![]() "Summertime Sadness," initially an album cut, was plucked from the tracklisting by European remixers and reimaged as a club track. ![]() That image dissolves in front of the TV lights, but on disc, it's both coherent and vivid. There, she's crafted a image: part Nancy Sinatra, part David Lynch heroine, an ingenue and fatalist in perpetual danger of getting devoured by the big bad wolf. She's a songwriter and conceptualist first, and she does her best work in the controlled atmosphere of the recording studio. Del Rey, whose real name is Elizabeth Grant and who first came to public attention in the pop and folk clubs of New York City, never claimed to be a skilled live perfomer. "Born to Die," her album, was not the enormous smash that many early adopters thought it would be, but it sold very well – especially in continental Europe, where the culture of mockery and scapegoating is not quite as entrenched. But in the year and a half since the SNL debacle, Lana Del Rey's fortunes have quietly revived. There are pop fans who still associate Del Rey with "Saturday Night Live," and who will always suppress a guffaw when her name is mentioned. Even Brian Williams got in on the beatdown: In an astonishing act of media bullying, the NBC anchorman took to rock criticism, and ridiculed Del Rey on the air. The SNL debut – which, in retrospect, was nowhere near as bad as a trend-hungry public made it out to be – made Del Rey a cultural joke among people who'd never subjected her music to close scrutiny before. Here, it seemed, was a walking embodiment of the pop star manqué: a young woman hyped by webloggers and tastemakers, manufactured and buffed to a shine, but unable to survive her trial by fire. Del Rey appeared stiff and unsure, terrified in the presence of the cameras, the studio audience, and the prospect of a massive viewing audience. When it's the whole world tuning in, including millions of those who otherwise have no deep interest in pop, you can earn yourself a public reputation that you'll never live down.Ĭyrus can take some comfort in the example of Lana Del Rey, who was effectively left for dead after a disastrous performance on "Saturday Night Live" on January 14, 2012. When it's just the music fans watching, it's easy to get away with missteps. The television cameras have a terrifying way of setting an artist's public image in stone. Although she put on a brave face, there were surely a few moments this week when Miley Cyrus wondered if all the public ridicule in the wake of her provocative VMA performance would be her undoing.Ĭourting controversy in prime time is a dangerous game: Lady Gaga put on that meat dress years ago, and no matter what creative fashion choices she's made since, we've never quite let her step out of it.
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