This morning, I had the pleasure of waking up with Ms. Del
Ray, by which I mean I left Born to Die
on repeat overnight. This came after an evening of binging on boxed wine and singing
along with “This Is What Makes Us Girls” (I bloody love that track), which itself
followed a day of scouring the internets for videos, interviews, and articles
featuring the enchanting young chanteuse.
(Who knew unemployment could be so grand?) Yes, I realize that I’m acting like a pathetically
besotted fanboy. But the fact remains; I haven’t been so addicted to an album
in a long, long time. Even truly excellent recent releases by Blondes and John Talabot have taken a backseat to Ms. Del Ray and Born to Die.
The question is: Why? Generally, I abhor “indie” and pop
music, the two categories into which Ms. Del Ray has been slotted. In fact, the
reason I finally broke down and bought my first iPod, just a year and a half
ago, was because the music being played in my gym produced in me the constant
temptation to drop a 75-pound dumbbell onto my face. What I’m trying to say is
that the music to which I am drawn typically is not the type that garners
mainstream attention. (Yes, I think it accurate to say that indie music draws
mainstream attention at this point in time. Additionally, if you are interested
in an overview of my musical tastes, see this, as well as the musical
selections that accompany my wine pairings.)
So, what is it about Ms. Del Ray and her music that has
captivated me so utterly? And, if
someone such as myself, who possesses a highly refined sonic palette, enjoys
her work so immensely, why are others, of undoubtedly inferior cultural
sophistication, so intent on slagging her off? These are the questions that led
me to write this, which I realize is but one of endless internet manifestoes
articulating an estimation of Ms. Del Ray. However, it is a necessary one
because, as I just alluded to, my opinion is better than everyone else’s,
clearly. Also, it gives me the opportunity to slag off Pitchfork’s typically wankerish review of Born to Die.
Let us begin where many of Ms. Del Ray’s disparagers fail to
even venture: How her music sounds. Listening to Ms. Del Ray sing is a
pleasure, and a quite sensuous one at that. The album commences with the title
track, in which a few breathless whispers flit in and out of the ether before
the first proper line is delivered in Ms. Del Ray’s sinfully languorous, effortlessly forceful delivery, which hangs and meanders in the air hypnotically like smoke from a
joint, and is just as intoxicating. (Note to potential employers: I’m basing my
description of marijuana use on second-hand anecdotes and its depiction in
films. I have NEVER engaged in such illicit activity myself.) Plus, she scored
big points with me by setting the video for “Born to Die” at the Château de Fontainebleau, outside and in the stunningly beautiful
Trinity Chapel. Take a look:
The production behind the voice is equally sumptuous: A
luxuriant soundscape of soaring, cinematic strings; pianos that sparkle on one
track, but plod in a delightfully lugubrious manner the next; light, agile,
unorthodox beats; and smeared, hazy, sometimes disturbing electronic effects,
which are to some extent reminiscent of the work of Clams Casino, a producer
who collaborates with hip-hop artists such as A$AP Rocky, as well as releasing
standalone work.
Basically, a new singer with a wonderful voice released an
album, the impeccable production of which marries the most satisfying conventions
of pop (Who doesn’t love cinematic strings?) with some of the most exciting
current trends in hip-hop: So what’s the problem? Why have so many decried her
music, which is so thoroughly enjoyable? Well, as numerous other commentators
have noted, a significant part of the reason has nothing at all to do with the
music, a point I will address later on, though I hope to do so in a way that avoids
the standard talking points (she has a rich dad, she’s
inauthentic, her SNL performance was bad, etc.), which are beyond stale.
But first, let’s take a look at some of the criticisms of Born to Die in Pitchfork’s review,
which, as it is a review for Pitchfork, manages to say quite a bit and nothing
at all at the same time, while being smarmy and condescending in the process.
Now, I am aware that the last sentence indicates that a standard, sophomoric screed
of “I’m right and everyone else is wrong,” for which blogs are often and rightfully
criticized, is about to begin. In the hope that things will not devolve to that point, I
will attempt to keep my criticisms mature and fair by pointing to the
fundamental, structural flaws in Pitchfork’s take on Ms. Del Ray and her album,
rather than combing though the column and stopping to have a go at each point
along the way with which I disagree. Alright, that said, let’s begin with a statement that
I found quite irritating (emphasis mine, in bold):
(…) the slick sound and sentiment
of "Radio", Born to Die's most straightforward statement of purpose ("Baby love
me 'cause I'm playing on the radio/ How do you like me now?"), places it
firmly within the realm of big-budget chart pop.
