All My CDs, pt 33: Born to Die

Born to Die - Lana Del Rey

I bought this album a few years ago because two songs showed up on my Pandora station, and I thought they were pretty rad. I had never heard of Lana Del Rey before, probably because I live a very sheltered life of listening to classical radio and watching no television except for Doctor Who. (The motive for this self-insulation is onefold: I hate ads.) Later, I learned that there is a bit of a controversy about whether Lana Del Rey counts as a real person and therefore worthy of any respect or attention as a musician. I have no thoughts of my own on the subject, but if you’re craving such discussion I refer you to this video and this article.

I'm not sure what originally attracted me to Lana Del Rey. Perhaps it was the generous use of stringed accompaniment combined with fascinatingly versatile vocals (deep and disaffected one moment, high and girlish the next). The lyrics may have played a role as well. They present an almost charicaturistic picture of the crassest and most problematic version of girlhood and femininity: conflating performance and appearance with sexuality, sexuality with love, and all three with wealth and luxury, all wrapped up in a mindset that one's well-being depends entirely on a man. But the sadness that permeates even the happiest-seeming lyrics belies the truth that this is all the twisted fantasy of a deeply damaged soul: “Carmen, Carmen doesn't have a problem / Lyin' to herself 'cause her liquor's top-shelf"”

The whole album could be interpreted as a brutal take-down of pop culture's destructive objectification of women, so sickeningly pervasive that girls grow up thinking of themselves as mere objects whose lives are meaningless and miserable if they are not appealing to men in a very superficial way. This sort of outlook makes it excruciatingly important to obtain and maintain male affection and love, even at the expense of personal health and other relationships.

The "nothing is more important than pleasing my man" attitude pervades every song on the album. Video Games's sweet refrain goes "It's you, it's you, it's all for you / everything I do." Dark Paradise illustrates the devastation that occurs when such an all-consuming relationship ends. One song, This Is What Makes Us Girls, explicitly links the problematic values system to gender: "This is what makes us girls / we don't stick together 'cause we put love first." The same song somewhat self-consciously underlines some of the tragic consequences, but fatalistically fails to recognize that it is not inevitable, that girls can follow another path, one where self-worth is not tied to sexual objectification.

Contrasting and complimenting the dark and gender-dystopian lyrics, the instrumentation is sumptuously orchestral, with bowed stringed instruments accompanying the sultry vocal strains. The combination of music and tragic words makes each song, at least for me, deeply saddening. I have at times found myself switching to another CD to avoid flinging myself into a melancholic funk just before a work shift or important dinner. It is certainly not music I would play all the time, but I could not imagine removing it from my collection. It's just too interesting.

Next: Buckminster