Course:Lana Del Rey
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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| Important Course Pages |
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Content Note for Rape, Misogynistic Slur
The music video for Lana Del Rey's Video Games came into my life when I was at a very vulnerable and impressionable age (but perhaps still too old for it to have been so). I was twenty-one and caught up in daydreams and persona and how they informed my identity. Del Rey's mobster wife/old Hollywood persona fascinated me. Her control over her submissive and sultry image felt almost subversive. Born To Die, her first album, is pop music exploded. It is pure aesthetic, pomp and artifice. Suddenly Lizzy Grant-turned-Lana Del Rey was no longer the daughter of a blandly wealthy website domain creator but a beautiful and tragic Hollywood heroine. I admire that kind of reinvention and the commitment to it.
Since Born To Die, Del Rey has released eight albums, all like eras in my life. I can pinpoint where I was emotionally during every song and where I don’t want to be again. I can see where Del Rey has let her Born To Die persona shed as she grapples with love and loss in her late thirties, no longer a young woman anymore.
It helps that Del Rey is incredibly prolific. As she has matured as an artist, she has started writing more contemplative songs. Songs such as A&W, an ode to being a woman discarded in her thirties. She croons “did you know a singer can still be looking like a sidepiece at thirty-three?”, singing about her rape and how no one would believe her because of her image as an “American whore”.
As I age, I wonder about the personas I have put on during my life. I wonder how Del Rey feels about inspiring a generation of girls and young women for better or for worse. I appreciate growing up beside her and look forward to more music in the future.
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