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| LANA DEL REY - BORN TO DIE |
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| Tuesday, 31 January 2012 01:45 | |||
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Whether she’s a bad girl or a glamour queen, there is not much Lana Del Rey is pretending not to be in her debut album.
Album Review
Artist: Lana Del Rey
Title: Born To Die
Genre: Pop
Record Label: Interscope
Release Date: January 31st, 2012
  Reviewed by Meaghan Archer
The newest tough girl, Lana Del Rey, doesn’t sell herself as a rebellious image, but as a suffocating glam-obsessed girl who wants nothing more than to be loved. On her debut album, Born To Die, LDR tells tales of a jaded New York life—a less commercialized version than one would expect from an artist who has received copious amounts of attention from the press.
This strong desire for attention is confessed immediately on “Blue Jeans,” the opening track on Born To Die. With a raw language that makes her truthfulness questionable, LDR addresses an emotional vulnerability that is a rare find in life. Her secrets are revealed with the twisted voice of a love-tainted girl. She sings of the dark and disturbing effect love can have on a person and the deep, shameful thoughts that should be kept to oneself. The disgraceful life of a young girl, “Carmen,” is told with a hypnotic tone in the lyrics, which replicates the inescapable trance this girl finds herself in. The lyrics are simple but draw a detailed scene of a young, street-working girl in distress.
Carmen may be in hell, but heaven and earth are where LDR prefers to live. On the titled track “Born to Die,” she suggests that love isn’t enough. So, have fun before you die and hopefully when you get to heaven the one you loved on earth will be there to meet you, and maybe then love will be enough. When she sings of being ready to die it is always when she feels enough love, but this love, according to LDR, cannot be contained on earth. If we are all born to die, then we are also born to love — if you love then you are alive.
LDR brought love to earth in Born To Die’s first single, “Video Games.” The track opens with a mystic, fairytale harp gently easing you into the
 emotionally painful lyrics of the song. She does everything for the man for whom she sings: It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you / Everything I do but it is all a game. Following her born-to-die theory, this love she sings of is a fake love she created for the purpose of feeling emotionally satisfied, since heaven is a place on earth with you.Much of these intricate and seemingly desperate acts/confessions of (a need for) love are simply (perhaps naively) explained on “This Is What Makes Us Girls” when she sings we put our love first/don’t cry about him. Another explanation is given on the final track, “Without You” in which LDR sings an incredibly heartfelt ending declaring I am nothing without you.
The beauty of her vocal ability plays through on “Radio” and “Lucky Ones.” A crooning, smoky bar kind of vibe surrounds you as you listen to “Million Dollar Man” — my favorite of the album’s gems. The tempo changes and natural vocal manipulations that run throughout the song make it more of a dramatized performance, regardless of the fact that you cannot see the girl behind the microphone. The entire album is more or less a performance of a collection of confessions.
Whether we fall for her rebellious dark side or believe the glamorous girl, there is no denying that Lana Del Rey has more than her fair share of twisted stories.
Track Listing:
Blue Jeans
Born To Die
Carmen
Dark Paradise
Diet Mountain Dew
Lolita
Lucky Ones
Million Dollar Man
National Anthem
Off To The Races
Radio
Summertime Sadness
This Is What Makes Us Girls
Video Games
Without You
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