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Saph · 02-02-2012, 05:01 PM

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Ouch. Lana Del Rey, formerly Lizzie Grant, recently released her much-hyped debut album, “Born to Die.” The reactions are what you could charitably call “mixed.” Here are the nastiest quotes from the nastiest reviews.

"An inevitable letdown as one unconvincing, lethargic vocal bleeds into the next"
- USA Today

"Diet Mountain Due and Off To The Races aim for chatty, sparkling opulence, but this singer doesnt have the personality to pull it off."
- Pitchfork

"But her voice is pitched and prim, her song doctors need to go the **** back to med school"
- Rolling Stones

"Lana Del Rey isnt nearly as convincing a fiction as David Bowie's, Ziggy Stardust, Madonna Ciccone's name shortened boy-toy persona or even Taylor Swifts character, 'Taylor Swift'."
- Los Angeles Times

"Del Rey has listned to Amy Winehouse, but gets nowhere near the emotion of the late British singers voice. Del Rey's attempts are without the honesty or devil-may-care feel"
- Los Angeles Times

"What Should have been a seductive subterfuge instead grows tedious, erratic and annoyingly faux-minx. It is a put-on she can't pull off."
- USA Today

More reviews here..
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/26-mea...ana-del-reys-n

MeMyselfAndI · 02-02-2012, 05:03 PM

Yay, glad they think Taylor Swift is better

Shaun · 02-02-2012, 05:05 PM

Metacritic (59/100)

That's basically 3/5 altogether... so not exactly hating it

Saph · 02-02-2012, 05:07 PM

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Originally Posted by Shaun

Metacritic (59/100)

That's basically 3/5 altogether... so not exactly hating it

I don't know, I just got this from a website

Fetch The Bolt Cutters · 02-02-2012, 06:09 PM

its ok, not amazing, not terrible, just ok.

Shaun · 02-02-2012, 06:23 PM

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"Del Rey has listned to Amy Winehouse, but gets nowhere near the emotion of the late British singers voice. Del Rey's attempts are without the honesty or devil-may-care feel"
- Los Angeles Times

has got to be the stupidest criticism I have ever read. That's like saying "Shaun Collins has seen the Mona Lisa, but he can't paint for shit".

And the authenticity angle was touched upon the other day on the NME:

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“These days you can see ****ing Johnny Borrell in his pants going through the bass parts, and that just strips away the magic. Everyone just wants more and more information. All the fantasy’s gone out of music, ’cos everything is too ****ing real. It makes people seem too human, whereas I was brought up on Marc Bolan and David Bowie, and it was like, ‘Do they actually come from Mars?’”

The words there, in 2006, of then-noted-internet-phobe Noel Gallagher. People scoffed at the time, called him a granddad and a luddite. But as we head into 2012 – even he now armed with an iPad – it seems you cannot move online for people fretting about the death of mystique, and a lot of the time it’s people who only months previously were gleefully lifting lids. The Guardian for example: in April they were “outing” WU LYF after less than 12 gigs and one single as puppets of a renowned creative agency head; by the end of the year they were – in the face of the brutally swift and efficient online demystification of the girl on this week’s NME cover – bemoaning “what is pop if not a theatre of dreams in which David Jones from Brixton can reimagine himself as a gay alien?”

They were not alone in their Lana/Bowie analogy. Village Voice: “Imagine a ’69 internet reacting to David Bowie’s breakthrough with ‘Space Oddity’ – a single as mannered, languid, and beguiling as ‘Video Games’, and a performer as in love with artifice and with plenty of past to dig up. Would his career have benefited from blogs tearing apart his inconsistency and torrents bundling his hit with ‘The Laughing Gnome’?”

Answer? He would have done what the trailer park-berthed Lana Del Rey had no choice but to do when quizzed about being plain ol’ Lizzie, daughter of a “domain investor” whose adopted identity – or “rebranding”– was the work of a committee of suits, or WU LYF were forced to do when their bandanas were prematurely forced off. He would have protested that he was just a regular guy, who likes dressing up and making music.

