P3 music documentary: Lana Del Rey - Queen of sad girls

[Beautiful Loser 45,907]

Before you say anything, yes, I know that I have no life so don't judge me for translating this whole shit, I don't even know why I wanted to do it.

Hi!

I wished in May that the Swedish radio channel P3 would make a music documentary on Lana Del Rey and it seems like they published one earlier this week! I accidentally heard their documentaries on Taylor Swift and Kanye West last spring/early summer and they present the story and background fairly interestingly so I kept listening even though I don't care about them. Anyway.

This is an audio documentary where they tell the story of Lana, who she was and who she is today, and who her fans are. It's in Swedish. They have interviewed fans who know her story very well and... it's just a great summary of her. There's nothing new that we (hardcore) fans don't already know of, but in case you wanna have a listen too, I translated everything for you. I warn you, it's quite a long text. I just thought that it's pretty good summary of her career in case anyone wanna go back to check something, or I dunno.

You can listen and download the audio here. Just click on "Ladda ner (66 min, MP3)". https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1216359
If any fellow Swedes read this, I think they'll air the documentary again on Saturday, January 12th, at 17:00 / 5 PM. It aired last Tuesday morning, but that day has already passed so...

I personally thought it was really cool to know the video clips they mentioned in the documentary even before they played the audio and, since I wasn't a fan until like 2013, I kinda missed all the shitstorm of hate that Lana went through and how bad it was. They told all of that fairly well I think.

 

 

Ok. Here's the translation of everything in case you wanna listen to the documentary and read along. Apologies in advance if anything is wrong, like if it should be 20th century instead of 1900 and any mispelled names.

 

*INTRO QUOTES*

You're listening to P3's music documentary on Lana Del Rey - the queen of sad girls. My name is Axel Winqvist.

Manhattan, 2012.
In a TV studio, 8 floors up in a skyscraper on 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the spotlights turn on. In the studio, there's an audience of almost 300 people. A light turns red and it's time for broadcast of Saturday Night Live, one of USA's most popular TV shows.

Ladies and gentlemen… Daniel Radcliffe!

The actor Daniel Radcliffe is a guest. During the show, he will have taken part in several sketches which mainly joke about his role in the Harry Potter movies.

Radcliffe: I would never insult the adult fans of Harry Potter…

His job is also to present the artist for the night. The camera’s zoom in on Radcliffe who is standing in the audience as stressed staff quickly take away the decór on stage. The comedians have left the stage and a young woman in a white tight dress has entered. Her hair is big and wavy, she looks as if she was from another time, like a glamorous actress from a vanished Hollywood.

Radcliffe: Ladies and gentlemen: Lana Del Rey!

NBC’s cameras sweep over a chandelier and then she begins to sing.

*AUDIO OF VIDEO GAMES PERFORMANCE PLAYS*

Rarely has a music performance on SNL given rise to so much attention. Lana barely gets off the stage before her performance is dismissed as catastrophic and embarrassing. Bloggers and journalists write that Lana is a talentless product. They claim that her father is a rich business man who has bought her career, that she haven’t written her own songs and that she has work done on her face.
The story of Lana Del Rey starts with a storm filled with hatred and it seems that her career is over even before it got to start.

*GODS AND MONSTERS PLAYS*

A large landscape is spread across in the north of the state of New York, with tall mountains, mile spread woods and mirror lakes. Curvy roads seek in between trees which turn into a firework of red, orange and yellow in the fall time. Here also lies the small community Lake Placid with approximately 2500 inhabitants. British Pathetone Weekly describe the place in a film from 1932:

*MAN FROM MOVIE TALKS*

Since the beginning of 1900 has Lake Placid been a resort destination for Americans with lots of money. The inhabitants spend their time ice skating and skiing during the winters, and rowing and hiking during the summers.
In the 80’s, a family moves in from New York. It’s the couple Robert and Patricia Grant who have left their jobs in the advertisement industry on Manhattan for a new life. The family looks like the mental image of the American dream in photos. They are beautiful and dressed in polo shirts and dresses with collars. The oldest daughter in the family is a blond girl with perfectly white teeth. She strikes a carefree smile to the camera and embraces her younger siblings. Her name is Elizabeth Woolridge Grant and will later transform into Lana Del Rey.
A mystery already begins here. Many journalists have described Elizabeth Grant’s childhood as if she belonged to the most upper class and that her father was one of USA’s richest persons.

Woman: I see it as the audience who has filled in the gaps, that she would have been some kind of super-super upper class who has flown all over the globe in her private jet.

This is Hanna Johansson, culture writer at, for instance, Expressen and a big fan of Lana Del Rey.

Hanna: When you read about her and just focus on what it really says, well, "her mom was like a teacher and her dad was some kind of entrepreneur". It isn’t that glamorous in reality, she is rich but not like in a sexy upper class way.

Who the Grant family are and what part they play in her career will later bring great attention. But, at the moment, Elizabeth is still a child who plays together with her siblings. The Grant family is musical; dad Robert plays piano together with the children and Elizabeth sings in a choir.

Hanna: It was a church choir. She went to a Catholic church.

On the outside, it looks like Elizabeth is the perfect daughter – she is beautiful and interested in religion and philosophy, and at a Christmas play in school she even plays an angel. But Elizabeth also spends her schooldays with sitting next to a window and dreaming away her life. She thinks that Lake Placid is small and absolutely boring. Perhaps this is why she seeks for something new in her teenage years.

Man: She has said, in interviews, that alcohol was her first love.

