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Celeb News: Critics review Lana Del Rey's 'Born to Die'
Member Since: 9/7/2010
Posts: 28,471
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Critics review Lana Del Rey's 'Born to Die'
Post only those reviews which count for Metacritic.
The Independent (UK) 5/5
Quote:
It's tempting, when considering the phrase "Hollywood sadcore" – Del Rey's own description of her musical style – to dwell too long on the second word. But the "Hollywood" part signifies more than simply silver-screen glamour.
Elizabeth Grant is essentially an actress, and Del Rey is a character she's created. Which is exactly where complaints about her inauthenticity founder: inauthenticity is the point. The music – a delicious hybrid of Portishead and Nancy Sinatra – only serves as a backdrop to the emotional drama in which Del Rey plays the role of the hurt-bruised lover, switching between "you" and "he" to describe her lover, as though stepping out of the screen to break the fourth wall.
Never is this more effective than on the world-stopping "Video Games". It's a trick as old – and as enduring – as Hollywood itself.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...e-6296383.html
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BBC Review 8/10
Quote:
Intelligent, ambitious and brilliantly realised, Born to Die defies any backlash.
What makes Born to Die so richly fascinating – and what marks Del Rey out from the standard issue "I’m hot, you’re hot" pop starlet – is her preoccupation with Hollywood archetypes of American femininity, and her ability to shape-shift between them.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/qrnv
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The Guardian 4/5
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What it is, is beautifully turned pop music, which is more than enough.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012...?newsfeed=true
Slant Magazine 4/5
Quote:
Del Rey may be the pop-star equivalent of a teenage girl naïvely playing dress up in her grandmother's vintage clothing and singing into a hairbrush that conveniently looks like an old-fashioned microphone, but that doesn't make Born to Die any less close to pop perfection.
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Full review here: http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/r...rn-to-die/2720
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Q Magazine 4/5
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The Telegraph 4/5
Quote:
Coupled with a film noir-ish attention to detail – the “red nail polish” and “Jesus on the dash” – and an obsession with faded post-war glamour, Born to Die often sounds like some great lost soundtrack to LA Confidential. Inevitably, 51 minutes of melodrama becomes draining. But it captures Del Rey’s mystique perfectly. Perhaps success will put a smile on her face.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...CD-review.html
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Sputnikmusic 8/10
Quote:
Born to Die is a brilliant album, but it's one that leaves room for a few improvements, and inspires confidence that they'll happen.
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http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/4...y-Born-to-Die/
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Spin 6/10
http://www.spin.com/reviews/lana-del...die-interscope
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Los Angeles Times
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And then there's her voice, with so much potential and yet unrefined. Her courage is commendable, even if she thinks she's got a way better tone than she does. But when she maneuvers that tone well, there's something there. She pinches her vocal cords like Betty Boop for "Off to the Races" -- and paraphrases "Lolita" lover Humbert Humbert. She goes low and often it feels forced, but occasionally, as on "Million Dollar Man," she nails it.
Del Rey has listened to her fair share of Amy Winehouse, but gets nowhere near the emotion within the late British singer's voice.Del Rey's attempts are without the honesty or devil-may-care feel.
This lack of belief in in her protagonist is what ultimately dooms "Born to Die." Lana Del Rey isn't nearly as convincing a fiction as David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Madonna Ciccone’s name-shortened boy-toy persona or even Taylor Swift's character, "Taylor Swift."And by the end of "Born to Die," the experience has become tiring and woozy, like if you'd taken a half-dozen Ambiens when you'd put the record on -- and now you’re getting very, very sleepy.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/musi...rn-to-die.html
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EW C+
Quote:
All tabloid tawdriness aside, she unleashes some truly A-level songs. But its baffling failures drop Die to a middling, maddening C+.
MUSICALLY MISGUIDED Del Rey might strike gold on a few tracks, but the rest of her album lacks lyrically
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http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20565242,00.html
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Sputnikmusic 6/10
Quote:
The worst thing about Born To Die is that even its great songs contain problems.
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http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/4...y-Born-to-Die/
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The Pitchfork 5.5/10
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16223-lana-del-rey/
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The Independent UK 2/5
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Born to Die offers them what is effectively a fairy-tale princess fable for our degraded times. No wonder David Cameron digs her.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...r-6295631.html
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Chicago Tribune 2/4
Quote:
Del Ray embraces the clichés with unwavering earnestness. She daydreams about the sugar daddy who will “keep me safe in his belltower hotel” and rhapsodizes about “the light of my life, fire of my loins.” She wants to smolder like Peggy Lee, but these trite songs don’t come off as particularly seductive or sensual. After all the hub-bub of recent weeks, one of Lee’s greatest songs sums up Del Rey’s grand entrance: “Is That All There Is?”