Again, let’s resist the urge to assess the validity of the
quoted text on its face; that’s not the main thing that bugs me. Instead, I want to
focus on two assumptions made in this statement, which I feel are at the heart
of what ultimately renders irrelevant the review as whole. First there is the
idea that an album, or any work of art, contains a “statement of purpose.” Does
the reviewer honestly believe that acts of expression contain, within or
perhaps accompanying them, dictated instructions on what they intend to
accomplish and how they are to be interpreted? If so, implicit in this idea is
the corollary that a work of art – whether it be music, painting, literature,
etc. – has one, single, inalterable meaning. The listener/viewer/reader would
simply have to consult the statement of purpose for that work of art and
perfect, indisputable understanding would follow. I don’t know about you, but such a world is
not one in which I would like to live. To give you an idea of what's going through my head, I’m imagining listening to Rick Santorum
interpret a Thomas Kinkade painting. That would not be an enjoyable experience.
Well, unless you happened to be in possession of a loaded firearm. In any case,
what I am trying to say is that meaning and significance are made in the
subjectivity of the individual consuming the work of art, regardless of the
particular intention(s), if any, of the producer. This means that all works of
expression are by nature polysemic, they can mean many things to many different
people at many different times in many different places. In short, it’s music,
not an essay question on a job application.
Language can also be polysemic. This leads me to the second
bothersome assumption contained in the above statement: That each and every
lyric of Ms. Del Ray’s album should be taken completely literally. The reviewer
dismisses out of hand the possibility that any sort of irony or meta-criticism
is contained within Ms. Del Ray’s writing. Perhaps the line quoted above was
meant by Ms. Del Ray to allude to an awareness of the somewhat arbitrary nature
by which success is attained in popular music, to the charge that many level at
her: that she is only successful because she is in the public eye, not because
of the quality of her music. Isn’t it a bit obtuse to assume that “Baby
love me 'cause I'm playing on the radio” is some sort of unvarnished
instruction? Generally, in forms of expression such as music and poetry,
language is not entirely straightforward; along with irony and subversion, it is
often used figuratively. In fact, I’ve been doing a little bit of that myself,
right here in this paragraph! I hope you all realized that when I turned the
phrase “unvarnished instruction” a moment ago, I meant an instruction that is literal and
direct, rather than one that has not yet had Minwax applied to it.
My apologies. Now I’m being the wanker. I could continue in
this vein by citing further examples of what has been described above. (The
paragraph in which the reviewer criticizes Ms. Del Ray for the unabashed – and, in my opinion, at least to some extent ironic – materialism of her lyrics,
while absolving Jay-Z and Kanye for a similar offense is particularly egregious;
and yes, I realize she’s saying it’s the how, rather than the what, but I would
still contest that her conclusions are quite mangled.) But, I pledged to attempt
to avoid pettiness. So, let’s move on, shall we?
A substantive point that is rightfully addressed occurs
later in the review:
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
and especially her appearance-- that's generally reserved for women only.
But the sexual politics of Born to Die are troubling
too: You'd be hard pressed to find any song 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 end 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 to 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 to Die attempts to serve as Del Rey's own beautiful, dark,
twisted fantasy, but there's no spark and nothing at stake.
I will say that I agree wholeheartedly with the first
two sentences. However, I’m not sitting in my parent’s basement on a weekend night in order to write blog
posts about things I agree with, am I? So, let’s get into the rubbish.
Leaving aside the problematic presumption that something must be “at stake” in an act of
expression, which is akin to the assumption that such acts contain statements
of purpose, I believe that the reviewer could herself be accused of taking a
sexist stance for seeing only the possibility of “an
ice-cream-cone-licking object of male desire” in Ms. Del Ray’s lyrical persona.
