Honeyed vocals, a cinematic pout and a haunting, David Lynch-inspired video clip posted on YouTube was all it took to propel Lana Del Rey to global stardom, hailed as the musical revelation of 2011. But a just-as-swift backlash has threatened to bring down the New York singer before her first album even hits the shelves next month, after bloggers attacked the 25-year-old as an industry-backed “fake”, posing as self-made artist.
Lana Del Rey’s story began early this year when, like thousands of would-be singers, the unknown American posted a track called ‘Video Games’ on YouTube, an edgy, melancholy tale of unrequited love delivered in slow, sultry tones. A collage of vintage footage, cartoons and contemporary images, the clip evokes the gauzy, nostalgia-tinted worlds of filmmakers like Lynch or Sofia Coppola.
A second clip, ‘Blue Jeans’, was posted a few weeks later as Lana Del Rey wowed music critics worldwide, hailed as much as a musical revelation as a style icon, with spots in Vogue and Rolling Stone. But her stellar rise soon enough gave way to a backlash, after some digging by indie bloggers unearthed a past life as plain old Elizabeth Grant, the author of two earlier, unsuccessful albums.
“She was basically a failed mainstream artist who is being ‘rebranded’ behind major label dollars,” read a scathing piece on the Hipster Runoff blog in September, claiming to “expose” the singer’s past. Widely echoed in the music press, the backlash, wrote the Globe and Mail, “is threatening to bring down the It Girl before she has even has time to ‘break’.”
The Del Rey controversy has also left music critics red-faced, since many pride themselves on their flair for original new talent. So the jury remains out, the mystery intact, and Lana Del Rey’s album one of the most eagerly awaited of 2012.
