Back in 2012, I had no intention of ever listening to a single note of a Lana Del Rey song. I’d read all the mocking headlines from her debut appearance on SNL, and had completely written her off.
But I still had an Entertainment Weekly subscription back then, and as I flipped to the music reviews, my eye was drawn to the piece about Born To Die. Mainly because the photo they used was hot, and I’m a dude.
The gist of the review: “It sucks in many places, but when it’s good, it’s very good.” That conflicted with the amateurish, incompetent mess narrative that had developed around the SNL gig, so I figured, what the fuck, let me check this out. I’m always looking for an opportunity to be a contrarian.
It turned out to be one of my favorite things of the year.
Lana’s discography is the unofficial soundtrack of this blog. If you’re not reading this shit in a sheer nightdress and heels, and occasionally looking up to stare wearily out the window at a world full of bad decisions you’d willingly make all over again, then you’re just not getting into the spirit of the thing. Try harder.