This is Tony Eks(X?), stylist and video director, who is also a big fan of Lana Del Rey. Tony tells us about the beginning of Elizabeth’s teenage years when she starts to drink. The alcohol became a way to cure the boredom and the role as the perfect big sister. She prefers strong liquors as whiskey and rum. She loves the feeling of being intoxicated. She dates older guys and dreams of living fast and dangerously. Later, she’ll say that there was a time when she drank every day, any time of the day.

Tony: It became a sort of alcoholism kind of quickly. And then she was sent away to a boarding school in Connecticut.

There’s little information about Elizabeth’s years in the boarding school in Kent, Connecticut. She’s sent there as a form of rehab to become sober. The education is tightly connected to the Episcopal Church in the USA and the campus is formed by beautiful brick buildings and large lawns. On the internet, there are pictures from Elizabeth’s yearbook where it states that her major is philosophy and that she’s engaged with choirs and the school’s newspapers.
When she’s famous, she gets a question about her time in the school by paparazzi from PopCandies TV:

Paparazzi guy: Lana? You went to boarding school, right? Do you feel, like, do you feel, like, boarding school keeps girls out of trouble or makes more bad girls?

Lana: *laughs* Depends on the girl!

*BOARDING SCHOOL PLAYS*

Elizabeth later writes a song, titled “Boarding school”. It’s about a messy girl who does crack and is high during classes. Some has interpreted it as a comment to her years in Kent, others as pure satire.
Elizabeth’s parent’s plan works. During the years in Kent, Elizabeth becomes sober. She says it’s a tough decision to give up on alcohol but that she’s always present in small miracles who confirms that she’s on the right path. One miracle is the music. Elizabeth gets accepted to a university she turns down on; instead, she moves to her uncle who lives on Long Island outside of New York. Here, Elizabeth works as a waitress at a restaurant and her uncle teaches her how to play six accords on guitar.

Tony: She’s said that with those six accords, she can write a million songs. And that’s how it went.

Elizabeth begins to write her own songs. A year later, she moves to Bronx in New York to start studying at Fordham University.

Tony: She took philosophy and metaphysics at the university because she wanted to find the connection between God and science. And I think that’s interesting, that she is a seeker.

But it’s not only philosophy who interested Elizabeth.

Tony: During her time at university, she did a lot of volunteering with youths, homeless people, drug addicts… because she was sober by then and had said good-bye to addiction.

When Elizabeth isn’t studying or is doing volunteering, she’s exploring New York. She calls it her “seeking for strangers”. That means that she goes out during the nights through dark and dubious blocks she’s unfamiliar with. To GQ Magazine, she says that she seeks for people with the same energy as herself, that she wants to be open to the universe. She says that during her young years in New York, situations could happen when she would sit in the back of a motorcycle and went away together with a stranger.
If Elizabeth’s nightly explorations of New York is an exaggerated story or not is difficult to tell. But, what we do know, is that the music takes a bigger part of her life.

Tony: She worked with some different producers and tried to find her vibe, and in the meantime, she played in bars and clubs in Manhattan.

Under names like Sparkle Jump Rope Queen and May Jailer, Elizabeth records different demos and performs at open mic-nights.

Tony: There are loads of clips on YouTube from these early performances before she got her break through. And then, her hair was bleached blonde, wears a manly, old, sweaty t-shirt and stands alone at the microphone and sings, and that’s nothing which money has been spent on at all, there’s no big show, it’s kind of acoustic.

In a video from the fan account Lizzy Grant TV stands Elizabeth on stage with cupped hands over the microphone.

Lana: Hi… I’m Lizzy Grant…

She greets the audience shyly and then begins to sing Mermaid Motel, a happy song about love.

*AUDIO OF VIDEO OF MERMAID MOTEL PLAYS*

The culture writer Hanna Johansson again:

Hanna: The music itself is, perhaps, not that terribly different from what was made when she became Lana Del Rey, but her appearance was the biggest- That’s the biggest difference.

Lizzy Grant might not have had the obvious glamorous appearance as Lana Del Rey, but there are similarities with how she acts on stage.
Tony Eks(?) again:

Tony: She’s still that girl in this bar when she’s on stage. Like, she is almost like a street performer in a way, that she stands and just starts singing.

In 2006, Elizabeth is in a competition of singer-songwriters in Williamsburg. In a grainy video from the arranger’s YouTube account tells a man from the jury what they’re looking for:

Man: I think that the best strategy for any competition is to be an extraordinarily beautiful woman and have really great songs to a really beautiful voice, that’s a strategy that works everywhere.

And then, a 20-year-old Elizabeth is being interviewed. Her hair is blonde and her cheeks are rosy, where she’s sitting in a bar.

Lana: It’s… pretty exciting to have made it all the way to the finals. I… I hoped that I would and… I think we all agree that we wished that it could last even longer, ‘cause we had such a good time.

Elizabeth doesn’t win the competition, but in the crowd is a man from a minor indie label which is called 5 Points Records. Elizabeth gives him a demo and she gets signed. She uses the money she gets in advance to get a trailer in a trailer park in New Jersey.
When Index Magazine pays the trailer a visit, the reporter meets a strikingly cheerful Elizabeth, dressed in a large baseball jacket and the hair pulled up with a scarf which draws the thoughts to Amy Winehouse, and shows around the trailer park.

Lana: The guy who has the red car, he always had the best fake flower garden so I was in competition with him but I never won.

Reporter: *laughs* I feel like this is a Discovery Channel.

