I haven’t read much about her performance, but the Huffington Post article you linked to didn’t seem like breathless but also pitiless criticism. I even thought it was kind of empathetic, just like you:

“Still, we wonder how little this has to do with talent, and how much with nerves. After all, we’ve seen her perform for a television audience outside the U.S. Her rendition of “Video Games” on Jools Holland, for one, was decent, and far from deserving this sort of criticism. Is this just be a case of being pushed into the spotlight too fast, with too much pressure for perfection?”

Even the comments on the article (or at least the 10 or so I browsed through) seem pretty fair to her. So sure, Perez Hilton exists to LOVE or HATE her, but I think most people don’t care too much. Don’t buy into the (anti?)hype machine, Lana Del Rey will be ok.

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I heard about her, but mostly all I ever heard was that she’s hot, but her music sucks. I feel like this is such a common occurrence that it really wouldn’t ever cross into my media absorbance or whatever.

And then, as is our usual Sunday afternoon tradition, the roomies and I watched SNL on Hulu, and I was like, damn, this woman is a joke. I felt the same way when Neon Indian opened for Phoenix.

For both Neon Indian and for Lana Del Rey, I feel like the hype machine is saying YOU SHOULD LIKE THIS AND GUESS WHAT NOW IT’S EVERYWHERE, and all my roomies think I should love Skrillex when to me it sounds like robots having angry sex, and I think, why does everybody insist on telling everybody else what to listen to? Okay, that’s too vague, but you get my point. So it’s pretty damn awesome when the hype machine collapses on itself. If Lana Del Rey’s hype cycle can complete before she can even release a proper album, maybe the hype will start to cool down on all fronts.

It’s not going to happen, but a boy can dream.

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There is hype about Lana Del Ray? I have seriously been out of the loop. “Video Games” I thought was pretty good though, sounds like the cutesy doe act is ironic and pokes as much fun at herself for buying into love and also enjoying the attention it brings.. not unlike a lot of girls I know. I guess I’ll continue to like the song for its strengths and keep all the critical, catchall analyzing of hype/fame/tits to CMG.

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Lana is exposed and she is not a youtube find:
“The timing of the deal and her video’s viral release raised eyebrows in the blogosphere. News of her signing broke in late October, but the ink on the contracts had dried in July.
It’s here where her labels, which provided her a budget for videos and album completion, as well as hired a publicity firm (Shore Fire Media) in August, deviate from standard practices”
Remember video games wasn’t uploaded till Aug 19, 2011 and blue jeans was uploaded on Sep 9,2011
Contrary to what Del Rey asserts, Kahne is under the impression that she bought the rights back from 5 Points to stifle future opportunities to distribute it—an echo of rumors that the action was part of a calculated strategy.

Kahne says “I think Lizzy Lana owns it, so wanted it out of circulation. That’s why they bought the rights from them, I think she wanted to be Lana Del Rey and didn’t want to be Lizzy Grant. That was her family name, and she’s very dramatic.She wiped [out] this other person. I think she actually thinks that she’s that other person, and she probably is. So that was the decision that she made, that she didn’t want traces of that whole person around, as far as I can tell. Kahne observed the physical transformation that’s become a focal point of criticism.“She looks different. [She] doesn’t sound different to me, though,” Kahne says. He claims that she was operatically trained, which Del Rey denies…..........................

All the information is out there she has had a lot of help and money to get where she is and they tried to keep it secret or lied about. Lana is a rich girl with a hankering to be a star nothing more,she has even said music is secondary to her in her attempts to not appear desperate, it’s all just so fake apparently she has spent 8yrs preforming and writing and made albums and EP’s but music is secondary wtf does that mean, I can’t believe anything this woman says couple that with the fact she can not sing live and I don’t any other reason why I should give her my time or money and personally I don’t think anyone else should.

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the truth is, i don’t give a shit if she’s “manufactured.” she’s not dying her hair black and pretending to be a punk rocker. as an idea, it’s interesting if one-dimensional, which is how i feel about someone like Dirty Beaches. her music as “lizzie grant” is awful, sure, and i know the stories about her dad, etc, etc. what bothers/frustrates me most about her, though, is she Is Not Ready to be what she wants to be. a musician saying music is secondary to what they want? whatever, i don’t care if the music is good. as generic as this sounds, she can’t really sing and seems utterly aloof. if she was a bit more internet savvy/self-aware, it’d be ok. but it’s like she’s trying to have her cake and eat it too. but. none of this matters, because i love “videogames” and “blue jeans” as recorded anyway, because i think they’re successful in what she’s trying to do. “born to die” as a song and video is an awful joke, though. i’ll listen to the album, though, because at this point anyone who has anything to say about her (positive or negative) owes her that much. really. #empathy

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You’re right that I didn’t really link to a very snarky takedown on LDR. Here’s a better one: http://gawker.com/5876449/lana-del-reys-infamous-snl-performance

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