It is, for those who like a bit of old-world mystique with their music, a now-very apparent problem. At present, everyone – everyone – in music journalism is trying to secure an interview with The Weeknd. He is ignoring the requests, probably because he knows that all he is going to be asked is, whether lines like “Bring your love, baby, I can bring my shame/Bring the drugs, baby, I can bring my pain” are really him, or just pretending. Likely of course, he is pretending, and when he does do an interview – which he will – he will be pressed endlessly on snippets of found info about his normal former life and just go, “Look, I’m just a regular guy who likes dressing up and making some music.”

Remember how much more exciting Burial was when he wasn’t just another beanie-hat-wearing anono-dude crate-digger? Even he, in a “rare” interview, said, “I love old jungle and garage tunes, when you didn’t know anything about them, and nothing was between you and the tunes. I liked the mystery; it was more scary and sexy.” That was in 2007.

But it’s way too late to go back, of course. It’s a part of the process. An old interview with the mum of The Vaccines’ Freddie Cowan about the £2.5m house he used to live in; Brother formerly playing in an emo band; Tyler, The Creator being revealed as having gone to a very nice school indeed; The Drums’ shady past in super-corporate indie types Elkland; Fred from Spector being the son of a guy auditing the Queen’s accounts. Nowadays it is standard interview practice to demystify.

No-one pre-2004-ish got their past dredged up too much, and even if they were pressed could sidestep it – as Pete Doherty did in the first NME Libs feature – with a blasé “the past is such a web of shadows and lies, it’s difficult to pinpoint exact dates.” All that stuff about living in brothels? It would have been replaced by the boring, dredged-up truth by the time ‘What A Waster’ had been released. Doherty would have been asked over and over until he cracked into the regular guy schtick:

So Pete, why did you say you were a rentboy when really you had a temping job in an office?

And it’s getting harder and harder, so people are resorting to more extreme measures. It’s got to the point where some music industry type rang me the other day, and said he had some band that were gonna “blow my head off”. I asked what they were called. He said he couldn’t tell me. I asked him to send me some tunes, even if anonymous. He said he couldn’t. I asked where they were from, he told me some far-fetched nonsense, which sounded amazing. I asked him to play me a bit down the pho… OK, you get the idea. It ended with me eventually getting a little bit excited, and him saying I could come and watch them practice soon.

I will, but really, how ****ing good are they gonna have to be to live up to these concocted expectations? Better than any band who are (probably about) a dozen gigs into their “career” ever has been before, that’s for sure.

This article originally appeared in the January 28th issue of NME

Tom4784 · 02-02-2012, 06:30 PM

Like I give a **** about reviews, unlike some people I don't need reviewers or sales figures to tell me who I should like.

I actually chortled at the Taylor Swift quote.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters · 02-02-2012, 06:34 PM

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Originally Posted by Dezzy

Like I give a **** about reviews, unlike some people I don't need reviewers or sales figures to tell me who I should like.

I actually chortled at the Taylor Swift quote.

-glares @ smithy-

CharlieO · 02-02-2012, 06:51 PM

I like it and to me that's all that matters. Who cares if critics don't. I believe that it is a very good album with beautiful pieces of music and lyrics in.

Taylor Swift. Do not make me laugh.

Iceman · 02-02-2012, 07:14 PM

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Originally Posted by MeMyselfandI

Yay, glad they think Taylor Swift is better

Retarded comment is retarded.

Iceman · 02-02-2012, 07:15 PM

From what Ive listened to I actually really like it.....for some reason I had a feeling beforehand I wouldnt like it but I dunno why.

Z · 02-02-2012, 08:12 PM

It's so disheartening to see people rip into her for not being "authentic." So ****ing what if she isn't exactly the persona behind her songs? So it's okay for other musicians to have alter egos (Eminem, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, the list goes on and on) but it's not okay for her to? It's the only criticism they have of her. Somebody who comes along that deservedly earns hype and actually delivers some impressive early results OBVIOUSLY needs taking down a peg or ten, in the eyes of the media. It's so dumb and so irritating to watch. I hope she ignores them and continues to do what she's doing. I much prefer listening to her interesting depictions of love and life, which are equally as self deprecating as they are insightful and clever, than listening to the same old Guetta inspired **** that the rest of the popular music industry is throwing at us. I hope Lana inspires a wave of similar minded artists. Absolutely brilliant artist.

Z · 07-02-2012, 12:52 PM

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Hi!