Elizabeth decorates her trailer with fake aquariums, tapestries and sea shells. Life in the trailer park seems to give her inspiration because in the same year, she releases her first EP under the name Lizzy Grant. In the studio, she works together with the producer David Kahne who has previously collaborated with artists such as The Strokes, Regina Spektor and Paul McCartney. The title track, which is called Kill Kill, gets a video – and here, you can see a seed of what later will become Lana Del Rey.

*KILL KILL PLAYS*

Hanna: In that video, there are a lot of esthetic markers which are already there, I mean… it’s filmed with some Super 8 film, there’re American flags, she’s styled as Marilyn Monroe, like, there’s a lot of that which you will later associate with Lana Del Rey.

Elizabeth moved back to Manhattan and continues to write. The music she creates is sometimes acoustic and somewhat minimalistic. It’s a form of indie rock which is popular at the late 00’s.
Her debut album is released in 2010, titled Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant. Ray is spelled at the beginning with an A instead of an E, but it is clear that an important piece of the puzzle has been found. Elizabeth talks about the name for MTV:

Lana: My sister and I were spending a lot of time in Miami and we have a lot of friends there from Cuba and we were… hmm, going out at night, and I’m- This was for a while and I knew that I wanted, um, a name that sounded sorta exotic and reminding me of… like, the sea side on the Floridian coast.

But Lizzy Grant’s record doesn’t live for long.

Tony: That record disappeared after only a few months up (on the internet).

Shortly after the release, Elizabeth went to her label with two new managers – Ben Mawson and Ed Millett. They make sure that Elizabeth can buy back the rights to her music. Her album vanishes without a trace from iTunes, and so does Elizabeth.
The artist she is now will soon be replaced for a new persona.

*BORN TO DIE PLAYS*

After getting herself out of the contract with 5 Points Records, Elizabeth Grant moves to London. She lives together with her manager Ben Mawson and polishes her sound. Elizabeth feels like she’s not being taken seriously because she’s singing with a high/light voice, so from now on she begins to use her lower register. Here she can be heard in acapella in a video from MySpace:

Lana: *SINGS MILLION DOLLAR MAN DEMO*

Elizabeth also polishes her aesthetic. Because, for every song she completes, she also creates a video collage. The style resembles the video for Kill Kill where Lana, as Lizzy Grant, stood with an American flag wrapped around her in (???) Super 8 filter.
The video director and Lana fan, Tony Eks(?), again:

Tony: In these early videos, which she has created herself, we can see her in a webcam, she pouts with her lips and looks sad. And then it’s mixed with classic American cars, old Hollywood stars, there’re fireworks at 4th of July.

*VOICE OF HOLLYWOOD ACTRESS*

Elizabeth publishes her collages on YouTube and it seems that a lot of young people are drawn to her dreamy nostalgia from the mid-1900’s.

Hanna: That’s super interesting, that’s like nostalgia of something which we haven’t experienced.

Tony: Like, I have never in my life swooned over this old 50’s rockabilly- I think it’s really cringey. But then she came and made everything so damn good, and I think that’s because she adds this dark feeling.

Lana: *SINGS VIDEO GAMES*

During her time in London has Elizabeth written a song about a love relationship. In the song, she observes her boyfriend who plays World of Warcraft and drinks beer. She tells about the relationship which inspired her to write the song to British NME:

Lana: You know, i-it was just a time in my life when I had let go of all my own personal career and ambitions, and just enjoyed being with him at home when he’d come home from work and play video games and I would write while I watched him, so… I think, when I wrote that song, I was just reflecting on, like, the sweetness of it but also the fact that there was something else that I was longing for.

Video Games is one of the songs Elizabeth puts out on YouTube. And now she’s calling herself as Lana Del Rey.
In the video, she’s in front of a web camera while clips from cartoons, skaters in San Francisco and the façade of the iconic hotel Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles flashes by. The video gets more and more viewers.

Tony: Then I got very fascinated, what a fucking good song and how large and bombastic it is with such an epic darkness that you usually never get to hear in such music. It felt so weird and it spoke to me a lot. You got very curious of who she was.

*VIDEO GAMES PLAYS*

In October 2011, Lana gets signed to Interscope, one of the largest record labels in the world. Video Games is released as a single and a new album is being planned. At the same time, Lana is appointed as “the next big thing” by the British music paper Q. In a dark floral dress, golden earrings and wavy hair like an old film star, she meets the press after the gala.

Male reporter: I feel that people don’t know that much about you, can you tell us a bit about your background?

Lana: I mean, there’s really not that much to know, I’ve been singing and writing for a long time in New York and sort of came to London to start writing again.

Male reporter: A lot of people have watched Video Games online, what do you think is the reason behind that?

Lana: Hmm… I know a lot of things, but I don’t know about that. I’m not sure why.

But not everyone are loving the new, mysterious star. Because even before Lana’s debut album is released, different rumors are spread. The journalist Michael Netta(?) in American PBS:

Michael: She sells the indie rock image but in reality she’s got a super rich dad, a pop record she paid to have removed from shelves a couple of years back and is in the center of this huge marketing machine that have basically constructed her. To a lot of people, this makes Lana Del Rey a big, fat liar.

There are a lot of people who think that Lana Del Rey is a fake product. That she has, in lack of interest for Lizzy Grant, created a persona who is trying to be underground and alternative, even though she has both agents and labels behind her. Critics mean that Lana is trying to make it sound as if she has grown up in a trailer park when she from reality is coming from a villa in upstate New York.

Hanna: The thing which is always coming back is this question of thruthfullness – is she just a rich girl whose father just has bought a musical career for her?

