Of all of the remixes, music videos, and performances one can find online of Lana Del Rey's hit single, "Video Games," none are more beautiful or poignant than her performance at the Corinthia Hotel in London.
This video of the exquisite 25-year-old pop-chanteuse features her alone with a microphone in an enormous ballroom and accompanied solely by her pianist. She sings the song with unmatched radiance as the camera cuts and weaves through the dimly lit space, catching glimpses of her motions and sways.
This video captures the very strength of what is essential about Del Rey's singing style: a painstakingly earnest presentation of a message that's meant to be taken ironically.
Thus, in "Video Games," we hear Del Rey singing of lowly masculine desires with lines such as: "Heaven is a place on earth where you / Tell me all the things you want to do / I heard that you like the bad girls / Honey, is that true?"
Unfortunately, Del Rey's newly-released debut album and recent television appearances fail to capture her earnest self-presentation (as expressed in both the beauty of her physical appearance and the darkness of her lyrics) that is never more fully present than in her recording at the Corinthia Hotel.
Released as a single last October, "Video Games" was an enormous critical success that skyrocketed Del Rey to stardom status across the blogosphere. Writers everywhere lauded her chanteuse image and her dark and marvelous lyrics; Pitchfork named "Video Games" the 19th best song of 2011.
Between that single and its popular B-side, "Blue Jeans," Lana Del Rey became arguably the biggest Internet sensation since The Weeknd came out with "House of Balloons" last March.
And then she went on SNL.
On the night of January 15, a storm of critics took to their Twitters and blogs to characterize her performance as the show's worst act since the infamous Ashlee Simpson-lipsynching incident in 2007.
Even NBC anchor Brian Williams chimed in, calling Del Rey's appearance "one of the worst outings in SNL history" and claiming that she was "the least experienced musical guest" the show had ever seen. In many ways, Williams' comments are hyperbole—she was bad, but not that bad, and the comedy sketch show has never been the ideal stage for live music.
Obviously, Del Rey was nervous that evening; her movements were jerky and her performance was wrought with excessive vocal gimmicks that came across as borderline campy. She failed to live up to her potential as a gifted vocalist and was not at all straight-faced about the ironic nature of her lyrics.
The huge stage on which she was placed for her primetime billing proved resistant to the implied loneliness of her song's subject matter; this was the reason, I believe, why her isolated Corinthia Hotel performance triumphs.
Another major fault of Del Rey's SNL outing—and also her recent LP—was the presence of a four-piece backing band.
Her recent debut album, "Born To Die," similarly comes across as excessively lavish with production. A plethora of sweeping string arrangements and powerful beats steal the spotlight and become just as repetitive as her lyrics about the dirty nature of her love and her devotion to bad boys—material betraying that which propelled the singer's rise to fame. While the album's title features lines like: "Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain / You like your girls insane," "Diet Mountain Dew" contains verses where she sings, "Can we get it now low, down and gritty / Do you think we'll be in love forever?"
Adding insult to injury, "Born to Die" pairs these lyrics with intentionally sexy riffs and arrangements that further inhibit the once-powerful dichotomy she occupied as a singer both earnest and sarcastic. The effect comes close to imitating the work of the current pop queen of dark and twisted beauty, Lady Gaga.
All of this makes the original cut of "Video Games"—a simple piano ballad lacking in contrived sexiness and composition—all the more poignant.
When thinking of Lana Del Rey and her artistic sensibilities, the garage rock female-fronted duo Best Coast comes to mind.
On Best Coast's debut album, lead singer and songwriter Bethany Cosentino pulls a number thematically opposite to Del Rey's. Amidst Cosentino's choppy, crude guitars, minimal production and strained vocals, she sings simple songs of love with upmost sincerity, so much so that you can almost picture Cosentino dropping off her mix tape for a crush.
Then with "Born To Die," I can only imagine Del Rey singing her proclamations into a mirror, now too self-involved with the attention that fame has brought her to notice the men for whom she once sang.
It seems like Del Rey's music was best suited for the smaller stage. She thrived in short form, with Internet singles posted on blogs and performances played to small and empty audiences, who no doubt felt endeared to catch a beautiful girl singing like some forgotten Jazz Age singer. Fame, perhaps, proved to be her foil.
This week's five hum and beats:
Harry Nilsson - "One"
Real Estate - "Municipality"
Tennis - "Origins"
The Replacements - "Within Your Reach"
Fleetwood Mac - "Dreams"