the year is 2023 n i want to buy a lana del rey cover issue.
usually, said thought would be embarrassing to admit. who actually listened to lana after ultraviolence? stans im not looking at u, yall r a different type of breed. yes, i kno ~normal fucking rockwell is her best album~ but that was 2019. her position as Mother no longer existed except for i miss tumblr 2014 playlists.1 her music n her no longer held the same toxic lolita miss americana chokehold. the real reasoning behind why we love her!
lana became stale n then she got weird. she walked between the lines of problematic fav n straight up stupid.2 calling feminism boring? forgivable. bashing the black girlies for no reason while framing it as a question for the culture? racist, selfish, tone-deaf, etc. then she dated a cop, wore those kitschy “face masks”….like girl ur doing it to urself now…. mina le, da only youtuber i watch, analyzes and describes this progression pretty well here.
but i think this total destruction of lana’s persona and real identity was needed for her to rise 3 we have surpassed the sad teenage girl era of our lives lead by her. we’re aware of how it has erased black girls, brown girls, fat girls, disabled girls, ie all girls who do not fit the educated, middle class, skinny, pretty, white girl standard. safy-hallan farah expresses it best in her own substack post: all alone in their white girl pain. we have taken lana off the pedestal she once stood so highly on n look critically against girlies who make work on their suffering.4
if lana has stayed the lana we i wanted her so desperately be, she wouldn’t have survived this long. her identity based on the romanticization of abuse, unhealthy relationships with elder men, mental illness, n the 50s has barely made it through. i doubt an added visual — one that was often culturally appropriated — would’ve had, but it was those videos n images that completed her persona.
it was necessary for her to become boring n lame. how could she rise from the ashes in the same style she was birthed without a fall? now lana can hang with Men n ride motorcycles n get married n smoke cigarettes at diners while we eat that shit up! i mean even the ending of a&w sounds like old lana.
the timing is perfect too. we’re post-woke, nostalgia obsessed, n turning catholic. lets jus see how she holds up this time………….
obviiiiii i have my own do yall even kno me?!?!?!????!!!
like she was giving more grimes than azealia banks
BTW im not defending any of her actions, i think shes a girly who means well most of the time jus v stupid n out of touch, mayb bc shes living in this fantasy land (if thats da case, i wanna b jus like DAT!)
dont judge me thoooooo….. (/.\)