Lana Del Rey’s work has been overlooked by critics and award shows for much of her career. In some cases, it feels as though critics, unless they are missing the point, have deliberately misunderstood her. Lana has been critically panned for singing about the same subject matter that other artists are praised for addressing. She has even received criticism from peers in the industry. Lana’s critics often charge her with glamorizing abuse, unhealthy relationship dynamics, and drug use (to name a few).
Lana Del Rey’s exceptional 2014 release Ultraviolence received some favorable reviews, but the tide really began to turn with her 2019 release Norman Fucking Rockwell!, which some consider to be her “magnum opus.” Pitchfork gave the work a 9.4 out of 10, a far cry from the 5.5 rating they assigned her debut album Born to Die. In spite of her newfound favor with the critics and the culture, Lana lost Song and Album of the Year to Billie Eilish in 2019. This year, however, it seemed as though the Recording Academy might finally recognize Lana Del Rey’s work, as she was nominated for five Grammy awards:
Best Alternative Album for Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Candy Necklaces”
Album of the Year for Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Best Alternative Music Performance for “A&W”
Song of the Year for “A&W”
Her 2023 release Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd achieved critical acclaim, and is the most intimate, personal work of her career. However, the Recording Academy overlooked her once again, mystifyingly selecting Taylor Swift’s Midnights as Album of the Year.
A Case for “Problematic” Art
Many artists make brilliant music about their struggles with substance abuse or toxic relationships — and Lana is no different. Must we expunge darkness and struggle from art? Must art made by women contain an overt message of female empowerment? Perhaps the members of the Recording Academy believe so. This year, the Grammys delivered a sanitized message of diversity and “world peace.” Harvey Mason Jr, the CEO of the Recording Academy, spoke about music from around the world being represented at this year’s Grammys, which is wonderful. However, the speech took a turn when he said “We began the show with an artist who grew up in London, the amazing Dua Lipa,” and a massive image of her appeared sidestage. “The next performance will be a first on the Grammys stage. We’ll see the superstar from Nigeria, Burna Boy.” Burna Boy’s image was cast on the screen. Finally, he appreciated being “guided through this evening by [the] fantastic South African host, Trevor Noah.” Noah’s face joined the other two onscreen. Perhaps it’s cynical to say so, but the display – combined with naming off artists based on their birthplace/culture – felt dangerously close to tokenism.
To make matters worse, Harvey Mason Jr vaguely addressed the Isreal-Hamas War in a speech about how music should be a “safe space.” He memorialized the 360 victims of the Hamas attack on Supernova Music Festival in Israel, without any mention of the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed since. He then motioned to a string quartet composed of Palestinian and Israeli musicians – an ultimately empty gesture to 1.9 million displaced Gazans. The speech felt like Israeli propaganda, and like a manipulation of the term “safe space.” Safety for who?
Peel back the layers of propaganda and performance, and at its core, there is a valid sentiment in the speech: art and music should be a “safe space.” Child psychologists help young people process their most difficult emotions through artwork. Songwriting, similarly, can be a form of self-psychoanalysis. It’s not always pretty, or empowering — but it is true, and it is real. When artists explore their most personal experiences in their work, the music paradoxically becomes universal. Though the audience’s life experiences may be vastly different from those of the creator, confessional song-writing is emotionally evocative and cathartic. As listeners, it often helps us put language to feelings we might never have been able to explain otherwise.
When Amy Winehouse’s iconic song about substance abuse, “Rehab,” took the world by storm in 2008, it earned her two Grammy awards. Back to Black, an album which explores the painful and bittersweet moments of an unhealthy relationship, won her Best Pop Vocal Album the same year. “Tears Dry On Their Own” is an excellent song from Back to Black, about being conscious that a relationship is unhealthy, and feeling unable to leave it all the same:
I knew I hadn't met my match
But every moment we could snatch
I don't know why I got so attached
It's my responsibility
And you don't owe nothing to me
But to walk away, I have no capacity
Based on the lyrical content and themes of their work, Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey might have been kindred spirits. In a video which has been circulating on Lana Del Rey fan accounts, Amy Winehouse discusses The Crystals’ controversial 1962 song, “He Hit Me— It Felt Like a Kiss.”
