Quentin

Ryan Gosling

Jon Hamm

Al Pacino

Bryan Cranston

Robert De Niro

Samuel L. Jackson

Michael K. Williams

Alison Brie

Uma Thurman

LANA DEL REY - LEAVE LANA ALONE

It is well-known, according to several concomitant studies of the Pentagon, from Mossad and from the KGB, Brain is a webzine "prescriber". It was thus normal that we belong to the "happy few" to meet Lana Del Rey, the musical sensation which is on all the lips (this pun tended us the arms and told us "come"). We discussed extreme relooking, Eminem, the sudden celebrity, Vaness' La Bomba… In short, of life.

Lana Del Rey (25 years, Lizzie Grant in the registry) has a lot of merit, she unleashes more passions than Mylène Farmer and Lady Gaga reunited and yet she's not transgender.

After a peaceful childhood and spoiled by daddy, a tycoon of the real estate, close to Lake Placid in the state of New York, the young Lizzie decides to launch a singing career by playing in all the piano-bars of New York and ends up by releasing a first album which knows a bitter failure in 2009.

Today, for some, Lana Del Rey represents the devil in person and this, for three reasons : she chose to opt for a new name, she's visibly passed on the operating table and, oh woe, she signed on a major.

It's true that Lana has a rather prominent mouth (so what ?), that she minces and that she doesn't adopt the indie pause of rigor, otherwise called the "Activia pause" as much Anna Calvi looks tended (that must obviously cause gastric complications to be the PJ Harvey of the poor). But here is, the problem, if it is one, it is that Lana makes some fucking good music. Then why all this hate ?

Video Games and Blue Jeans are two tracks so evident that they become overwhelming. If her songs, pathos, grandiose, epic, romantic do not talk to the ayatollahs of the indie who are turning the eye as soon as a chorus is too catchy or when an "artist" (preferably bearded with a three-string guitar) sells its albums beyond the family sphere, they have at least touched the lovers of the love and the lovers of the pop, this music which has the gall of wanting to touch the largest number of people with words and notes of a disconcerting simplicity.

But, in fact, why did Lavinia make the misery so much to Princess Sarah ? But because she was jealous of course. We better understand why Christopher Owens, lead singer of Girls, but also the biggest indie whiner since Cat Power, has made a scandal because Lana Del Rey was invited on the prestigious set of Jools Holland and not him. But dude, wash your hair, write a masterpiece and maybe we'll talk later.

Hollywood Sadcore

Lana defines herself as a little trashy lolita, a "Gangsta Nancy Sinatra" and it's in this register that we discover her on the terrace of the Mama Shelter for our interview. Capped of curlers and dressed in a small dressing gown, she makes think of a starlet on the return which would give an interview at the edge of the swimming pool of its villa located in the middle of the Californian desert, black glasses on the nose and glass of whiskey in the hand.

There is however nothing, Lana is just preparing for the shooting of its music video which will take place the same night in a castle in the suburbs of Paris. For her new single Born to Die she has indeed chosen to abandon the DIY aesthetic to surround herself with the talents of Yoann "Woodkid" Lemoine who already officiated with Yelle, Katy Perry and Mystery Jets, among others.

Extreme relooking and Kabale

Since its appearance on the web this summer with the clip of Video Games, fed mostly with archive footage, of videos in Super 8 and duckface, Lana Del Rey bothers and the number of her detractors is exponential (the DFA label at the top). "Why did she released this homemade clip if a major and big money are behind all that ?" wonder the haters, always suspicious.

When we talk about it to her she did not seems to be an inlaid robot by a label as her doe eyes are moist and her voice quavering :

"We wanted to classify me as an indie artist because there is a little dark vibe attached to my music and we also said that I went from indie to mainstream totally thoughtfully but the reason for this is really simple : it is because people have loved Video Games. A music becomes pop from the moment when it becomes popular. I can understand that it may surprise certain people that it only happens to me and not to someone else, it surprised me too. You know I'm signed to a major label, but I'm still in charge of all the music like the picture. I imposed Yoann "Woodkid" Lemoine for the realization of my new clip Born to Die, it's me who chooses everything.

