Nevertheless, she has mass appeal in spades. And because she luxuriates in a passive, regressive, female-identified submission that seems not just removed from but deliberately antithetical to the display of autonomous self-assertion that unifies all corporate auteurs across market shares and genre lines, her name never gets listed in the pantheon of current major pop artists. But within the great big world of superstardom, she’s an anomaly, fitting into absolutely zero current musical genres or trends. Judging by international metallurgical certifications alone, she seems to be especially popular among the French, which I would have guessed immediately, and the Polish, in whose country Ultraviolence has already gone platinum. Her shows sell out, especially those at festivals like Lollapalooza or Coachella.
#Lana del rey sexy on stage plus#
Her singles and especially music videos typically dominate their respective media channels, and she even tried the lucrative if tasteless Lady Gaga marketing strategy of tacking new extra collectorama onto a repackaged and rereleased album in November 2012 when she produced Born to Die: The Paradise Edition, which consisted of the original album plus the half-hour Paradise EP, and added a modest million or so onto said original album’s sales record.
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Her roundly panned major-label debut, Born to Die, proceeded to reach #2 on the Billboard 200 in January 2012 and has since gone double platinum in twelve countries, with 2014’s Ultraviolence well on its way to similar sales records since being released in June.
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Lana Del Rey fits every definition of the massive superstar - unusually for such an idiosyncratic artist, she caught on commercially long before critics decided her brand of hedonism might be worth some acclaim. But when you listen to a Lana Del Rey album for the first time and hear her sighing and moaning about what a bad girl she is, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. It’s not that she believes in these idealized sexual archetypes, of course, not when she also sings songs about fucking her way up to the top because she wants money power glory. Her voice, all childish and pouty and sensual, admits and flaunts more vulnerability than is considered politic among stars of her caliber, and her slow, lush music packs none of the electrobeat-fueled punch that you hear blaring from the radio nowadays. Here we have a woman whose ’50s nostalgia celebrates not just the glamour and craft she perceives in film noir but also the idealized sexual archetypes that still prevail in Hollywood, a woman who slips behind the mask of some weird retro persona to sing songs about being powerless before men.
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#Lana del rey sexy on stage full#
In a world where pop superstars perform in flashy costumes, stiletto heels, and headset mikes, with giant screens broadcasting their every move to sprawling audiences of a hundred thousand people or more in a world where the most widely respected celebrity alive keyed her Video Music Awards show to the word “FEMINIST,” in all caps, towering in the background behind a stage full of backup dancers and elaborate lighting in a world where your dress, shoes, hairstyle, and/or pantsuit can inspire more journalism than the contents of your platinum album in a world where the inspirational ballad has become a cash cow in a world where virtually every woman who sings melodic pop songs with upbeat electronic backing does so in Madonna’s shadow - given our present musical climate, the emergence of a countertype was all but inevitable.įor many, the mere existence of Lizzie Grant and her alter ego Lana Del Rey serves as a cold slap in the face to the big-budget feminist empowerment campaigns enacted by even richer and more famous people like Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.