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...,787378.column
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Sputnikmusic 5/10
Quote:
Born to Die is vapid, innocuous pop with politically touchy sexual politics, almost indistinguishable from and less interesting than scores of terrible-albeit-infectious female pop music.
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http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/4...y-Born-To-Die/
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Nymag
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Lana Del Rey: Lurching Toward Vegas
She’s really quite earnest about what she’s trying, and alarmingly scattershot in her ability to get there — good news for those of us with the critical distance to chuckle happily over Born to Die, and also, perhaps, for anyone who wants to swallow it whole and digest a lot of strange, messy ideas about being a “girl.”
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Full here: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment...ard-vegas.html
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Rolling Stone 2/5
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/al...o-die-20120130
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Tiny Mix Tapes 0/5
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-re...l-rey-born-die
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Member Since: 11/20/2010
Posts: 29,258
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Well, this is only one review, though I thought it would get better ones.
Critics talking about personalities or background and past events doesn't only apply to Lana. They do that with quite a lot artists.
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 12,539
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What an unprofessional review. They didn't even talk about the album
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Member Since: 7/3/2010
Posts: 5,788
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Quote:
Originally posted by Sammi
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Ya, I've noticed they have a habit of doing that recently.
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Banned
Member Since: 9/28/2011
Posts: 879
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I hate when they do that.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 3/13/2011
Posts: 9,521
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You do realise that's not a review? It's an article about her.
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Member Since: 3/12/2011
Posts: 10,342
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They actually went in on her. I was reading towards the end when they started saying how it's not her fault, then they did a 180 and said she can be replaced any day she is nothing special.
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Member Since: 12/3/2010
Posts: 19,759
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Quote:
Originally posted by NY Times
IT’S already difficult to remember Lana Del Rey, but let’s try.
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Shading starting with the very first sentence.
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Member Since: 9/7/2010
Posts: 28,471
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Quote:
Originally posted by Dizagaox
You do realise that's not a review? It's an article about her.
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Quote:
Born To Die,Lana Del Rey's debut album
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I think it was 'supposed' to be an article about her debut album but I fail to see where did they mention some song or review it.
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Member Since: 6/17/2011
Posts: 16,910
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Quote:
Ms. Del Rey has an idea about her presentation, which counts for something — to some it counts for everything — but her singing still sounds like a road test. “Born to Die” doesn’t solve Ms. Del Rey’s problems because it isn’t aware of them; it’s a multiple choice test with every answer scanned “C.”
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Member Since: 5/13/2010
Posts: 6,489
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Why are they doing this? Stupid.
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Member Since: 7/22/2010
Posts: 16,134
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They DRAGGED ha for FILTH!! WTF!
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Member Since: 3/12/2011
Posts: 10,342
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Quote:
Originally posted by Twai
They DRAGGED ha for FILTH!! WTF!
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I was trying to be less obvious but NYTIMEs went in
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Banned
Member Since: 6/25/2011
Posts: 37,192
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I don't get how they can like the production but not Lana's vocals over it, when they're so perfectly matched.
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Banned
Member Since: 11/24/2009
Posts: 61,404
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This is a very well-written piece.
And I like articles that delve as much into the artist as their music. Because an artist and their work are really one and the same; it's a manifestation/extension of who they are and what they have to say. It's part of their DNA. Unless they literally just showed up to the studio to record some songs...which we know sometimes happens
That's why when I first heard BTW I didn't just criticize the album but also Lady Gaga. Gaga is BTW; BTW is Gaga.
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Member Since: 11/17/2010
Posts: 12,926
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Slant: 'Born to Die' is almost Pop Perfection
Quote:
I was initially puzzled by the accusations of inauthenticity that were hurled with such vehemence and frequency at Lana Del Rey (née Elizabeth Grant) in the wake of her meteoric rise to It Girl status last year. Yes, her self-styled "gangsta Nancy Sinatra" persona doesn't exactly jibe with reports that her career was bankrolled by Daddy Del Rey. And I guess we're supposed to lament the fact that, unlike Amy Winehouse, she doesn't appear to have a predilection for dope or booze to back up her supposed bad-girl bona fides. But since when exactly has "authenticity" ever been a criterion in pop music?