I did not become an another person as people like to say, I haven't adopted a character, I'm not the creation of a label. I wanted to take this name for a long time, my first album didn't worked, I thought that it was the occasion. I wanted a cinematographic name, who is catchy but which is at the same time pretty and soft. There's no idea of "reinvention" behind all this, I don't have to reinvent myself, I always thought that what I was doing was good, even when nobody was listening. I am the same person, I see the same people, I make the same music, I listen to the same music.

I don't really know why people make a fixation on my appearance. Ok I cultivate a certain look, but as you see I am normal in real life. I'm disappointed that we speak only of it because for me my music speaks for herself, I find it good. Actually I wasn't excepting people to talk about it at all. My first album didn't work, I had no expectations or any particular hope when I posted this video on YouTube this summer."

When Lana Del Rey was still Lizzie "without the lips" Grant

Inspirations

If her love lyrics and her arrangements worthy of the soundtracks of the biggest Hollywood peplums can give the envy to the most sensitive to cry like a baby, it is however the happiness and Eminem who are her main references :

"My biggest inspiration remains my life, my experiences. I experienced a lot in a very little time, and it hasn't always been easy. My main influence is love, it's an emotion so different from the others, it takes you to the heart and the body, it has an undeniable impact on my music. Even if melancholy is very present in my songs, I write them when I'm happy, otherwise I can't. I can't do anything when I'm in pain, I'm in a daze and I'm good for nothing.

Eminem inspired me a lot in the sense where he puts his life so much well into scene and music. His rhymes are so intelligent and punchy that he influences me in my writing."

Vaness' Del Rey

The editorial staff of Brain Magazine is a fan of Vaness' la Bomba in front of the Eternal, and since her recent reappearance as Vaness Del Rey, the love has only grown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJFYREfFpBA

In all logical we thus asked Lana if she had seen the kindly parodic video of the friend :

" - Lana (frightened) : No I haven't seen it, it's funny ? What is she doing ? Does she make fun of me ?
Brain : No, let's say that instead of putting images of Red Carpet in her video, she shoots pigeons in slow motion in the Parisian subway, and then poses as you, but your look is quite different...

- Lana (very feverish, tears in the eyes) : Oh okay, if you tell me that it is funny, you reassure me a little, I was afraid. You know it is not easy to hear and see people making fun of me. I don't know how to manage all that."

Indeed !

The report to the celebrity and the medias

Her look and the choice of her name show that Lana wanted to build a myth, at least a mystery, around her person, but the celebrity codes seem already to escape her and especially scare her :

"I don't know of what the future will be done, my life today is radically different from the one I was living three months ago, and I try to not take into account too much the bad press or even the good, otherwise it's going to eat me. My main preoccupation is to finish this album because that's what currently matters the most to me. My ideal is still to lead a simple life and be available to my family and friends. I don't like this media exposure, being known implies too many complications. I wonder if I will not finish this album and move on to something else."

Lana Del Rey, the Black Dahlia
 

Only one video posted on YouTube, "Video Games" was enough to make this young american pop singer the phenomenon of the season. So, buzz or bluff ? Encounter in Paris, with a strange creature taken out of a 50's movie.

She asks two hours of preparation for the photo shoot (hairstyle, make-up and stylism), advised by a funny bird called Johnny Blue Eyes. She, it's the musical phenomenon of the moment, Lana Del Rey, 25 years, plastic UFO.

Three months ago, a clip circulates on the web and has a gigantic and immediate success. Video Games present a series of extracts from film noir, young skaters and stars of hip-hop, all found on YouTube and assembled in an artisanal way.

In the middle of these pictures, Lana, young woman with a fascinating physic, lolita of the fifties to the gangsta of the modern times, sings her loving dramas in a sweet and warm voice. The pout is sulky, the video goes around the planet and projects the young woman at the rank of starlet 2.0. The excitement begins.

The public falls under the spell of the mystery singer, excited by that mouth, swollen with collagen obviously, and by the dramatic melodies which escape from it. But many people on the internet love to hate what they consider a purely marketing product and have fun searching the drawers of the web in search of the "before Lana". Parodies of the clip or sites mocking her lips multiply.

Frightened young woman or femme fatale

When she finally leaves her room, a white dress and roses on her head, to join the team of Jean-Baptiste Mondino on the roof of a hotel in Paris, we believes her straight gone out from YouTube. Same slightly wavy hair, same fifties makeup.

