Lana Del Ray used to be known as Lizzy Grant, a failed pop star from upstate New York with dismal album reviews, and a gloomy, sad girl routine. Elizabeth Woolridge Grant is the actual person behind both performers. Elizabeth quickly reinvented and rebranded herself as Lana Del Ray, a persona who embodies America, dissonance, love, violence, pain, and womanhood, a persona which garnered much more success and attention. She is the definition of cool, mysterious, and beautiful, with a cigarette permanently poised in her delicate hand. She is the girl you pity and envy at the same time. She is and isn’t you all at the same time. This persona is art. This persona is in part shaped by the music she releases. Del Ray’s voice is smoky, stirring, ethereal, and breathy. The raspiness and whispering is a staple in her music, and they add to the illusion. Lana utilizes beautiful imagery and metaphors in juxtaposition to her thematically dark, horrifying, and morose lyricism. Over time, Lana tried on several genres, hyperpop, EDM, country, and has finally settled with alt/alt rock music.
In her first studio album Born to Die, Lana connects herself to the character Lolita, of the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. The book explores the relationship of a pedophile, Humbert “Hum” Humbert, and his ward, Dolores “Lolita” Haze. Lana speaks to “Hum” in the song “Carmen”. The song itself details alcohol abuse of a seventeen year old Carmen, who is “charming” and convincingly “happy” to those around her, but is drowning in substance abuse to hide her pain. The song itself sounds beautiful, with an enchanting violin, and of course, Del Rey’s collected, cool, calm voice. Carmen “relies on the kindness of strangers/tying cherry knots, smilin, doin party favors”, which is a euphemism for doing sexual favors for money, much like Lolita towards the end of the novel (Del Rey) (Nabokov). The song also features a verse that is in French, and is from the perspective of a man we assume has paid Carmen for her time/“party favors”, which echoes a stanza in Lolita (Del Rey) (Nabokov).
In a later album, titled Ultraviolence, in the title track, she sings that, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss/Give me all of that ultraviolence/He hurt me but it felt like true love”. She apparently no longer sings the first line during concerts, but still keeps that “he hurt me but it felt like true love”, which is less explicit (Del Ray Qtd Cooper). She explores this turbulent and violent relationship that is like an all consuming “fire”, but she is the “kerosene” (Del Ray). She is causing the turbulence and violence, not the man who is committing these acts of violence.
Her third album, Honeymoon, takes pleasure in manipulating men, and grieving them; she sings to lovers who have died, or who were never really there for her emotionally. In her 2017 album, which lacked the controversy and moroseness of her prior albums, Lust for Life, she sings about feminism and the changing political landscape as a woman in a Donald Trump presidency. Specifically in the song “When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing” she sings: “Girls, don’t forget your pearls/And all of your horses/As you make your way across the pond/Girls, don’t forget your curls/And all of your corsets/Memorize them in a little song”. These two albums are a stark contrast to her other albums because of the obvious contempt she feels for the world around her. She feels entitled to manipulate men through her sexuality, echoing her earlier femme fatale energy in Born To Die, but she is more mature, cynical, and sad about using this power, or that it is her only source of it. It is much more introspective music; she feels like a victim of the system she is trapped in, so she must play by its rules to get ahead.
Lana’s 2019 album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (NFR!) continues exploring these themes, where she compares her struggles with mental health to Sylvia Plath, poet, and suicide victim. In the song, “Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it”, she acknowledges that she has “Monsters still under my bed that I could never fight off” referencing her issues with substance abuse and mental illness (Del Ray). She calls herself a “woman with a weak constitution”, who shouldn’t have hope with a “past” like hers (Del Ray). Her experience with abuse has scared her psychologically, and in “Cinnamon Girl” she directly states this: “Like if you hold me without hurting me/You’ll be the first who ever did”. She acknowledges that this is the first relationship that is healthy, or at least, is not physically abusive.
In her latest album, Chemtrails over the Country Club, in the song “Let Me Love You Like A Woman” she sings that “Let me love you like a woman/Let me hold you like a baby/Let me shine like a diamond/Let me be who I’m meant to be”. She implies womanhood is inherently tied to motherhood and nurturing others, which could explain why she stays in abusive relationships. (I personally disagree that women are inherently nurturing or must be nurturing to be women, but that’s not the point right now). She must fix, love, and take care of these broken men, who break, or at least scar, her in the process. She asks her lover “talk about the good old days with her”, and expresses her desire to live in a suburb/small town like she grew up in, which she accomplishes later in the album’s narrative. In the same album, in the song titled “White Dress”, she sings about her experience as a young musician. She nostalgically sings that she was a “waitress in a tight dress” at “nineteen”, playing with the “Men in Music Business Conference” which is where she felt “seen” and “like a god”. To a teenage, and now adult, Lana, this white dress makes her feel beautiful and sexy, and gives her power. In this way, being sexy/sexualized is where Lana’s power lies. This connects to the song, “Fucked My Way To The Top” for obvious reasons, and “Money Glory Power” where she sings “I want money and all your power, all your glory” (Del Ray) in the album Ultraviolence.
