It was in the video for her debut single, ‘Video Games’, that the world caught its first glimpse of Lana Del Rey. As that tolling bell gave way to shimmering strings, she emerged from amongst a mess of broken images, full-lipped, her eyes heavily adorned with mascara, leaning against a simple white wall, seeming somehow both coy and alluring as she sang to the camera. Around her swirled a plethora of seemingly disparate images, among them symbols of America, such as the Stars and Stripes and the Hollywood sign, the markers of consumer-capitalism, like adverts for iPods, and old news footage in black and white. It read as a composite vision of America, its past and present indelibly interwoven. Across the video, both old and recent footage of young people, laughing, dancing, skateboarding, hanging out, all faded and drenched in sunlight so that past and present become indistinguishable from one another, all the while giving it a home movie aesthetic and a wistful quality that matched the sweeping cinematic strings and the melancholy vocals. She immediately captured the public imagination, so far removed was she from the sort of radio friendly pop of acts like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, or the ascendant Taylor Swift. She was in equal measures nostalgic and new, drawing both on some romanticised vision of America, and yet, also being distinctly modern, with the present and the past both co-existing in her art, just as it does in the video for ‘Video Games’. ‘Video Games’ was followed by further singles, ‘Blue Jeans’ and ‘Born to Die’ and then the album dropped. It was incredibly successful, only being kept off number one in its first week by Adele’s all-devouring album, 21. She garnered a huge following, becoming something of a cult icon as the album’s melange of baroque pop and gritty hip-hop beats transcended traditional music tastes. Everyone was enthralled, from pop listeners to staunch indie lovers, from hip hop aficionados to tumblr fangirls.

Just as in the video for ‘Video Games’, the idea of America is central to Lana’s debut album, and her work in general. However Lana’s vision of America is a complicated one, it is in equal parts nihilistic, idealistic, capitalist and romantic. She is infatuated with the mythology of America. She haunts its temples, making multiple references to iconic locations, including Coney Island, the Hamptons and Rikers Island, as well as LA, California and New York. Furthermore, she worships America’s icons, like a form of idolatry. On the sumptuous ‘Blue Jeans’, one of the album’s best tracks, Lana compares her beau to James Dean over slow picked guitar, on ‘Million Dollar Man’ she quotes Elvis, while the video for ‘National Anthem’ finds her playing Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Yet these figures she worships all died young, reflecting an inherent nihilism at the heart of her vision of America. The aptly titled ‘Dark Paradise’ suggests darkness beneath the dream, while ‘Summertime Sadness’ with its twanging guitar and snare drum rhythm romanticises driving fast and dying young. However, it is the album’s astoundingly excellent title track that best captures America’s nihilism. ‘Born to Die’ opens the album with swirling strings that rise over the deep rumble of 808s while Lana’s rich and sultry voice intones what is her mission statement, a tale of doomed romance, beset by existential anguish ‘cause you and I, we were born to die.’

Unlike Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, who is motivated by a belief in an idealised American Dream and ignores the corruption and moral decay at its heart, Lana sees it all and adores it more for it. On ‘Off to the Races’, she ditches her deeper, wistful vocals for a more high pitched and seductive delivery, verging on rapping as she weaves a tale of drug use and debauchery. Lana Del Rey is infatuated with a vision of America that she knows to be artificial and idealised, the glitz and the glamour of LA, the excesses of Florida, the grime and grit of New York, all ‘Blurring the lines between the real and the fake.’ Her own ‘National Anthem’, an ode to America’s capitalist system, sees her expose the true heart of America, ‘money is the anthem of success’, ‘Money is the reason we exist, everybody knows it that’s a fact kiss kiss’. She desires money, she gets it, she desires men, they leave her, she desires them all the more. ‘Radio’ finds her fully acknowledging her obsession, as she sings:

American dreams came true somehow I swore I’d chase until I was dead I heard the streets were paved with gold That’s what my father said No one even knows what life was like Now I’m in LA and it’s paradise’

Perhaps this album is so popular because, like her, we are all deeply enthralled to the same myth that she is. She sells us what we’ve already bought into and while we, like her, are fully aware of its corruption and falsity, we cannot help but be engaged by the dream, and moved by her own unwavering commitment to that dream.

However, Lana’s most powerful draw is that, through all the excess and the superficiality, she is an idealist and a romantic, and even more than her obsession with America and fame, she is in love with love itself. Throughout the album there is a sense that she has an unwavering belief in the power of love and its ability to overcome anything, perhaps even to a fault. This is one of the reasons that in so many of her songs, she finds herself irrevocably attached to men she shouldn’t cling to, trapped by the belief that maybe they can change, yet always knowing that they won’t. Lana’s vision of love is never more powerful than it was on her breakthrough song, ‘Video Games’. From those first evocative notes, the song transports the listener into her world, nostalgic both for some half-imagined past and for some long-lost lover. This is Lana’s creation myth; its home movie aesthetic and everyday imagery of ‘beer’, ‘wild darts’ and ‘video games’ tear away the trappings of fame and the corruption of the American dream that she espouses so often, there is no gangster glitz or glamour. Instead, ‘Video Games’ is an enduring ode to domestic love and a simple life and as a result it is her most relatable moment and her most romantic. When she sings ‘Heaven is a place on Earth with you’, that place could be your small city flat in Glasgow, or old suburban home in Melbourne just as easily as her LA villa. It is the one moment that best captures what makes Lana Del Rey so popular. In the same way that On The Road was Kerouac’s, in the same way that Gatsby was Fitzgerald’s, this album, in all its paradoxical glory, in its obsession with fame, its celebration of wealth and decadence, its infatuation with American culture, and most of all, its love of love, Born to Die is Lana Del Rey’s American Dream. And to all those critics who accused her of inauthenticity, her enduring appeal is proof that people have chosen to believe in her. In many ways, Lana Del Rey stands as one of the most original and authentic voices in all of contemporary popular music.

Best songs: Born to Die, Blue Jeans, Video Games, Diet Mountain Dew, Summertime Sadness

Best moment: the opening strings of ‘Video Games’ or the ending of ‘Diet Mountain Dew’ as Lana intones ‘do you think we’ll be in love forever, do you think we’ll be in love?’

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