Her steps are slow, her wrongfully timid voice resembles that of a naive high school girl, she has glances of a stray hind. Lana Del Rey is not really at ease, especially when the photographer explains to her that he will make a close-up on her lips. Panic : "Oh no, not my mouth."

This hemmed mouth that causes so many jeers is not frankly assumed by the interested, who, after negotiations, will let herself do and even have pleasure in taking the pose. The hind caught in the headlights turns into a femme fatale.

Lana then removes her stage costume and puts on jeans, white shirt, black ballerinas, and orders a cappuccino. She poses in front of her the few cigarettes she stitched from different people, settles, the legs as tailor, breath finally.

Closely, we see the false eyelashes, the ultra pronounced makeup, but also guess a pretty young girl with delicate features. The night before, Lana Del Rey turned her new video, Born To Die at Fontainebleau with Yoann Lemoine, author under the name of Woodkid of the sublime Woodkid Iron : "He's a genius, he gave me everything I dreamed he totally respected my universe."

This is the first time that Lana Del Rey sets the foot in Paris and she did "not even had time to go see the grave of Jim Morrison". The following week, she will record two TV shows and will perform on the stage of the Silencio and the Nouveau Casino.

What a flood of requests for Lana Del Rey, born Lizzie Grant 25 years ago in the middle of Manhattan. The family – her parents are real estate agent and professor, she has a little brother student and a little sister photographer – then migrated to the north of country, at Lake Placid, before sending Lana, at 15 years, to a boarding school of the corner: "I lived in my head. I was not really alone, I was thinking a lot, I tried to understand who I was, what I wanted to do."

Lizzie/Lana returned to New York at 18 and, after her studies of philosophy quickly interrupted, begins to write her first songs and play them in clubs. The concerns of the young Lizzie are the same as today : "Love and my vision of the future, a kind of fantasy about my future. The dream of a better life, inner peace."

And then, Lizzie became Lana : "I wanted a group name. I chose Lana Del Rey because I find the sonority really nice. There was no break between Lizzie Grant and Lana Del Rey, but Video Games drew so much attention that internet users have searched and tried to figure out who I was. I created a sound world for the album (1) [to be released mid-January, at Polydor, note], which corresponds to the visual world of my clips. I did not invent a second personality, I would become insane and more importantly, I do not need any."

Lana makes her clips with iMovie

All doubts are allowed since the appearance of this girl out of nowhere. Is it really her who has directed her first videos as she claims ? How did she get such a buzz in a record time ?

A legend runs according to which a press agent, announcing her departure, would have delivered to all her contacts her last "crush" : Video Games. Lana opens wide the eyes : "Really ? It is so romantic", exclaims she while going up in the acute ones.

The truth would be simpler: "I put the video on my YouTube account and each day, I saw the number of views increase. Thirty days later, Radio 1 diffused the title when the animator Fearne Cotton said that she adored the song, then a lot of influential artists followed, like The Weeknd or Yoann Lemoine (Woodkid). It was at this time that I met people from majors. Today, I have two managers to which I am very close."

Lana Del Rey works mainly with three people : Justin Parker, a composer and producer in London, her best friend Dan Heath, composer of movie musics in Hollywood, and Emile Haynie for the hip-hop rhythms.

The inspirations of the singer are mostly visual : the cinema of the fifties, the landscapes that she knows (Brooklyn) or not (Monaco, Paris) and which "overwhelm" her.

Musically, Lana said she still needed a very orchestral background and hip-hop rhythmic : "it gives a different beauty and tension which reminds... I don't know... life."

As for the clips, she confirms, almost offended, being the director : "I work with iMovie. As for the Word software, you copy/paste, it's really easy. I had a problem of copyright with certain elements which I used, I had to remove and replace seven seconds. But most people were glad that I use their images because they loved the clip."

Her popularity, does she scare her ? "Now yes. You know, I do not like to be in the middle of  a polemic, it's not in my nature." She does not know if she feels armed enough, encircled or strong at the moment : "I love singing, but it isn't the most important in my life. If this became too difficult to support, I would stop." Her ultimate accomplishment, she ends up giving with a certain coquetry, would be "to be a good person".

(1) Lana Del Rey still has five songs to produce for her record and a song to record for the one of Damon Albarn.