In an interview for Pitchfork, Lana says that the fact that her father is an entrepreneur doesn’t automatically make him a successful tycoon. She also says that they have had little contact since she moved from home.

Tony: Her parents have said that they have never had loads of money, but I think she has had it rough either, not in that way which many people thought at first, like, “Oh, she lives in a trailer and creates indie pop and homemade music videos! ♥”. That’s very contructed, and it was a shock for people when they got to know that.

The theory of who Lana truly is continues, not in the least when it comes to her appearance and pouty lips.

Hanna: The lips - people were totally obsessed over them in 2011. I wonder if it’s a sign of the times we live in that we now, seven years later, really… it feels like the lest harmless thing if someone has work done on their lips, everyone has done it. But it was maybe not like that then, it was something which made people absolutely furious about.

Lana herself claims that she has certainly has no work done.

Tony: Concerning these big, swollen lips, she has said it herself that she wished that she hadn’t pouted so much if she had known that so many people would watch her video that she had put together at home.

Lana Del Rey is 26 years old. A big part of the music world’s eyes are directed towards her. In many’s eyes, she’s now a fraud. Her 60’s makeup is made up, her replies in interviews feels made up and is her music even good?

Hanna: A very common opinion was that she was a nobody. There was one text that came out, “What makes Lana Del Rey cringe worthy? A literally analysis.” It analyzed her lyrics and come to the conclusion that they were banal/nothing special and were very critical about that. “Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry”, that’s kinda, that’s not super deep, maybe.

Two weeks before the album Born To Die is released will Lana perform at one of the USA’s largest TV shows.

Male voice: It’s Saturday Night Live!

Radcliffe: Hi, I’m Daniel Radcliffe and I’m hosting Saturday Night Live this week and (???) guest: Lana Del Rey.

Male voice: It’s Saturday Night Live!

The actor Daniel Radcliffe is guest at Saturday Night Live and presents Lana. Millions of people are home are watching their TVs, oblivious that they will watch the decade’s most questioned performances.
Lana enters the stage in blue spotlights.

Tony: She’s dressed in a long, white dress, totally, utterly nicely 60’s styled, what should you call it?, honey blonde hair.

*AUDIO FROM SNL VIDEO GAMES PERFORMANCE*

Tony: She’s twirling and glances away a bit nervously up to the roof and is swaying quite on her voice. Well, it becomes quite an outcry because she’s such a bad live performer.

Lana doesn’t have time to finish her singing before critics slays her participation in the show.

Hanna: It has been described as so catastrophic, so embarrassing for everyone involved. I read some old tweets and Juliet Lewis(?) wrote that “this feels as if you’re watching a 12-year old”.

SNL is Lana’s first contact with the broad, American audience. Earlier she’s been jested by critics and bloggers – now, it’s as if all of America have turned their backs on her. The YouTuber Michael Buckley reviews:

Buckley: Let’s talk about Lana Del Rey, shall we? Um, when she came on the screen, I thought, “Oh my god, she’s lovely, she’s in a wedding dress, this might be interesting!” Then she started singing, and it was so slow and so odd, and I thought it was a joke, I thought “Is that Kirsten Wiig in a wig?” I was like “This is not a real song!” and it went on and on. I don’t think she sang any notes or had any inflection(?), I don’t know how she stayed awake!

An e-mail gets leaked from a host on American NBC who called Lana’s performance for one of SNL’s worst of all time.

Hanna: She was ridiculed a lot after that. The SNL editorial staff made a joke about it in their “weekend updates”, this news sketch where Kristen Wiig made a Lana Del Rey imitation.

SNL, three weeks after Lana had been the show’s guest:

Wiig: *sings falsely*

Male voice: What is that noise? What’s that- Ohh, look! It’s Lana Del Rey! Lana, three weeks ago, uh, you were on the show and you sang two songs off your new album.

Wiig: That’s what I thought I did, Seth, but, based on the public’s response, I must have instead clubbed a baby seal while singing the Taliban national anthem.

But Lana is not only ridiculed in the sketch. Kirsten Wiig and SNL also give her critics a word:

Seth: Some, uh, critics, they pointed out that you attempted to sing a few years ago under your real name, Lizzy Grant, and I guess they thought your new name, Lana Del Rey, seemed, like, a marketing gimmick.

Wiig: Yes, and they were absolutely right. No serious musician would ever change their name. Except, maybe, for Sting, Cher, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, everyone else in hip-hop and, of course, Bob Dylan.

Seth: That’s an excellent point.

Hanna: It’s not unheard of that a pop artist gets into a role or is a bit off (when performing) live. But it was for some reason treated like that at that time.

What is it that makes Lana Del Rey get such massive criticism? In interviews from the beginning of her career, it’s difficult to determine if she sometimes is trying to play a role or if she’s simply just not used to be interviewed.

Hanna: She often plays cocky but… she kinda isn’t. That might have made her a target for a certain type of mockery.

Eventually even the critics get a (harsh) response.

Tony: First, there was a concept of her being fake, “this was a disappointment” and she wasn’t this really sweet young girl with pouty lips that they had praised to the skies as an indie queen, but this was a construction. Then came this thought, “Alright, who have made this construction?”, “It’s the record insudtry!”, and then came the think pieces(?) such as “But wait a minute, is it because she’s a woman that makes us so disappointed?” and “Why isn’t she allowed too to create an identity as an artist?”.