We are aware that you have been having trouble with Lana Del Rey for some time now. When you know that a relationship isn't working it is somtimes hard to move forward but we just want to let you know that it is alright to make a clean break. And maybe the right time is now. Maybe now it is time to let go of Lana Del Rey. And that is fine. Do not feel guilt. She is safe in the arms of pop.

Why now? Well, she's got a proper single out this week. This is the one that's supposed to be 'the big one'. And yes we know the accidental Top 10 hit last year confused you a bit, because you weren't sure whether you were already supposed to have bailed on her by that point, so your end-of-2011 year in review articles were a bit muddled. You didn't know what you were supposed to think any more, but that does not matter any more because, like we say, you can walk away right now with your dignity.

And there's no need to feel bad that it hasn't worked out. You've given it a good go. You've had your chance to impose your boring ideas of authenticity onto a pop creation, to express your disgust that she might be better in the studio than on the stage. That's the way you like to judge things and that's fine, it's just that this isn't how pop works, and Lana Del Rey is a pop thing. A hot, melodic, major label-signed pop thing.

You were probably starting to realise about ten weeks ago that the whole Lana Del Rey 'proposition' was a bit less complex than you'd made it out to be. You realised that her music didn't really sound like anything else you wrote about, but you still wanted her to be 'your' pop princess. The Britney of alt! Maybe the David Sneddon co-writes were the last straw, maybe it was the cover of Q Magazine. But isn't that still interesting in a looking-at-it-from-the-outside sort of way? Not really, but we admire you for trying to keep that going.

The point is, you've had your opportunities to big her up and knock her down and do this and do that. You've had the leaks and the 'leaks' and the streams and the mixes. Oh, those mixes! The mixes were made just for you! We know that made you feel special. And now you feel betrayed because she was just like all the other girls, with their blog-friendly positioning and their secret fantasies of a Top 10 hit. We know you're upset and we know you're angry but please don't talk about being used. You want to be used. You want to be a tastemaker. You want to be the one PRs and pluggers and labels come to when they want to launch a new artist. You want to decide when things are good or bad and you want the comments on your blog articles from the people who disagree. Well you've had all that. You've done all you can. You've done your thinkpieces and your polls and your faceoffs. You've had your traffic. There is nothing more you can say or print or publish or broadcast to change things now.

So let her succeed or fail on her own terms. These are the terms of the popstar, for that is what she is. If she succeeds she succeeds as a popstar; if she fails, she fails as one too. Leave her to the mainstream chat shows. Leave her to the daytime radio playlists. Leave her to the Top 10, or the Top 40, or the Top Wherever-She-Ends-Up. Because that is what this was all leading up to. Don't act all surprised. It is not our fault you do not understand this popstar. We know you are embarrassed that you got it wrong, and we know you're not sure how to handle the situation now. Do you continue the support? Do you lash out? Do you try to do both at the same time because you're not sure how many records she's going to sell and you want to maybe keep your readers on side? The answer is easy. If you don't feel that she's part of your world, let her drift away while you go back to plotting that definitive Bon Iver thinkpiece.

Yes we know you'll be writing articles about how right you were if she succeeds or how wrong your peers were if she fails by the time the end of 2012 reviews roll around. We know she'll either be the multi-platinum pop creation you created or the faker who deserved everything she got. So why not write those thinkpieces now? Why not write them now, print them out onto some nice paper then take them into a field and set fire to them, because we don't want or need to read them.

If a kid picked and poked and pushed and pulled a rabbit you'd take the rabbit away from them.

You cannot be trusted with a popstar.

You've had your chance.

Hand her over.

Love,

PS: You can have Santigold back if you want.

Source: http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?...983&Itemid=206

Yeah this pretty much says it all.

Benjamin · 07-02-2012, 12:56 PM

Am I the only one who never gives a crap about critics opinions? I always see them as a majority of people that failed to get into the industry they criticise because they weren't very good themselves.

Z · 07-02-2012, 04:10 PM

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Originally Posted by ukturtle

Am I the only one who never gives a crap about critics opinions? I always see them as a majority of people that failed to get into the industry they criticise because they weren't very good themselves.

You might be right, but they do very often influence public opinion, especially if a significant number of them share an opinion, it spreads like disease.