Lana Del Rey: nostalgia made voice

 American melancholy

Lana Del Rey (born June 21, 1985, in Manhattan, New York, USA) is an American singer-songwriter known for combining glamorous and melancholic musical themes with classic American aesthetics and a nostalgic, cinematic visual style.His songs often focus on melancholic experiences that audiences can relate to, wrapped in a cultural pastiche of Hollywood's golden age.

Grant began performing in clubs and writing songs under the name Lizzy Grant. In 2006, she recorded a demo album titled Sirens under the name May Jailer. Around that time, she signed with 5 Points Records and used the money from her contract to move to New Jersey, where she lived in a trailer park. In 2008, she released the EP Kill Kill under the name Lizzy Grant, but the album was not successful on the charts.In 2010 Del Rey released the album Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant on 5 Points Records. (Grant had not yet settled on the spelling of her stage name, initially spelling it “Lana Del Ray.”) The album was released solely on iTunes (a streaming service), but it was unlisted after just a couple of months, reportedly at the request of the singer and her management team. She then broke with 5 Points and moved to London, where she worked with songwriter Justin Parker on several songs, including “Video Games.” 

Despite her strong album sales and many accolades, Del Rey has been criticized for appearing to romanticize abusive relationships, death, and depression in her songs and videos. Her critics in this regard have included Kim Gordon of the avant-garde rock group Sonic Youth and Frances Bean, the daughter of alternative rock band Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who died by suicide in 1994. In 2020 Del Rey posted a lengthy response to such criticisms on her Instagram page, writing:She also wrote that she has “been honest and optimistic about the challenging relationships” she has had, adding, “That’s just how it is for many women.” However, Del Rey has also expressed regret about some of her early song lyrics, and in 2017 she announced that she would be retiring her song “Cola” (2012) from her concert set lists. The song’s sexually charged lyrics include a reference to former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. At the height of the Me Too movement in 2017, multiple women accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and rape. (He was convicted of rape in 2020.) Del Rey said that she supported the women who had come forward about Weinstein and that retiring the song “would be the only right thing to do.”