Obviously, before I analyze Lana Del Rey, and her past, I must begin with Del Rey’s own comments which initially attracted me to this controversy and album. Del Rey posted to Instagram a lengthy statement during the summer of 2020, for seemingly no reason. She states, ‘“Now that Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, [having sex], cheating, etc — can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money — or whatever i want — without being crucified or saying that I’m glamorizing abuse???????”’ (Del Ray qtd in Carras).
Numerous commenters and critics took offense to Lana’s selection of entirely women of color, to which she replied that “‘This is the problem with society today, not everything is about whatever you want it to be. It’s exactly the point of my post — there are certain women that culture doesn’t want to have a voice it may not have to do with race I don’t know what it has to do with….’” (Del Ray qtd in Carras). So, this was poor form, from any perspective. Del Rey is blatantly picking out women of color, minus “ariana”, which is racist and tone deaf. Additionally, Del Ray could have easily made her point without putting other people down, and acknowledging that the artists she mentions — Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, etc — all create in the mainstream genres of pop, rap, and r&b, which is predominantly more popular now than alt or rock music, which is what genre Lana currently sings in. Therefore, this comparison is a false dichotomy, and does not help her argument. But, at its core, Del Ray has an interesting point: what kind of woman can feel “empowered”?
Can mainstream feminists, who champion empowerment being strength, independence, and power, shown through musicians like Taylor Swift, pre-Folklore era, reckon with women who, like Del Ray, reject that? Do women like Del Rey have a choice in what empowers them, or are they submitting to the “patriarchy”? Does free will, or at least real choices, exist for women in a society shaped by “patriarchy”/oppressive systems?
From a mainstream feminist perspective, Del Ray is not empowered, and to quote music critic Anne Powers, “Del Rey has continued to stand firmly against the ideal of self-empowerment. Instead, she has explored what happens when women call themselves children; when they stumble in high heels; when they put the love of a man before all… an antifeminist stance” (Powers). Del Rey has responded in several interviews to claims about her “anitfeminist stance”. In 2014 she stated that she was “uninterested in feminism”, and was more interested in Elon Musk and SpaceX (Del Rey Qtd Cooper). Later, during the MeToo era and the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, in 2017, Del Rey stated that she changed her mind because of the political climate, stating that,“‘Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly’”, which encouraged her to speak out as a feminist (Del Rey qtd Frank).
Del Rey explicitly acknowledges critics of her romantic entanglements in “Brooklyn Baby”: “They say I’m too young to love you/They say I’m too dumb to see/They judge me like a picture book/By the colors, like they forgot to read” (Del Ray). She is asking for people to see the nuance of these relationships. To Lana, these relationships are more important than the judgement. To her, age is unimportant and secondary to the passion and inspiration that these relationships provide her. She has also specifically acknowledged that “women hated me. I know why. It’s because there were things I was saying that either they [women] just couldn’t connect to or were maybe worried that, if they were in the same situation, it would put them in a vulnerable place.” (Del Rey qtd frank). Del Rey wants these women to question their own discomfort with her, and see that these critiques of her music are not valuable to her. Del Rey has also responded to critics who find her music too violent by saying that “‘I don’t like it. It’s just the only thing [I’ve known]”’ (del Rey qtd frank). This challenges the idea that Del Rey is “antifeminist”: her lived experiences simply don’t align with this idea of “self empowerment”.
Catherine Vigier, French feminist artist and socialist critic, explored this phenomenon in her paper “The Meaning of Lana Del Rey”. She states that women in America today have to “express a confident, upbeat image, and to abandon any image that suggested victimhood”, which led to popularity of “self empowerment”, and the hatred of Del Rey’s “victimhood”. Vigier goes further to say that Americans, more specifically mainstream American feminists, assume that men and women are exactly the same. They assume that men and women’s desires, choices, needs, wants, etc, are the same, but this is simply not true. The options women have today are far more limited than mens in terms of how to exist: “self exploitation or self destruction” (Vigier 12). Self exploitation refers to self sexualization and victimization, whereas self destruction refers to the unsustainability of “empowerment” or strength. Self exploitation can also mean spreading oneself so thinly, to appear strong and independent, that a person destroys themself. These choices are related, and are not necessarily opposites.
But, Vigier believes that women should not feel bad about these choices: it is capitalism’s fault. She cites another economist/feminist writer, Susana Faludi, who detailed that “economic decline can lead to men feeling like failures… this can lead to hostility toward women and sometimes violence” (Vigier 11). Yet, we still blame women for being in a violent relationship, the obvious example being Del Rey, instead of demanding accountability from male perpetrators. We treat Lana Del Rey as though she exists in a vacuum, and her violent relationships are not the norm. The sad truth is that in America,1 in 4 women have faced severe domestic violence, and 1 in 5 have been raped in their lifetime, and 1 in 15 children have been exposed to intimate partner violence according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. So even if girls are not in a relationship which is violent, or have experienced sexual violence, she could have witnessed it as a child. But violence is not the only gender based predation impacting girls and women. According to a recent UK study, 97% of girls aged 18-25 has dealt with some type of sexual harassment (UN Women UK). That seems like an incredibly high number, but when I get my friends talking about growing up, every single one of them has a story about a time they were violated. Every single one.