“There’s only a certain percentage of people in the world that would understand what that’s about. Most people be like ‘How dare you promote domestic violence?’ But to me, I’m like ‘I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.’”
Lana Del Rey used the controversial lyrics — “He hit me, and it felt like a kiss” — in her 2014 work Ultraviolence. Just as Winehouse predicted, some people interpreted her work as glorifying intimate partner violence. But the case can be made that this “problematic” art is the vulnerable work of somebody who has experienced toxicity in relationships and is using art to process complex feelings.
Confessional Songwriting
In Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Lana bares her soul lyrically, discussing mental illness, her strained relationship with her mother, her uncle’s suicide, whether she should have children. “A&W,” which was nominated for Song of the Year, begins with the lines “I haven’t done a cartwheel since I was nine/I haven’t seen my mother in a long, long time.” The loss of childhood innocence progresses into an examination of life as an “American Whore,” whose only value, essentially, is as a sexual object. Lana has often written from the perspective of The Other Woman, infusing the trope with glamor and grace. As she’s written it before, the character is a tragic but beautiful one – icy exterior, deeply lonely on the inside. The character is static until the utterly devastating “A&W,” when Lana sings:
I mean, look at my hair
Look at the length of it and the shape of my body
If I told you that I was raped
Do you really think that anybody would think
I didn’t ask for it? I didn’t ask for it
I won’t testify, I already fucked up my story
On top of this (Mm), so many other things you can’t believe
Did you know a singer can still be
Looking like a sidepiece at thirty-three?
Got a cop who turned on the backbeat
Puts the shower on while he calls me
Slips out the back door to talk to me
I’m invisible, look how you hold me
I’m invisible, I’m invisible
I’m a ghost now, look how you hold me
It’s not about havin’ someone to love me anymore
This is the experience of bein’ an American whore
Lana Del Rey has been candid about her relationship with celebrity cop Sean Larkin, who married someone else while Lana was in couple’s counseling with him, thrusting her into the role of The Other Woman without her consent. “A&W” is devastating because whatever glamor we associate with the beautiful, tragic woman is completely stripped from her– and she senses it too: “I’m invisible/I’m a ghost now.” The newfound self-awareness is akin to The Crystals realizing: “Maybe it doesn’t feel like a kiss when he hits me. Maybe if he hits me, he doesn’t care about me at all” – but realizing it too late, when he’s already stolen parts of them that they will never get back.
The tone of resignation in the lyric, “It’s not about havin’ someone to love me anymore,” is painfully relatable. Haven’t we all felt it at some time or another? I will never find love. Owning up to it is vulnerable enough, but Lana takes it even further. She sings about her younger sister’s firstborn child in “The Grants” and wonders if she’ll have a child of her own in later track,“Fingertips”:
Charlie, stop smoking
Caroline, will you be with me?
Will the baby be alright?
Will I have one of mine?
Can I handle it even if I do?
