Pitchforks: 3/5
Record Label: Interscope
An unbecoming discord rattles at the core of Lana Del Rey’s second LP “Born to Die.” With enough hype to sink a boat, Del Rey went from being under the spotlight to under the microscope. In a matter of weeks, her notoriously unbearable recent performance on “Saturday Night Live” destroyed most of the momentum the singer garnered over months of carefully played publicity. That’s not the kind of situation any performer wants to experience going into the release of an album, though for Del Rey, a singer slapped with the label of being a hipster redux of Amy Winehouse, there really was nowhere to go but down.
“Born to Die” features all of the songs the singer has released over the last six months, though there are different cuts seemingly prodded and mangled just to fit the aesthetic Del Rey wants to achieve with the album — a rustic, overtly sexual tirade about her idea of the American dream. Though Del Rey’s thoughts are not too far from the truth (the subject matter varies stagnantly from money to beer to sex), the overall outlook of “Born to Die” remains a bleak overture with few outstanding tracks. The strongest tracks on the album are only this way because of the heartfelt iconoclasm they offer.
The track “Radio” is a strong offering, with a quasi hip-hop beat combined with a recurrently catchy hook: “Pick me up and take me like a vitamin, ‘cause my body’s sweet like sugar venom oh yeah/ baby love me ‘cause I’m on the radio.” Though Del Rey’s songwriting often appears to be accidentally clever and rarely eloquent, she still maintains consistency as a hardened shell of a woman who is gracing her audience with the scraps of what innocence she has left.
“Million Dollar Man,” a colorful and beseechingly excellent number, begs for the image of the singer lounging on top of a glossy grand piano in a ritzy Manhattan 1930s club surrounded by lascivious mobsters in padded pinstripe suits.
If Del Rey held off releasing so many of the tracks from “Born to Die” before they were to be put on a proper full-length album, it would have made the entire LP seem stronger than it is.
Her trio of Internet hits, “Blue Jeans,” “Video Games,” and “Diet Mountain Dew” play back-to-back-to-back almost as if to remind listeners why anyone bothered to listen to her in the first place.
Reach the reporter at rrocklif@asu.edu
Click here to subscribe to the daily State Press newsletter.
