3 Stars Out of 5 Stars
The internet is once again a proud father to a lithe lady by the name Lizzy Grant, more commonly known as Lana Del Rey. Her strength? This precious mockingbird has a mournful voice that carries the weight of today’s suffering youth. Del Rey is quite something with Old Hollywood style haunting her vocals throughout the album. So quirky are her generalized lyrics, so minimalist and simple, it has a junior high reading level. It is a strange contrast from the sonnets of, say, Bon Iver and The National. She gets to the point and does so quickly. It’s quite lovely, really. It’s such a shame it works against her.
Her triumphs are quickly drowned in childish angst. Del Rey is transformed from a sultry songstress to another uninventive and bitter tween. If Born To Die was a pie chart, ninety-six percent would be “won’t you love me?” while the other 4 percent would be overly-extravagant turns of phrase. The combination of “cocaine heart” and rhyming terms like “Saigon” with “ovation” is enough to make any listener cringe at the awkward use of seemingly quirky concepts. The high-brow, East-coast life has white-washed her vision with tobacco and liquor; she attempts to be svelte and wickedly clever to stand beyond the Youtube elite. Unfortunately, she fails to even stand out beyond the lyrical abilities of Rebecca Black’s “Friday.”
With singles such as “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans”, it is easy for her lyrics to appear frank and truthful. She leaves behind the eloquence for rough honesty, a style seen more through urban rap styles (heck, she even mentions her hip-hop youth in “Blue Jeans”). Yet, since the release of her album, this simplified genius fades fast. Del Rey’s combination of lyrics is clunky and thick. The use of awkward metaphors and rephrasing obvious comments (“Every time I close my eyes/it’s like a dark paradise” isn’t as insightful as it might have seemed in the studio) fails to color Miss Del Rey as a youngster beyond viral videos. With at least one brand name mentioned in each song, Del Rey is the master of superficial; where it appears she mocks our material obsessions, she wholly embodies them. Del Rey jumps the shark with her ‘aged youth’ appearance, creating the image of a smart-ass teen. While her lyrics kill any chance at existential impact, the ultimate sound of the album is relatively acceptable. The lo-fi Summer of 2011 style carries into the instrumentals, faded drum and bass gives her foolish lyrics a slow, femme urbane theme about it. She works to hits the crowd hard not with a vicious abuse of rhymes at a vivacious rate, but blunt statements and truth, where she fails miserably.
She was described as a ‘gangsta Nancy Sinatra’ by her manager, which in some ways, is relatively true. A one-hit wonder with a fabulous voice, Del Rey falls flat under both media hype and pressures because of weak songwriting. Born To Die receives 3 out of 5 stars, only because everything else about the album keeps her sputtering literature above water.
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