Steve Sailer writes: “Singer Lana Del Rey has been triggering music critics for a decade for her pride in being a beautiful straight white American woman. But she’s so smart (philosophy major in college) and aesthetically gifted (both in terms of her overall shtick and, on this new album, in massive melodic hooks) that she’s gotten away with it so far.”
Comments:
* The criticism on Lana is not so much that she is a white or straight, but that she sings mostly about men, and often not in a condemning tone. If she sang about how oppressive and piggish men are, then there wouldn’t be a problem. The problem is that she sings about how she loves men, and how femininity is all about the chase of a man worth chasing. *That* is what pisses not only feminists, but all liberals and left-leaning people about her,
The big theme of Lana’s music is that the biggest thrill of femininity is to chase a man that you are in love with while he ignores you, and conquering his attention and affection. Needless to say, this pisses the Woke crowd to no end.
* “Del Rey”, isn’t that hispanic?
It’s Southern California 1920s glamor.
* Billie Eilish highly admires Del Rey. Eilish is another example of a musically gifted white female who writes somewhat depressive music. Her recent single, “my future”, opens with a series of jazz chords of the type you just don’t hear in current pop music.
In an interview, Billie’s brother said she wants everyone to like her and that has turned her into a woke liberal. A lot of wokeism is just a desire to conform, be popular and follow the crowd. There is no group that worries more about being popular than teenage girls, of which Billie is one.
This wokeism has mostly kept her out of trouble but not completely. Her last single, a Latin song sung in Spanish, caused her to be accused of engaging in cultural appropriation. There was a controversy after the just concluded Grammy awards about her winning Record of the Year over a black female rapper. The underlying premise of these complaints was that the black female rapper had a better song but lost because of racism. Billie is intelligent enough to realize this was going to happen and spent most of her acceptance speech profusely apologizing for winning.
* She herself has described her music, which I find unusually interesting for something that isn’t obviously interesting, as “Hollywood Sadcore.”
* a lot (most) of the current woke hatred is just envy – basically Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism applied to all of white society.
Most women don’t look at the aesthetic of Cardi B/Megan Thee Stallion and aspire to live that out, they look at the stuff like Del Rey’s album cover and imagine themselves in that picture, and the implied financial and relationship security behind it. But going full bore feminist doesn’t lend itself to that outcome – instead women are told they need to act like men in their approach to career and sex lives, and it makes them miserable, which they reframe as being ’empowered’.
As for men, our culture cannot admit that the white guy with the suburban house, wife, kids and dog is still the archetype of success, and a huge percentage of society has no shot of getting there, thus those that do or at least check most of these boxes are hated.
* She’s enormously talented musically and in her evocation of a nostalgic Americana.
I’m unsure where she’s going with the nostalgia. Is it a futile, defeated nostalgia for “an America that never existed”, or for an America that existed but is now dead?
Many of the young women she depicts are on the nihilistic life path of finding the world bland and without anything to believe in, partying and sensation seeking to escape the bland world, being hurt or mutilated or killed by glamorous but callous men, but wallowing in the hurt, because it’s the only thing that’s real and there’s nothing else to believe in.
I was listening to her for a long time before I watched her videos, which then reinforced my feeling of unease. She doesn’t look like a healthy or happy young woman.
* As she sort of humblebrag acknowledged in that little Instagram tiff she had last year, Lana has got a fairly wide open lane for her shtick since the median point of performative femininity in music today has settled somewhere between Billie Eilish’s schizoid asexuality and “WAP.” There’s an unmet demand for a woman who is actually reasonably pleasant to look at singing songs that are reasonably pleasant to listen to. Props to her for coming out of her attempted canceling last year though by refusing to back down or apologize. Props also to her for her productivity over the last decade. I appreciate musicians who can keep working consistently rather than getting burned out and/or lazy with success.
* She is a very creative and talented artist and I am very glad she’s not my daughter.
* Lana del Ray is a hilarious stage name. It just steers straight into Hollywood regency era kitsch exoticism. It’s the name dashiell Hammett would give a studio bosses vaguely ethnic mistress whose real name would turn out to be Debrorah Westlake.
* Today I learned this woman was a philosophy major from New York who is reported to have had a drinking problem at the age of 15. Special.
* Steve’s influence is limited to lucky happenstance because Tucker Carlson’s show has become the most popular news show and the main people responsible for the content of the show are regular readers of this blog. Tucker, Mark Steyn, and the former top writer who Tucker fired are readers.
* Smart, highly creative women are not usually very easy to handle. Guys who want a house in the suburbs, kids and a dog should probably avoid them in favor of “common-sense” women.
But some of us can’t help ourselves.
* One of my favorite Lana moments came when she told world-renowned crazy shit-talker Azealia Banks to STF or she’d kick her ass.
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES Jan. 12, 2021:
More Lana Del Rey drama ensues after her diversity comments about new album art
Lana Del Rey’s Instagram posts of her upcoming album’s front and back covers have sparked yet another debate about the singer and her thoughts on race — a conversation that the “Summertime Sadness” artist appeared to be trying to get ahead of.
Pro tip: Saying your “best friends are rappers” isn’t likely to win over anyone when discussing race relations.
“There’s always turmoil and upheaval and in the midst of it- there’s always beautiful music too introducing my new album chemtrails over the country club,” Del Rey wrote Sunday on social media, posting the black-and-white album cover, featuring herself surrounded by 10 smiling women. Its back image shows Del Rey’s face peeking out from among the other women’s backs.
She followed up with a lengthy second statement that began, “I also want to say that with everything going on this year! And no this was not intended-these are my best friends, since you are asking today. And damn! As it happens when it comes to my amazing friends and this cover yes there are people of color on this records picture and that’s all I’ll say about that but thank you.”
The Los Angeles Mar. 18, 2021:
You can’t fire Lana Del Rey; she quits.
Months after a cascading series of attempted cancellations — here she was centering her white privilege; here she was wearing a mesh face mask in the middle of a pandemic; here she was insisting she’s obviously not racist because she’s had rappers for boyfriends — pop music’s most glamorous headline-maker is back with a riveting new album about exiting the limelight to find a simpler place where the haters can’t get her down.
Again and again on “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” which dropped Thursday night, Del Rey sings of casting off her renown as though it were a heavy coat. She dreams of leaving Los Angeles, the adopted home that figured so prominently on 2019’s “Norman F— Rockwell!,” for “a little piece of heaven” in Arkansas or Nebraska. She describes doing the laundry and washing her hair with the kind of breathy sensuality she used to employ while singing about getting high by the beach.
…More than once in the past year, as she set flame to her accumulated goodwill, you could wonder if she actually knew what she was doing — that maybe her baffling moves were part of some larger creative project about the diseased American soul in the age of Donald Trump (whom, by the way, she appeared in a radio chat to absolve of his complicity in January’s Capitol riot).
