My qualifier is that I’ve been listening to her a lot. I felt the need to preface this review with those facts because the way this artist-who has now been compared by more than one of my colleagues to the Most Photographed Barn in America-is talked about, people are jumping through hoops of qualifiers. How else am I to reconcile the 20-odd negative reviews I’ve read that all make allowances for “Video Games” and not another one in the bunch with the fact that I’ve been chewing up these songs with my ears and singing them back to her for weeks now? Thing is, wouldn’t you be interested in a heartsick robot’s record? Why bother wasting such pithy comparisons on an artist who’s not compelling enough to absorb and question over and over? Which is not to say that the quoted above are making up their critical exegesis, or that I’m unhappy such vigorous back-and-forth is taking place, but rather that it comes across like nobody wanted to give this record a chance. How alone I am in that will be proven this week when Born to Die guns for the #1 spot on the Billboard 200. Lana reminds me of whomever the last artist was that that I felt compelled to play 76 times in a month and sing all the time because their melodies were in my head all the time. Del Rey has been compared to everything from a “faked orgasm” to an “android built by a grieving scientist to remember his hot dead wife.” I’ll throw my own into the hat: Lana’s like the robot girlfriend Warren Mears built for himself on Buffy who he eventually grows bored with and leaves for another woman. She sounded much sadder and less convinced of the words coming out of her mouth-and later it turned out people didn’t just believe they weren’t her words but that it wasn’t even her mouth. I didn’t think she played the role she’d carved out for herself as well as Nina Persson in the Cardigans, or Sarah Nixey in Black Box Recorder, or Holly Golightly. I found her imagery pandering and her phrasing slipshod. I first encountered “Lolyta” when “Video Games” first surfaced and I wasn’t entirely sold on the Artist Formerly Known as Lizzy Grant. You should Google it if you’re a Britney fan. She disagrees with me that it sounds like Britney Spears. It’s a fact that her ringtone is “Lolyta,” the original version of the Born to Die bonus track “Lolita.” We both prefer the one with the “y” spelling and the Peter Gunn-style bassline. In the shower: “Light of your life/ Fire of your loins/ Tell me you want me/ Give me them coins.” Making toast: “Diet Mountain Dew/ Baby New York City/ Never was there ever a girl so pretty/ Do you think we’ll be in love forever? Do you think we’ll be in love?” At the laptop, writing a Paste review: “Red, white, blue in the skies/ Summer’s in the air baby/ Heaven’s in your eyes.” Sometimes these weren’t me singing, but rather my girlfriend, who’s normally shy about singing but quite public about her love of Lana Del Rey. It’s a fact that I’ve caught myself singing or humming several tunes off Born to Die during this period. It’s a fact that I’ve played Lana Del Rey’s songs 58 times this week and 76 times this month. Let’s table opinions for a few paragraphs and talk about facts.
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