhaps worth writing down, given the whirl of misinformation and hype and hating that has gone on. With just a couple of songs Lana Del Rey has completely rejuvenated and revalidated the whole of popular music. That may seem an overstatement, but I'm speaking as someone who wouldn't listen to the Top 40 if you offered me a large sum of money. I only had to listen to a snatch of one of Lana's songs, and I knew she was something special, something exciting from a musical realm that has been entirely stale for the past decade. Firstly the image: yes, she is striking to look at, but it is anything but an easy look, it's a confrontational look and a mysterious look; she doesn't smile, she looks like she could maybe kill you, given provocation. Everything she does flirts with the conventions of pop music, but all at one remove. In her songs, she plays a certain character, arguably several different ones. You sense that she doesn't feel any limitation on what she will do. She will quote Nabokov's Lolita, because she feels like it. She will write a song entitled 'Born To Die', she will call her album it, as no other calculating pop star would do. She sings about doomed love and death, as no other pop star would do. She mixes pungent reality with seductive fantasy. All her songs are shot through with a sad, wasted glamour that it's impossible to shake from your mind, once you've heard it. She is to pop music now what Springsteen was to pop music in the seventies and eighties. She is arguably one of the best lyricists at work today, in any genre. She presents to us 'a freshman generation of degenerate beauty queens'. The portraits she paints are old-fashioned portraits of young women and young women grown old, who have never heard of the word feminism, and blindly pledge their hearts to useless and violent and masculine men. Listen to the sadness in her portraits, rather than having some knee-jerk reaction to the un-PC characters. This is no advert for female empowerment, but it portrays these doomed and sincere women with great fidelity and affection. Del Rey doesn't sneer; she empathises with her characters, she becomes her characters. There is as much depth in her portraits of superficiality as you would find in a Matt Berninger lyric. Dark Paradise is one of the most subtly powerful and devastating portraits of living after the death of a lover that you will find. Carmen is a heartbreaking portrayal of a woman who everyone envies the false image of, while the woman herself is living in hell. Million Dollar Man is a perfect indictment of a certain kind of flashy man who women will fall for, only to be mistreated. Del Rey's women are victims, yes, but it's the sincere tragedy of their situations which makes for such memorable music. The tunes, of course, are entirely sublime. The sort of tunes you thought had died out with pop's heyday. You remember Madonna circa 'Like a Prayer'? Born To Die itself is one of the most majestic pop songs ever written. She is in the same league as Prince when he wrote 'Nothing Compares 2 U' and 'When Doves Cry'. Her voice is not a perfect instrument; there's a hitch in her voice which is occasionally disruptive, but she manoeuvres around it pretty well, and her ability to move from deep sophisticate to adolescent wanna-be is frequently striking. Buy the fifteen track version. Lucky Ones is classic.