The Authenticity of LANA DEL REY

15:46 · 2,791 words of transcript · watch on YouTube

1. Born to Die has spent over 300 weeks on the Billboard 200, which only three women have managed, on more than seven million copies sold.
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2. Her first video was taken down the day after upload for copyrighted footage, and the song spread through radio and music blogs anyway.
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3. The biography underneath: raised in upstate New York, singing in school and a church choir, sent to boarding school after acting out, and taught guitar by an uncle during a year waitressing on Long Island.
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4. She played Brooklyn open mics under two different names, studied philosophy at 19, and self-recorded acoustic material under yet another alias.
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5. A songwriting competition she did not win led to a label approach, and she spent the signing bonus on a trailer in New Jersey to write and make videos in.
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6. The earlier album was released digitally, never pressed, and pulled from iTunes within three months, after which she sought a separation agreement from the label.
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7. When the old material and photographs with label executives surfaced, the indie audience that had adopted her felt deceived, because indie status carries an expectation of authenticity.
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8. The cover-up theory does not hold: everyone involved was proud of the earlier record, it was reissued later, and one of its songs was reworked onto the extended edition of the hit album.
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9. She has said she deliberately lowered her singing voice so she would be taken seriously rather than dismissed on the basis of how she looked.
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10. The conclusion is that authenticity in pop is an illusion anyway, that the form is theatrical by nature, and that she differs from her peers mainly in never stepping outside the character.
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