Anarchic comedian Doug Stanhope- hear me out here, this is relevant eventually- has a website called “Doug Stanhope’s Celebrity Death Pool”, on which players bet on who the next big dead celebrity will be. Players get different bonus points depending on the way their particular star burns out: 50 points for a “John Lennon”, and 25 points for an “Amy Winehouse” or a “Kurt Cobain”. Morbid? Well, yes. Entertaining? Absolutely.
After reading Lana Del Rey’s recent interview with The Guardian, one could be forgiven for thinking about placing a bet in the Death Pool. She is quoted as saying “I wish I was dead already”, and has described her complete lack of enjoyment of fame. “Kurt Cobain” indeed. Darkness is a word which fully compasses Lana Del Rey, from her moody film-noir film collages to her gently sung dark subject matter (which that unbearable club remix of “Summertime Sadness” completely glosses over and squishes out). Themes of mental illness, alcoholism, and abusive relationships are spread across her work; it is her mastery of a seductive vocal and her ability to write a solid chorus which has so far kept the Death Pool at bay.
However, compared to Born To Die, the Death Pool draws ever closer on Ultraviolence. Launched off the back of the viral success of sublime single “Video Games”, Born To Die was a hip-hop-meets-film-score pop record that was light and shade. The tentative ballads are balanced by beat-driven singles, and the mood is varied. Ultraviolence, on the other hand, is consistently despondent, and much gloomier than her previous album. You only have to look at the names of some of the songs- “Cruel World”, “Ultraviolence”, “Sad Girl”, “Pretty When You Cry”- to get the sense that this is not a happy record. The strings have given way to mourning guitars, and the sound is generally less pop-oriented. The standout single is “West Coast”, which goes from slow to even slower in the chorus. This apparently irked her record label, who said that her songs should be sped up and were “not good for radio”.
They may have a point about radio-unfriendliness. Her recent performance at Glastonbury was summed up by a prolific ginger man in the front row who had his arms folded and was looking confused. The main problem with Ultraviolence is its lack of variety; if it had been 11 strong singles then perhaps record labels and ginger men would be happier, but Lana has instead written a set of songs which sound more like miserable film scores than pop songs. After receiving an internet backlash-turned-witch-hunt over the past few years, perhaps she doesn’t feel the need to impress anyone but herself. On first listen, most fans are likely to be unimpressed. Time will tell if this is the sort of album that takes multiple listens to “get”.
After Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey could feasibly call herself an artist rather than a pop star. In fact, she has more rock ‘n’ roll credentials than anyone else. Alcoholism at 15? Check. Hangs out with biker gangs and once accidentally joined a cult in New York? Check. Made an introspective, middling second album that irritated her label? Check. If the normal rock ‘n’ roll trajectory is to be followed, I may well be about to earn 25 points in the Death Pool.