Saturday, January 8, 2022

The Beauty of Song, Part Nine: Lana Del Rey

Elizabeth Woolridge Grant is a purveyor of serious, introspective pop music.


But her name was too professorial even for a recording artist producing music as involved as that, so came up with a catchy pseudonym - Lana Del Rey, a name she said was inspired by the Miami shoreline and also by Lana Turner and the Ford Del Rey, a sedan sold in Brazil.  She may not be aware that her stage name also means "king's wool" in Spanish.

Her self-titled 2010 debut album on a small label eventually got her enough buzz to land herself a major recording contract, which led to her 2012 LP Born To Die (an album title already used by Grand Funk Railroad), which was a huge success and featured the Top Ten single "Summertime Sadness."  Subsequent albums such as the critically acclaimed 201 release Ultraviolence (which featured he hit single "West Coast" and 2015's Honeymoon (which included the single "Music To Watch Boys By") furthered her career.

Lana Del Rey's songs delve into topics such as sorrow, glamour, doomed romance and bitterness, and she doesn't pull any punches in her singing or her songwriting.  And she's incredibly prolific; she's released seven albums in nine years.

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