The Freakish Powers of Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey

Del Rey, born Elizabeth Grant in New York, weathered a now-incomprehensible controversy about “authenticity” (a word that, to paraphrase Nabokov, should only ever be in quotes) upon the 2011 release of her swooning, doomy single “Video Games.” “It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you / Everything I do …” Romanticism that smelled like nihilism, utterly convincing. Who could have doubted her? Who could have doubted Lana Del Rey? But they did. They arraigned her as the fabrication of (male) music-biz wizards: a fake, a thing of vapors. Only to watch her billow unstoppably outward, enveloping her helpless audience in a woozy fantasia of poetry, scandal, profanity, emotional purgation, street talk, and yellow-toothed pianos in decaying Hollywood mansions. Dark-blue Americana.  

 

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