From what I understand, which Ms. Del Ray has confirmed in interviews, the impetus for the
album, and its main subject, was love, specifically a relationship that did not
work out. Bear with me as I take a few steps sideways, backwards, and run
around in a little circle to arrive eventually at an interpretation in which
the lyrics of the album are construed as something substantive, and not written off dismissively as utter
vapidity. Okay, here goes: Love is terrible. I am using ‘terrible’ here in the sense that it was used by Michelangelo’s contemporaries to describe the great master and his art: Phenomena that is totally overwhelming and awe-inspiring; something
that can completely shatter an individual, leaving him without the ability to even
think coherently.
As my conventional use of the male pronoun in the final
clause of the previous sentence indicates, this is an experience that can
happen to men as well as women. Indeed, certain ancient Greek philosophers and physicians (who were all men) even conceived of love as a sickness, as an affliction that one is lucky to survive, a sentiment to which I can attest. Some time ago, I was in love with an individual
who did not feel likewise, and it was indeed terrible. I felt awful all the time.
What’s worse is that I linked my sense of self-worth to that individual. My
happiness was dependent on someone other than myself, which essentially made me
less than a whole person. Nevertheless, even though being in love was
horrendously harrowing, I could not imagine
not being in love. I had bound myself so tightly to the other person that she was,
in my mind at that time, a crucial part of my existence, and I could not be
told otherwise. Put more simply: Love can sap a person – man, woman, or
transgendered – of what could be referred to as “interiority.” It’s just
something that happens to people, for better or worse. Viewed in such a way,
the scenes and situations that Ms. Del Ray paints musically, by portraying herself as unreservedly devoted to another at her own expense, could be
construed as reflections of love, in which case they could be considered successful in conveying emotional impressions accurately.
Furthermore, do such situations necessarily have to
involve “sexual politics” and have things “at stake?” Can they not simply be
powerful emotional interactions between two individuals? Or, if you for some
reason prefer buzzwords: Isn’t Ms. Del Ray guilty, at most, of writing naïvely
about the experience of being in love without taking stock sufficiently of how
she would appear as a gendered object in the brutal, unrelenting glow of the mass media, which is itself in instrument of the patriarchy?
(Forgive me. I want to hit myself in the head with a hammer after
writing that last sentence.) Anyway, my point is that the
reviewer has arbitrarily injected certain terms, standards, and expectations
into her discussion, and then used them to form an assessment of Ms. Del Ray
and her music. I just don’t see the reason for doing so, or what is gained by
it.
However, while we’re on the topic of sexual politics and being
the object of male desire, I will admit that the Lana appreciation session described at
the beginning of this essay did involve a viewing (or two) of the video for
“Video Games,” which included commentary to the effect of: “Wow. She’s gorgeous.” Now I
realize that I may be opening myself up for criticism, but I don’t view any
part of the previous statement as a problem. Just as Ms. Del Ray happens to be
a woman, she also happens to be a very attractive one. Am I not allowed to
appreciate that? Also, isn’t some measure of fantasy built into the very
structure of love songs? As I understand it, phrases such as “I will love you
till the end of time” are stock in trade for both male and female singers. The
listener can then, if he or she so chooses, imagine him or herself in either the first or second person, depending on the gender and attractiveness of the singer, the sexual
inclinations of the listener, and various other factors. I would even assert that they
are encouraged to do so.
Oh hell, I’ll just go ahead and say it: It’s nice to imagine
that a beautiful young woman who has a mellifluous voice and makes cool, artsy
videos is madly in love with me. There. If that makes me a chauvinist, well, it’s
no big deal, because there are probably a bunch of other things for which I
could also be called a chauvinist. But, that’s far from the whole reason that I
continue listening to Ms. Del Ray’s music, as I hope is demonstrated by what
has been written here.
I suppose this is as good or as bad a place to end as any.
Though the amount of literature on Ms. Del Ray has long since reached critical
mass, I hope I have contributed at least a novel sentiment or two. Of
course, you are welcome to add you own opinions, questions, or comments below,
and I will happily discuss them (or delete them, if I deem them idiotic). I’ll
close by emphasizing that I truly enjoy listening to Ms. Del Ray’s music and I
wish her the best in her future endeavors. I would say that I can’t wait for
the next album, but I know I’ll be happy with this one for quite a while.
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