This is the fault of society. It’s capitalism’s fault. It’s the patriarchy’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault and no one’s.
That’s clearly not a satisfying answer. In this specific instance, Lana Del Rey has a young fanbase, which has ranged from tweens to young adults. She is not singing to people who have had much romantic experience. Hopefully, they are not part of the 1 in 4, or 97%, (although I have a sinking suspicion they are). Regardless, they are an impressionable group of people that look for a role model, and misguidedly picked her. I was one of those people. She influenced me to think her “persona” was cool.
Because I was a young fan, and this is only my personal experience, I am scared for the girls after me to hear her words, and think that being Lana is cool or fun or empowering. To think that minors, or barely legal adults, are actively making a choice to replicate Del Rey’s persona and her actions horrifies me because I did that too. I thought that having relationships with older men, as a seventeen year old, like Del Rey sings about in “Carmen”, was perfectly normal, and maybe even a little sexy or glamorous. Del Rey’s beautiful imagery and sirens song tricked me. I thought that sexualizing my body to gain power, and feeling “empowered” by my own “one woman sexual liberation” as I called it, was a way to become a good feminist, or a good woman, or at least feel some control. Del Rey calls herself a “sexually liberated” and “free” woman, which is what I wanted, so I used Del Rey’s lyrics to achieve what she had. Both Lana and I were taught that wanton sex for women (only with men, obviously, this is still a patriarchy after all) is liberating. We would still be a slut but we had reclaimed that term, and a prudish woman isn’t empowered, she’s just a horny, unfulfilled, bitch. We were taught that no woman can ever do anything, be good enough, to escape womanhood without judgement.
So, I would love to blame Del Rey for everything she did to me, or influenced within me. I would love to rip her entirely to shreds, but I can’t. I can’t blame Del Rey alone, because she did not ask to only experience violence. She did choose to glamorize it for a young audience. But as an artist, her job is to make audiences uncomfortable and challenge them, which for an adult, it definitely does. Maybe the fact that I related to Lana’s feelings of being looked at or objectified at age twelve is the true problem that I can argue to fix. Maybe we shouldn’t sell sex to twelve year olds, and have better systems of support for girls like me, other than Lana Del Rey. Maybe the act of being a woman should not be a controversy in itself, and we should seek accountability from men. Everyone’s just doing their best, even if it isn’t good enough. We deserve more, but this is all we’re gonna get.
Works cited:
Carass, Christi. “Lana Del Rey Hits Back at Social Media Critics: ‘This Is the Problem with Society’.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2020, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-05-22/lana-del-rey-instagram-post-response.
Cooper, Duncan. “Cover Story: Lana Del Rey Is Anyone She Wants to Be.” The FADER, The FADER, 16 Apr. 2020, http://www.thefader.com/2014/06/04/cover-story-lana-del-rey-is-anyone-she-wants-to-be.
Del Rey, Lana. “Off to the Races”. Genius. https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-off-to-the-races-lyrics
Del Rey, Lana. “Carmen” .Genius. https://genius.com/574474
Del Rey, Lana. “Lolita”.Genius. https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-lolita-lyrics
Del Rey, Lana. “Ultraviolence”.Genius. https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-ultraviolence-lyrics
Del Rey, Lana. “When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing”.Genius.https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-when-the-world-was-at-war-we-kept-dancing-lyrics
Del Rey, Lana. Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it. Genius.https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-hope-is-a-dangerous-thing-for-a-woman-like-me-to-have-but-i-have-it-lyrics
Del Rey, Lana. “Cinnamon Girl”. Genius. https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-cinnamon-girl-lyrics
Del Rey, Lana. “Let Me Love You Like a Woman.” Genius.
https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-let-me-love-you-like-a-woman-lyrics.
Del Rey, Lana. “White Dress”. Genius. https://genius.com/Lana-del-rey-white-dress-lyrics.
Frank, Alex. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A Conversation With Lana Del Rey.” Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 19 July 2017, pitchfork.com/features/interview/life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-a-conversation-with-lana-del-rey/.
NABOKOV, VLADIMIR. LOLITA. EDITORIAL ANAGRAMA, 2020.
“NCADV: National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.” The Nation’s Leading Grassroots Voice on Domestic Violence, ncadv.org/STATISTICS.
Powers, Ann. “Lana Del Rey Lives In America’s Messy Subconscious.” NPR, NPR, 4 Sept. 2019, http://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/757545360/lana-del-rey-lives-in-americas-messy-subconscious.
“Safe Spaces Now.” UN Women UK, 10 Mar. 2021, http://www.unwomenuk.org/safe-spaces-now.
Vigier, Catherine. “The Meaning of Lana Del Rey.” WordPress, 2014, journal109944135.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/fa754-vigier-del-ray-clean-final-18-nov-1221.pdf.
Alexandra Faye Friedman 