Lana Del Rey: Born to Die – review | the guardian →

“Isn’t there, though, a chance that Grant might be playing dead? Her album takes the “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” persona introduced last summer on “Video Games” and runs with it, often from the cops. If she is acting a little blank, it’s because that is just what a self-medicating 21st-century Stepford moll with an existential hangover would be doing. The Lana of Born to Die is waxy, anaesthetised, in love with bad boys, seizing that day, bottle in hand. Unlike other hedonic outpourings, such as, say, Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” or Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night”, Lana Del Rey’s partying is fuelled by a knowing sadness, and sung in that laconic, hypnotic voice, which ultimately saves this thoroughly dissolute, feminist nightmare of a record for the romantics among us.”

lmao music writing on the guardian

also i love it that this journalist is named Kitty Empire