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Honeymoon by Lana Del Rey. She of the gigantic hoop earrings. The red nail varnish. The heart-shaped sunglasses. The supermodel looks. The twin hand tattoos “Paradise” and “Trust No One.”
Fortunately she can make a good album too.
Her latest for Interscope/ Polydor is just out and rightly winning some acclaim and early sales movement. Here’s why she’s onto a winner, critically and commercially.
The download copy of Honeymoon sent out to journalists describes the music as “alternative” in genre, though this is misleading with Del Rey steadily moving in a pop direction. She still isn’t super commercial in a Taylor Swift way, but her success is growing.
Let’s go through the figures first.
She was rated by Spotify in June as the top-streamed female artist among U.S. users. She has 7.6 million Soundcloud followers. On YouTube she has 1.5 million subscribers, 5.7 million hits for the track “Honeymoon” alone and 61 million hits for 2011’s debut “Video Games.” She has 3.5 million subscribers on Vevo, with 91 million hits for “Video Games” there. Even in the knowledge there will be overlaps between figures, she has more than a billion video views and has already sold at least 8 million albums, according to worldwide industry sales reports.
The prices for Del Rey live shows started to rise as early as last year, with TiqIQ saying tickets on the secondary market were about $270, second only to Beyoncé.
Commercially things are looking good for the 30-year-old who was born Elizabeth Grant. She started off sounding a little more mainstream as Lizzy Grant, with an image described as “aspiring model
The makeover that followed led to countless cynical column inches about how a superstar was being created by template. The articles weren’t particularly fair. The streamlined Hollywood doom-gloom vamp who emerged was its owner simply playing with and exaggerating her character, a “gangsta Nancy Sinatra.”
Of her previous albums, Born to Die was on many critics’ lists as one of the best of 2012. (The current writer’s verdict then was that she looked “more like the future of music than just the advertising face of
The detractors have rushed to condemn every stumble since, such as a shaky performance on “Saturday Night Live” in 2012 and the relatively weaker sales of the 2014 follow-up album Ultraviolence.
Even so, Del Rey’s ride to the stars has been remarkably smooth and Ultraviolence debuted at the top of many charts. It is also more unified than its predecessor, something of a “groove album” which sticks to the same hypnotic pace across its key tracks and with Dan Auerbach producing.
So to Honeymoon, which launches off with Del Rey sighing “it’s not fashionable to love me.” If early sales continue, it is clear a lot of record buyers are going to disagree with that this time, though it would be interesting to see the gender-balance percentages and how many are lovestruck guys.
Next up on the album is the song “Music to Watch Boys To,” with another arresting opening gambit: “I like you a lot, so I do what you want.”
From the time of “Video Games,” Del Rey has faced criticism from some that she seemed to be anti-feminist by depicting less empowered women. The earlier song was mocked for the singer appearing a doormat, meekly willing to dress or undress just to please her lover: “It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you, everything I do.” She doesn’t much care that her boyfriend likes bad or insane girls as long as he comes home, grabs a beer and bosses her about.
Lana has consistently fired back on this one, with the best answer being her own artistic control. She has taken commercial risks that would have been impossible for artists in the control of record companies that shut out anything likely to damage sales prospects.
For example, the swearing. Get past the gentle harmonies and sugary strings and the bitter lines are still there. “High on the Beach” has these lines: “The truth is I never bought into your bullshit.. You could be a bad mother******/ But that don’t make you a man.”
In other words, she is still writing a requiem for her character in the earlier videos, the trailer-park girl who hangs around smoking cigarettes on dirty street corners waiting to be picked up by guys who are carrying a few more years or pounds than they might like. The endless stream of Hell’s Angels or spectacularly over-tattooed ne’er-do-wells such as that played by model Bradley Soileau could not believe their luck in meeting such an impossibly bewitchingly beautiful waif, “Lolita lost in the hood.”
Now she looks ever more like the star who has just stepped off a private jet or a catwalk . Lana has graduated to a swank beach house with a paparazzi helicopter buzzing her every move.
There is trouble in paradise. In “God Knows I’ve Tried,” she sings “I’ve nothing much to live for, ever since I’ve found my fame.”
In previous videos, she wrapped herself in the Stars and Stripes and declared “I believe in the country America used to be.” Here the American Dream has turned nastier with freaks in the California sun and hints of gun violence. For all the fancy living, love can be painful.
She makes retro music sound fresh, such as on the Italian-spiced “Salvatore” and balladry that recalls the likes of “Young & Beautiful” from the “Gatsby” soundtrack. This new album resembles film music itself, maybe of the 1950s.
Lastly, there is a cover version: after the previous torch singing of “Blue Velvet,” this time it’s a cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Understood.” That song might not work in other contexts but it seems an apt and worthy closer for this dreamy collection.