In an interview with Dutch FaceCulture gets Lana a question about how much of her alter ego is different from Lizzy Grant:

Lana: They’re very much the same person. Like, when I started singing I just considered what I was doing an art project. There was always this plan to just sorta create a sonic and visual world that I found to be beautiful. Umm, it’s the same person, just with a different name. *giggles*

Perhaps is the difference between Lana and Lizzy Grant not as big as people had thought. And what seemed to be made up seems to come, with a large probability, from herself and not from a record label.

Tony: You can feel it when you’re listening to the songs, it doesn’t matter, the songs are so good, the lyrics are so beautiful, everything connects so much. And, what, I’ve never met anyone in the fucking music industry who could be this smart and create something so beautiful, like a universe. I am pretty sure that she’s the one who’s in charge.

Born To Die is the first album which Elizabeth releases under the name Lana Del Rey. When it’s released in the beginning of 2012 has thousands of articles been written about think pieces about her persona and artistry. The analyses have been going around and around, but the audience doesn’t seem to have grown tired of the cool singer, no matter who she is.

*COLA PLAYS*

Despite the harsh critique, Born To Die sells millions of copies – it becomes one of 2012’s most successful albums. Because there is an interest for the mysterious star Lana Del Rey. From her earlier career there are videos of hundreds of young people are screaming and crying outside of studios and hotel rooms, waiting to catch a glimpse of their idol. But no one knows yet how Lana has been affected by the hate and mockery.
She gets interviewed by MySpace, 2012. In the video, she’s sitting in front of a vanity in a hotel room and looks down to the ground with a sorrowful expression.

Female reporter: What would you say to all the haters?

Lana: I don’t think I would say anything.

Two years later tells Lana to the magazine Fader that the public image of her is created by journalists. She says that nothing that has been written about her is true and that she’s been completely broken during the harshest attacks. She gives the impression in the interview of being exactly who Lana Del Rey claims to be: a young woman in a sad world. In the meantime, she has built her own universe with her lyrics and videos.

Hanna: The themes which she speaks of are very much about the idea of the USA, the idea of America. A very beautiful and glamorous place but might conceal something very ugly under the surface. It’s a lot of “surface”, a lot of beauty but with jagged edges in a way.

In summer 2012 releases Lana the video for her single National Anthem. In the video plays the rapper A$AP Rocky the American president John F. Kennedy. Lana is playing both Kennedy’s wife Jackie and Marilyn Monroe who has been rumored for a long time to be Kennedy’s lover.

Hanna: She has some kind of solidarity with this “other woman”. She has in overall, I think, a fascination for women who don’t exactly do what they’re supposed to.

*NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS*

Hanna: I think that it’s so terribly good. The phrase, “tell me I’m your national anthem”, I think it’s very strong but, also, I’m like “but what kind of idea is that, it the silliest thing I’ve ever heard”.

Later the same year comes another video which makes a lot of people raise their brows. It’s the video for the song Ride, where Lana is seen together with a motorcycle gang.

Tony: In that one she portrayed a prostitute who rides around with a MC gang through the US.

In one scene, Lana is bent over an arcade flipper machine with an older man behind her. In another scene, she’s sitting in the back of a motorcycle in a desert landscape and later escapes an attempt of rape up in the mountains. The video ends with Lana declaring that she’s crazy – but free.

Hanna: She shows and sings and portrays often a very destructive life. Not to show that it’s so horrible, but neither to say that it’s so cool, but it can be a bit of both. It can be… very beautiful and painful at the same time.

Ride is criticized for romanticizing prostitution, violence and how Lana is objectified by the older men in the video. Lana is now both loved and hated.

Tony: It was like a breaking point for her. Her storytelling only got clearer and clearer as she, in the meantime, is holding all these strings to her universe.

Some claim that Lana is a bad role model. At the same time, it seems that the dark world she has created continuously attracts new listeners. Because Lana’s most dedicated fans can be found in a group which is called “sad girls”.

Female voice: Sad girl is, in its original form, I’d say, someone who overindulges in their sadness in a way, and glorifies the feeling of being sad and makes it into something cool.

This is Fredrika Tellandersson, PhD student in media science(?) at Rotgers(?) University. Fredrika has, in her research, studied young women which on Tumblr and Instagram completely indulges in the dark and sad.

Fredrika: It might not be so much about what you’re sad about, just that it’s nice to be sad, and that it’s the melancholic’s pleasure.

A typical “sad girl” posts pictures of and quotes of melancholia, diagnoses and mental illness. Not rarely together with pictures in pink and a pretty shimmer.

Fredrika: Lana matches very well in that aesthetic, I’d say, like her flowers, roses, but also cigarette.

The sparkling pictures of anti-depressive pills and smoking girls with a sad frown is what “sad girls” use to create memes about being depressed.

Fredrika: A typical post which has been re-blogged 42 304 times: and it only says “it’s summer vacation, you know what that means – isolation and severe depression”.

Lana quickly becomes an icon for other “sad girls” because she, in different ways, combines sorrow together with beautiful melodies and nostalgic video clips. Later, she’ll even write a song with the title Sad Girl. But after her first album are the fans drawn to her songs with titles such as Summertime Sadness and Dark Paradise. Lana’s image as a sad girl becomes even bigger after an interview with The Guardian which brought attention.

Male reporter: Do you see, like, is there like a fantasy of dying young yourself?

Lana: Um… yeah. I mean… You know… I wish I was dead already.

Male reporter: *giggles* Why do you say that?

Lana: *giggles* I do.

Male reporter: No, you don’t.

Lana: I do. Yeah, I do, yeah, I don’t wanna have to, like, keep doing this, you know, that I am.

Male reporter: The music? Or just being a pop star and being alive?

Lana: Everything.