More legitimately damning were the interviews and live performances that began to emerge in the weeks and months following the singer's inevitable courtship with the majors. Del Rey isn't completely ineloquent, but she displays a lack of understanding of her source material, functioning almost entirely on the surface of a persona that could have been concocted in one of David Lynch's wet dreams. The generous interpretation is that her creative choices are instinctual; the more popular, cynical point of view is that her aesthetics are purely superficial. Her speaking voice is high-pitched and girly, making her vie to be taken seriously by singing in a lower, sultrier range feel all the more contrived when she struggles to hit those notes in a live setting, as she infamously did on Saturday Night Live earlier this month, her enunciation twisted into an unintentional parody of Marlene Dietrich.
The enormous hype, to which Slant has unapologetically contributed, was bound to unfairly result in a backlash. To wit, her much-buzzed-about but abruptly postponed showcase in New York last fall pointed to a studio creation who might not be ready for primetime. But it seems unjust to hold an artist like Del Rey to a higher standard than, say, Britney Spears, who outsources everything including her own dancing, or Katy Perry, who even mimes her flute diddling, by sheer virtue of the fact that she makes pop music that's "serious"—or at least greater than that of the lowest common denominator.
Stacked with the singles "Video Games," "Blue Jeans," and the title track, the first half of Del Rey's Born to Die alone practically guarantees it a spot among the year's best, and it's only January. Del Rey's vocal performances are at turns haunting and vampy: She uses her impressive range to dazzling effect on "Blue Jeans," comparing her delinquent lover to both cancer and her favorite sweater in what seems like one swooning breath, and the album's tour de force, "Off to the Races," a theme song for the gold-digging coquette of some imaginary hip-hop film noir that juxtaposes a full orchestra and machine-gun barks straight out of the Portishead songbook.
It's easy to hear why Del Rey started singing in a lower register. Early, radio-friendly versions of songs like "National Anthem" and the unexpectedly insightful and poignant "This Is What Makes Us Girls" were so lightweight that Del Rey's Kewpie-doll performances barely kept them from floating away. The new versions, including a punched-up rendition of the formerly more chill "Diet Mtn Dew," are given the same lush-strings-meet-hard-beats treatment. Ironically, the album's sole weakness is the strength of its immaculate production, which can be a bit overwhelming over the course of 12 tracks (15 on the deluxe edition). The little flourishes that made "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans" feel so special are diluted by sheer repetition. A distorted, ghostly whine reprised from previous tracks distracts from "Million Dollar Man," an otherwise solid, bluesy ballad reminiscent of Fiona Apple, but most of the songs are strong enough to withstand such excess, and in many cases are accentuated by it.
The repetition of those elements in marriage with recurring themes of chasing paper ("Money is the reason we exist/Everybody knows it/It's a fact," Del Rey cheekily declares on "National Anthem") and escaping the fuzz is what makes Born to Die one of the more cohesive pop albums in recent memory. "Radio" is the kind of self-referential, hard-knocks track that will only further bait Del Rey's critics, and she fares much better when she sings in (or about) characters, as she does on "Carmen." A "Coney Island Queen" with a fondness for slipping in and out of red dresses is referenced on both that track and the first-person "Off to the Races," suggesting Del Rey isn't trying to pass herself off as something she's not, but rather, doing what the finest singer-songwriters have always done: "blurring the lines between real and the fake," as she says on "National Anthem." Pop music is all about artifice and escape, and "Lana Del Rey" is indeed an act.
In Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, an insufferably pedantic academic played by Michael Sheen diagnoses Allen proxy Owen Wilson with nostalgia syndrome, a common neurosis that condemns the afflicted to a lifetime of pining for a rose-tinted version of the past that probably never existed. Del Rey may be the pop-star equivalent of a teenage girl naïvely playing dress up in her grandmother's vintage clothing and singing into a hairbrush that conveniently looks like an old-fashioned microphone, but that doesn't make Born to Die any less close to pop perfection.
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4/5
Source
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 12,539
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Spill the real tea Slant.
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Member Since: 1/12/2012
Posts: 18,340
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LMAO! At first I thought it said "Satan: ..."
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Member Since: 11/8/2010
Posts: 1,812
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I see no lies.
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Member Since: 5/26/2010
Posts: 4,712
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Wouldn't really call it pop tbh.
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