She name checks both her siblings in “Fingertips,” suggesting a level of closeness we haven’t seen in prior work. In the album’s title track, Lana earnestly asks, “When’s it gonna be my turn,”and it’s enough to send me into hysterics. DYKTTATUOB is an invitation into Lana Del Rey’s most private thoughts and fears and hopes. After years of being misunderstood by the press and criticized for writing about shallow female archetypes, DYKTTATUOB is achingly personal and reflective– but not exclusively downbeat. The album’s final song “Taco Truck x VB,” reads like a tongue-in-cheek parody of herself:
Met my boyfriend down at the taco truck
Pass me my vape, I'm feeling sick, I need to take a puff
Imagine if we actually gave a fuck
Wouldn't that be something to talk about for us
Lana famously loses her vape on stage during live performances. Her vape can even be heard crackling in a Chemtrails track, “White Dress.” It’s a lovable quirk among fans– those fortunate enough to meet her in person often ask Lana to try their vape's flavor. In “Taco Truck,” she also boldly sings “That’s why they call me Lanita,” to the chagrin of some fans. Perhaps it's her way of addressing the criticism she's received for her Spanish stage name, or for her sporadic adoption of a Chicano accent. Regardless, it demonstrates that DYKTTATUOB is a personal album wherein she takes ownership of not just her innermost feelings, but of the qualities that make her our “problematic fave” – the qualities that make her a complete person.
When Brandi Carlile introduced Joni Mitchell’s moving first time performance at the Grammy awards, she praised the artist’s “self-revealing songwriting.” I thought this was a good indication that the Recording Academy might finally recognize Lana Del Rey’s work, seeing as how DYKTTATUOB is her most self-revealing work thus far. Carlile stated that many artists don’t realize they “stand on the shoulders” of Joni Mitchell, and I heard a Lana Del Rey track playing in my head: “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep sea fishing.” By this point in the show, Lana had already lost Alternative Album of the Year and Best Song by Pop Duo– but I felt certain that Carlile’s phrasing was a clue, some foreshadowing, of Lana’s well-deserved win to come: Album of the Year.
What Does The Recording Academy Know Anyway?
When Lana lost Song of the Year for “A&W” to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” I understood – it’s a beautiful track. The lyrics are simple, but effective. Meanwhile, the lyrics of Swift’s “Anti-Hero” – also up for Song of the Year – are trying so hard to be clever and literary that they sound like they could have been written by either the cast of SNL or a high school student flipping through a thesaurus:
Sometimes, I feel like everybody is a sexy baby
And I'm a monster on the hill
Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city
Pierced through the heart, but never killed
Did you hear my covert narcissism
I disguise as altruism
Like some kind of congressman?
(A tale as old as time)
I wake up screaming from dreaming
One day, I'll watch as you're leaving
And life will lose all its meaning
(For the last time)
It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me (I'm the problem, it's me)
At teatime, everybody agrees
I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
Midnights is Swift’s attempt at the confessional songwriting that Lana employs in DYKTTATUOB, but it still feels superficial, and most major music publications seem to agree. DYKTTATUOB and “A&W” appeared in critics’ end of year lists. In fact, almost every nominee for Album of the Year made it in Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Albums of 2023 – not Midnights. Taylor Swift’s Midnights also did not make it into Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2023. Jay-Z criticized the Grammys as he accepted the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, saying “Some of y’all are gonna go home tonight and feel like you’ve been robbed. Some of you may get robbed. Some of you don’t belong in the category.” The crowd gasped. Could we all possibly be thinking of Midnights at the same time? Critics have not grouped Midnights with the other contenders for Album of the Year– that’s for sure.
So, what does the Recording Academy know anyway? As demonstrated by CEO Harvey Mason Jr’s “world peace” speech, the Grammys have a brand, an image, and a narrative to protect.
When Grimes was on the Board for Producer of the Year, she was given a list of pre-selected nominees to choose from; so, perhaps the Grammys select nominees and winners who support the narrative they aim to create. And after ex-CEO Neil Portnow’s sexual assault allegations and misogynistic comments, perhaps giving a female artist Album of the Year for a record-breaking fourth time helps steer the conversation in a “female empowerment” direction. Miley Cyrus got it right when she accepted her award for Record of the Year: “Please don’t think that this [award] is important.”
It is entirely possible that diehard Lana fans are acting like sore losers– but maybe we’re right to have little faith in the award show that previous Grammys CEO Deborah Dugan calls "rigged." Lana Del Rey has the maturity and tact to lose gracefully – so we the fans will just have to say it for her: she was snubbed.
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