In a conversation about Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and other artists who have died young says Lana that she wishes that she was dead. Her answer raises a lot of attention. Not in the least from Kurt Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.
News24 reports:

Female voice: The Video Games singer has whipped up a fan frenzy since opening up about her desire to die. Frances Bean Cobain want Lana Del Rey to know that romanticizing early death is not cool and, in a series of tweets, Frances Bean wrote this to Del Rey: “I’ll never know my father because he died young and it becomes a desirable feat because people like you who think it’s ‘cool’. Well, it’s not. Embrace life, because you only get one.”

Lana will later announce that it was the reporter who asked leading questions, that she didn’t mean what she said. But by then it’s already too late.

Tony: Somewhere at that point, I think it became a bit too much for people, this dark and depressive “sad girl” thing.

Some claim now that Lana has crossed the line, others mean that she’s actually doing something good when she’s talking about sadness and destructiveness. A fan on YouTube with the username The Ryon Show has filmed a meeting between themselves and the star. Ryon is standing backstage together with other fans and is talking with Lana through an iron gate.

Ryon: Ok, well, you’re such an inspiration to me, and I’m just gonna say this. Um, a couple of months ago, I almost tried killing myself and when I listened to your music, it put me in a place like no other. I would get high, I would get drunk every night, but when I listened to your music, I would just pray and you helped me through it, so thank you so much.

Lana: Well, I am so glad-

Ryon: I love you.

Lana: -thank you, I love you, too, baby. *kisses him*

Fredrika Tellandersson thinks that “sad girls” and others who are feeling bad are not necessarily feeling worse by (listening to) Lana. On the contrary, she believes that the culture of sharing ones moodiness creates a feeling of belonging.

Fredrika: I absolutely believe that there’s a community in that, absolutely. I believe that it makes people less lonely and makes them feel less not-normal or odd.

Tony: I can only speak for myself, but I became incredibly attracted that this was such a huge commercial artist who touched at all these things which you otherwise push away.

Fredrika: That’s what Lana points at: yes, it’s ok to be sad.

Lana is still in the beginning of her career but she has a unique contact to her fans. In a clip from a concert in Dublin, she’s seen in a white lace dress. She thanks her fans and then breaks down in tears.

Lana: We have two more songs, but I just wanted to say, you know, a lot of people have said a lot of things about me and… You know, I really-

Later, she’ll reveal that she’s been haunted by a mysterious and prolonged illness. She’s tired and overworked, and on the stage in Dublin she’s overwhelmed by the feeling that the crowd cares more about her that what she does. She’s raised by the fans but broken down by the criticism.
But she will soon be back and give more of herself and the universe she has created.

Fredrika: She goes all in into this “sad girl” thing.

*ULTRAVIOLENCE PLAYS*

Lana moves to Los Angeles during the success from Born To Die. She rents a house in Hollywood Hills together with her boyfriend Barrie-James O’Neill who is a singer in the Scottish folk-rock band Kassidy. From the couple’s house, the Pacific Ocean can be seen on days when there’s not too much exhaust/smog and haze. The walls are decorated with pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Kurt Cobain.
In an interview with The Fader, Lana’s entourage is described. It’s a staff containing of six persons where, among others, a body guard and a stylist are working full time. Lana says that she’s never the star in her own show, that she’s always the quiet one in the group, that she hasn’t had the energy to work with anyone else because she’s so shy. It is in this environment where Lana’s third album, Ultraviolence, is created. Lana says for a long time that she doesn’t want to make any more music after Born To Die, but she’s starting to think differently. She decided to make an ever more cinematic, and slightly more minimal, album.

Tony: Ultraviolence, which came after, is her darkest record.

Hanna: It really is as if she goes to another level.

On one of the tracks, it was intentionally thought that Lana would collaborate with the rock legend Lou Reed. She flies to New York to meet him, but on the same day she arrives she’s met with a message. ABC reports of what has happened:

Male reporter: America is mourning the loss of one its founding fathers of rock and roll.

Lou Reed is dead in the suites after a liver transplant. The song, Brooklyn Baby, which Lana has written with Reed in her mind, becomes a solo song. In June 2014 she also breaks up with her boyfriend Barrie-James through an interview with the German magazine 20 Minuten. But Barrie-James seems to have totally missed that he’s been dumped when he’s talking with a reporter from American TNZ.

BJ: Don’t believe what you’re reading. It’s not over.

In the same month, Ultraviolence is released and the title track is immediately gaining attention and debate.

Hanna: It is, in some ways, more explicit than her previous songs about being in destructive relationships. Like, there’s a line in it which is so… “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”, which is coming from some old Crystals song from the 60’s which is a really happy pop song which is about living with a guy who hits you.

While Ultraviolence received critical acclaim, there are many who considers Lana to be a controversial figure.

Tony: It really starts to create debates, “is Lana Del Rey even a feminist?” and “what kind of chick is this who is singing about all of these things?”

Lana’s reputation isn’t getting better when she makes an interview with The Fader on how she sees feminism. And Varsity(?) Entertainment reports:

Male reporter: Don’t call Lana Del Rey a feminist! The west coast singer admits she doesn’t really care for talking about politics when it comes to women’s rights. “For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept”, she says.

In the interview Lana says she’s more interested in the car brand Tesla than feministic problems.

Hanna: Which… is such an incredibly silly answer in many ways. You maybe want, when someone is making a song which might romanticize a violent relationship, that the person who has made the song will say something more well-thought like, “of course I’m against violence – I am an artist”. It’s almost as if she’s makes this… “I think feminism is boring, I think the space is fun”.

