Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, you’ll be aware that one of the biggest musicians of the modern day is traversing the Atlantic next summer. None other than the Lana Del Rey is gracing Hampden Park, usually home to the slightly less elegant Scotland team and their adversaries, next June.
While Lana has headlined at UK festivals, it’s been quite some time since the sparkle jump rope queen has toured Britain, making the occasion doubly special to UK-based fans.
This momentous event has provided me with the perfect opportunity to discuss an issue that has long weighed on my mind: what Lana del Rey can tell us about American popular and political culture. With her Americana-inspired lyrics, Lana is no stranger to the American psyche.
Credit: Instagram/@honeymoon.
Americana both refers to the glorification of American culture, particularly a nostalgia for bygone days, and a folk-heavy soft-rock genre heavily influenced by musical elements originating in rural America. LDR infuses both in her music, from lyrics that express a unique fondness for the states to her most recent single, Tough, which marks her shift to a more country-influenced musical style.
Although widely regarded as genre-defying, there’s no denying the influence of cultural and musical Americana on Lana’s music. Her lyrics are invocative of America throughout the 20th century, guiding the listener through nostalgia for various aspects of the American Dream.
Born to Die, the singer’s first mainstream hit, conjures up a vision of America at its perceived peak: a society of liberty, opulence and success. The album knowingly draws on this, with tracks titled American, Bel Air and National Anthem, the music video of which portrays the life JFK could have had with Marilyn Monroe.
These two pillars of American political and popular culture characterise the vision of America that was in ascension post-war: melding the material, political power of JFK and the glitzy sex symbol of Monroe mirrors the glamour that America represented in the 50s and 60s. Americana is not just the superficial admiration of American pop culture icons, but a respect for the intricate system of genuine, dominant power that lies behind them. A dynamic that the finest political minds may take a career to convey, Lana manages to illustrate in seven minute and forty-nine seconds of music video.
Credit: Instagram/@honeymoon.
Two of her next albums, Ultraviolence and Lust for Life, in addition to her most critically acclaimed album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, progress chronologically beyond Born to Die, instead exploring an America coming to grips with itself in the 70s.
Ultraviolence describes “the freedom land of the seventies”, while Lust for Life draw on parallels between modern Coachella and retro Woodstock and features pillar of the 70s music scene Stevie Nicks on a track. These express a progression from the opulence of Born to Die towards a more reflective and torn America, struggling with Vietnam and revolutions in cultural expression. The sound is less upbeat, the lyrics explore darker themes.
Norman Fucking Rockwell, named after an eminent illustrator famed for his depictions of American culture, continues the 70s theme. In this album, Lana focuses more on the West Coast, exploring creativity and hippie culture in LA with tracks like Venice Bitch – Venice Beach in reality being a hub for the hippie movement and the home of skateboarding in the 70s. Mariners Apartment Complex encapsulates the spirit of creatives coming to Los Angeles – in real life Mariners Village is a community where new arrivals in LA often found themselves, built in the 70s as long-term rental properties.
Across her whole body of work, Lana explores the transformation of American people, culture, and identity from the glamour of Old Hollywood towards grungy, gritty alternative culture. This transformation imitated America’s changed stance in global affairs, revealing the transformative latter-half of the 20th century through a synth-infused lens.
So, say what you want about the struggle for tickets to her Hampden event, but buy them knowing you're not only seeing an artist but one of the greatest political analysts of the 21st century.
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