Video of the Week: Lana Del Rey

Posted by VaughnDL July 31, 2014

Video of the Week: Lana Del Rey

When it comes to Lana Del Rey it seems like people either love her or despise her. I don't know exactly what my opinion of her is. The other day I was listening to a playlist on 8tracks, and the song "This Is What Makes Us Girls" came on and I really liked it, so I listened to a few of her other songs (I already had three on my iPod) and discovered that I really like her music. After listening to her songs, I got curious about her as a person, and so I discovered this video, which I think is really revealing.

First of all, I'm glad she sang in this video outside of a studio or whatever, because it shows that she truly has a singing talent, which a lot of people don't believe. Many people think that she's heavily autotuned, but I always thought she had a really nice very real voice that's incredibly unique and unlike any other musician I've heard before. Her voice is very interesting; she can go from a bubbly vintage pop sound to a very deep and gravely haunting sound. Which is super cool, in my opinion.
Second of all, I think she's very pretty. I am fully aware that she appears to have botox or some other form of plastic surgery. Still though, I just like her style as far as clothing and hair, she obviously very much prefers vintage and retro stuff, which I like too. I think people give her a bad rap because her image has been very heavily tainted by the media. I think she got caught up in fame and let people mess with her style and body too much, which is very unfortunate, but seems to happen all too often with insecure starlets, such as Lana Del Rey. I say she's insecure because I think when she first came into the business, all she wanted to do was make music, but over time, she got pushed by outside forces to develop a more mysterious, more "Hollywood" persona, and that didn't go well. Plus, I know she gets very anxious and nervous about being on stage, which only adds to her insecurities as a celebrity.

Thirdly, she does not seem happy. She smiles a lot, but not as much as she frowns, and she's wonderful to her fans, and seems to genuinely appreciate them, but has been known to be very angry and reserved in interviews and public settings.

All in all, I think Lana Del Rey is the product of media manipulation. It seems like she wants to be herself, but herself isn't good enough for the paparazzi, so she tends to get into trouble for stupid things, and lashes out and seems very depressed. I honestly wish I could meet her just one on one with no one else around so I could find out what she's actually like under all the falseness she's been forced into because of the music industry. Still, despite all the hate she gets, and despite her dark and strange ways, I do really appreciate her music. Like I said, it's just so different from any other music I've heard, it doesn't even really fit into a genre. I also think many of her lyrics are very hard hitting and true to life. In the song "This Is What Makes Us Girls", she says "This is what makes us girls/ We all look for heaven and we put our love first/ Something that we'd die for, it's our curse/ Don't cry about it, don't cry about it". I think a lot of girls nowadays can relate to that: to trying so hard to find love or something that resembles love in order to feel like they have a purpose. The fact that Lana put something like that into a song without it sounding slutty or poppy or whatever really hit me. There's just something about her music that I really appreciate, and I just hope she gets her act together and learns how to be herself and how to be happy. If that means pulling out of Hollywood, well, I'd be okay with that, even if I do love her music.