When Lana is criticized for her lyrics about violence in close relationships/domestic violence and for dismissing feminism, a lot of other artists do the opposite at this time. Beyoncé tours the world with a backdrop which says “feminism” in large, pink letters, which can be interpreted as the opposite terminal/pole to Lana.

Fredrika: Many of them come out as feminists and it’s really this “girl power!”, we’re almost back to this “empowerment!” and it’s just like that! And then we have Lana who comes with Ultraviolence which is the complete opposite, really the opposite of the strong girl.

In another interview, with the Frenchmen Laura Leishman(?), Lana elaborates her thoughts with the line “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”.

Lana: So for me, like, when I put something into a song, like, it’s not always that literal, obviously that line is gonna have some negative connotations for our friends out there, some of our female friends out there. But, you know, I mean, in a way, like, I was just saying I really- I was more expressing, like, a passion, like, I just really enjoy a relationship that has a strong physicality, a strong chemistry… And, like, some of the time, you know, I realize when I say things like… Because I’m not that sarcastic, like, by nature. A lot of things I say are sort of taken super literally and, you know, for me there is always a lot of different meanings behind.

Hanna: She releases her songs to the world and then people have to deal with it. But that also what you kind of like about her, she drives her own race.

Fredrika: That’s what art is for, to be able to explore those feelings without going there in reality.

Lana has given her critics her answer. She doesn’t compromise with her expression and goes her own way. But she also has fans. Ultraviolence sell almost a million copies during its first release week and some fans make bigger noise than others.
Clevver News reports:

Female reporter: Kim and Kanye’s wedding is getting more and more romantic by the minute! First Paris, and now Lana Del Rey!

In May 2014 performs Lana at Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s wedding party in the castle Versailles. The waiters and waitresses are dressed like Marie Antoinette and the guests arrive in golden carriages with feathers.

Hanna: She performs this song Young And Beautiful which was also in the movie The Great Gatsby as well.
Unlike the rest of the three-day-long party’s lavish budget, Lana plays for free.

Hanna: They’re friends, so she performs as a friend.

American TNZ:

Lana: I would never let a friend pay me to sing at a wedding.

Male reporter: Lana, you’re totally worth it!

Lana and Kanye West will meet again in the future, but, at the moment, Lana is busy with getting new friends.
In the summer of 2015, Lana heads out on a tour together with Courtney Love. The rock legend, who is mother to Frances Bean Cobain, doesn’t seem to have anything against Lana for romanticizing her late husband’s suicide a few years ago. On the contrary, two provocative from each generation are seen, meeting each other.

Fredrika: It just made so much sense that Courtney Love and Lana Del Rey fit together, because it’s the same, to quote, “bad feminism” even though their expression of feelings is different. Courtney Love uses a lot of anger in a way.
Courtney Love in American CBS:

Courtney: We became really good friends and, um, I got obsessed with her, I really like her music a lot.

The Endless Summer Tour goes on for two months in North America. Only a few years earlier was Lana ridiculed for her shaky live performance in SNL. But the reviews sound different now.

Tony: You can tell that this is a person who has grown incredibly a lot as a performer.

A year later will Tony Eks(?) see Lana at Bråvalla Festivalen in Sweden. The emotions for the concert are mixed.

Tony: She’s the best artist I know of, and me and my friends go to Bråvalla only to see her. We drive the wrong path, or we arrive just in time the enter the festival area when she starts her set. And you’re thinking like “ok, will this be good?”, it hasn’t been that much hype over the live performances even though I love the music. So we run over to the stage, I think West Coast is the first song, and the whole concert is so incredibly good.

Lana’s voice is now strong and clear. She interacts with the audience, takes selfies and smiles. But she still is that same person who performed in small bars in New York ten years ago.

Tony: Her style on stage is so simple but it feels very honest and straightforward and maybe it’s not necessary to have choreography or some dope scenography with flashing lights. Maybe it is like how it was for the young musician who was performing in bars in Manhattan, but in larger propotions.

Halfway through the Endless Summer Tour is a rumor starting to spread that new music might be on the way. And in September arrives the album Honeymoon. On the cover is Lana in a StarLine bus which is used for sightseeing in Los Angeles. She’s wearing sunglasses, a floppy red hat and on the truck is an American phone number in blue. When persistent fans call the number, they can hear a teaser of the album and sometimes even talk with their idol, like in this clip from British NME:

Lana: That’s a pretty name, I like that.

Female: Thank you, we love your music and, um, the new album is great.

Lana: Thank you so much, what are you guys…

If Ultraviolence was a minimalistic album, then Honeymoon is grander. Strings and loud drums are heard in the songs and Lana is now acclaimed in unison. Many music reviewers say that it is her best album so far.
But, what happens next is even more noteworthy. Lana will soon be back and surprise the fans and, not in the least, her “sad girls”.

*HIGH BY THE BEACH PLAYS*

In 2016 gets Lana interviewed by Billboard Magazine on the red carpet of the American Grammy gala.

Male reporter: Are you gonna drop another album anytime soon and surprise everyone?

Lana: I don’t think it’ll be a surprise when I do it but, you know, I will soon and I’m working on stuff I love, so...

Lana is wearing a striped dress and her hair is up. She looks as if she’s comfortable in the spotlight, unlike at the beginning of her career. But when the album, which the reporter asks about, gets released it releases in contrast to what Lana said in the interview. Something like a shock. It starts already in April 2017 when she posts a picture of her cover art. Lana is standing in front of a blue truck, dressed in a white dress and flowers in the hair. But something in the picture is different.

