Seriously, I love this woman and I think, if you got to know her (maybe not personally but musically) you would love her too. Lana Del Rey is an odd mix of intriguing beauty. Not in the new way beauty has come to be defined, tanned, blonde and plastic but in a mystical way that makes it seem like she is constantly being viewed through an Instagram filter. It's beauty in sepia. She is Audrey Hepburn with attitude, and I'm not talking about being able to hold her own with the men. Lana has had a strange series of life developments that have led her to become the musician she is today.
Del Rey was born the daughter of a domain investor in Lake Placid, New York. Critics have used this to suggest that her music that seems critical of American excess (National Anthem) is hypocritical. Del Rey's story however goes much deeper than the often cliched American love story with Upstate New York. At the age of 14 Del Rey was sent to boarding school in Connecticut to deal with an alcohol dependence that by anybody's standards had begun very early. She moved back to New York when she turned 18, studying metaphysics at Fordham University.
She has talked candidly in interviews that she used this time to experience New York fully. In a recent interview with GQ Del Rey professed her love for adventure in ways that most of us would consider simply downright insane. She would walk down dark alleys with the purpose of putting herself in danger,
and accept rides on the back of motorbikes with people she met down there.
For me her self styling as the 'Gangster Nancy Sinatra' is perfect. Her music harks back to the age of the Kennedy's in America, when Sinatra was king and Nancy the Queen of independent America, whilst still maintaining a modern view of the country she loves. The music is, to use the perpetually boring cliche, hauntingly beautiful, choosing odd chord combinations and a blurring between rap and singing that is surprisingly new and, quite frankly a breath of fresh air.
In my opinion Del Rey will go down as a game changer in the music industry and possibly even in modern social history. She has given everybody the right to express their distaste with things that are often percieved as the best. And by the best I mean money. As Lana Del Rey herself puts it "Money is the anthem of success, so before we go out what's your address?"
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