Lana Del Rey: ‘I’m not trying to create an image. I’m just singing because that’s what I know how to do’
- Lana Del Rey released Born To Die in 2011, and critics have been struggling to define her unique style
- Her latest release, Norman F****** Rockwell, is no exception, still polarising critics and winning new fans
Here’s a wild idea: what if Lana Del Rey is exactly who she says she is?
Her music keeps making us think otherwise. It’s still too elegant, too plush, too slippery to be real. Maybe that’s why, in concert, she likes to talk about a song after she sings it, as if to confirm that it wasn’t just a puff of Chanel No 5 in our collective imagination.
For years, the easiest way to reconcile the strangeness of Lana Del Rey was to tell ourselves that we were listening to a persona. Here was a remote pop star dream journaling from a perspective too fabulous to belong to an actual human being.
Del Rey has rejected that idea from the start. When NPR published a deep, diligent, largely flattering review of her new album last month, Del Rey took issue with its mention of personae and blasted back on social media: “Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will.”