Hanna: She smiles. She has never done that before. It’s almost like when Greta Garbo played in a comedy for the first time, it’s so foreign that this ice queen is standing there, smiling, grinning.

It’s not only the smile that indicates that Lana has changed. In February 2017 encourages Lana her fans to take a stand against the newly elected president of the US, Donald Trump, with the help of magic.
American FOX:

Male reporter: Lana Del Rey, my favorite celebrity witch, uh, tweeted an invitation for her coven to join at the stroke of midnight February 24th, March 26th, April 24th, May 23rd – “ingredients can be found online”.

Tony: When Lust For Life gets released, you notice that she’s more politically engaged. There are songs on the record which are about the political situation in the world, and before the album release she encourages all her fans to join her in a large witch ritual in which they will curse Donald Trump.

Fox, again:
Voices: Goodbye Donald J. Trump! That he may do no harm to any human soul…!

Lust For Life is filled with songs with political messages. In When The World Was At War We Kept On Dancing, Lana asks herself if the time we’re living in is the end of an era and even the end of the USA. The song God Bless America is a reaction to Donald Trump’s sexist statements during the (presidential) electoral campaign in 2016. The artist who refused to call herself a feminist has changed her expression. It even makes her cut all ties to Kanye West.

Hanna: Recently they have kind of gotten into a fight/an argument. He posts a picture of himself with a “Make America great again” cap and then she replied that “this is a loss for the culture that you’re acting this way”, she was really mad at him. So that’s the situation between them at the moment, it’s a bit cool/chilly.

Lana suddenly doesn’t want to sing songs like Ultraviolence or Cola. They refer to a known, these days a controversial, film producer.
MTV News:

Female reporter: There’s been a lot of conversation this past week about an old song of yours, Cola, potentially having been about Harvey Weinstein. Is there any truth to that?

Lana: When I wrote that song, I-I suppose I had like a Harvey Weinstein-Harry Winston(?) type of character in mind. Obviously I don’t feel comfortable with it now. I thought about it right away. So… yeah, it’s-.

Female reporter: So are you gonna retire it from the catalogue?

Lana: I think that. Yes.

Lana’s artistry has for many years flirted with the idea of the old America. The men in her videos have often been a caricature of older, sometimes conservative or frankly a violent man. Now she says that she doesn’t even want to perform in front of the American flag.

Fredrika: Now it became too real.

Hanna: She has just romanticized a lot a certain type of men who are Trump supporters, who are red necks with a cap. That would have been too provocative to do now, but I think that it might not be only that that she wants to do, I mean, she doesn’t want to fight only, she wants to tell another kind of story.

*GOD BLESS AMERICA – AND ALL THE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN IT PLAYS*

Despite her political themes is Lust For Life most optimistic record. She sings about love and hope, about dancing when it is as hardest. Lana says that she made her first four albums for herself but that Lust For Life is for the fans. And the fans seem to like her new, political Lana just as much (as the old Lana).

Tony: I think that she still manages to keep her dignity which I sometimes think is so nice, there is one artist who isn’t just yelling and crying, changes their opinion on what other thinks, but takes time to give an answer and takes time to read about it. And she still has her musical style in focus.

Lust For Life is also a record when Lana, for the first time, is collaborating with several other artists; The Weeknd, Stevie Nicks, Sean Lennon and A$AP Rocky are featuring in different tracks. Maybe there’s something symbolic in (the fact that) the artists who once got scolded and was seemingly alone is now supported by artists from several generations.
The story of Lana Del Rey started with a witch hunt and ended in a witch ritual against an American president.
What Lana will come up with next, we can only guess. Her upcoming album has gotten the title Norman Fucking Rockwell after the painter Norman Rockwell who, during the 1900’s, portrayed a traditional American everyday life.

Hanna: She has added a “fucking” in there, in between his first and last name, so you get a hint that she might have a moody twist on this American dream society.


You have heard P3 music documentary on Lana Del Rey. The documentary was made 2018 by me, Axel Winqvist. Producer was Vendela Lundberg and executive producer, Ulla Svensson, and technician, Fredrik Nilsson. The show is a production by Tredje Statsmakten Media. Tracklist and information on the audio we use in the show can be found on the web.

*LUST FOR LIFE PLAYS*

 

[trayertrash 7,210]

lipster of the year 2k4evr

[annedauphine 34,532]

ultimate queen of translation

[Beautiful Loser 45,907]

lipster of the year 2k4evr

This whole thread will be my promo for the awards lmao

 

... What am I doing with my life...?

[longtimeman 7,959]

Thanks for this - I'm always looking for fun ways to practice my Swedish comprehension!

[Beautiful Loser 45,907]

Thanks for this - I'm always looking for fun ways to practice my Swedish comprehension!

I’ll give you a like for the good joke because I highly doubt that you’re serious lol

[longtimeman 7,959]

I’ll give you a like for the good joke because I highly doubt that you’re serious lol

No, I'm serious! 

[Ultra Violet 18,412]

God bless you Clampi <3 you're too good for us

[Beautiful Loser 45,907]

No, I'm serious!

 

Really?? Omg, I’m sorry, and you’re welcome! <3

[Serene Queen 4,776]

Hank you so much! We don’t deserve you!

[Paris Hilton 8,973]

OMG THANK U

[Beautiful Loser 45,907]

(It’s started to air right now so tune in on P3, 99,3 Hz, if you wanna listen live!

 

Edit: Ugh, I suddenly feel so emotional to finally hear my baby on the radio. )