Last night Lana Del Rey brought her carefully crafted “score for American Beauty meets early Bruce Springsteen ’sex Americana’” retro stylings (and thankfully no chewing gum) to a Bowery Ballroom packed with industry bros and gals in homemade floral headdresses. After some initial technical difficulties she opened with “Without You” then current single “Born To Die,” reinstating the Internet’s preferred “fuck you hard in the pouring rain” line, in case you were wondering. LDR’s voice sounded as sultry as it does on record and the hometown crowd had her loose and self-deprecating. After debuting new song “Summertime Sadness” [UPDATE: Watch that below] for the sake of “practice” she told attendees, “I know you don’t care, but you’re gonna fucking like it when it’s on the record.” It’s out January 30 on Interscope, as signs posted around the bar reminded. Check out Jessica Amaya’s photos above and the setlist below.
SETLIST
“Without You”
“Born To Die”
“Blue Jeans”
“Radio”
“Million Dollar Man”
“Video Games”
“Summertime Sadness”
“You Can Be the Boss”
“Off to the Races”
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Needs more eye makeup.
Summertime Sadness is legit. I can’t wait to hear the recorded version.
this lady knows her way around a great jam – and i aint talkin toast.
Needs a little more smilex…love that joker.
Got weird right around the middle..
Pretty boring tbh
Stereogum, could you do an above the influence feature on your princess whenever her record comes out? Again, I am not a hater (even though I am starting to scare myself) but musically/vocally/lyrically (maybe even facially, too (no porno, even though…)) I hear a combination of Cher(1980′s), Barbra Streisand (1980s’s), Celine Dion (1990′s) and Rihanna (remember her ballads like “Unfaithful”? I do..).
If that combo is appealing to you, I won’t judge you (I don’t judge my aunts or female cousins). I can stand behind a great female vocalists any day (sadly, that phrase is always going to be a double entendre), but Lana’s music is too schmaltzy for me. Maybe she is on another level of irony that I don’t understand (like Drake, haha). Maybe I need to be bludgeoned over the head with it to get it (I love Kaputt and Relayted). Back to the point, an above the influence article would be great.
@ Ass-Kicked 89: not a lot of people know that, but both celine dion AND barbara streisand came up to me once and were like “let me fuck you hard in the pouring rain”… of course i said no because their lyrics were terrible.
You’re obviously right in a lot of ways, but it would be wrong not to cover it at this stage.
I think the singles are pretty okay, but have been a skeptic since the show cancellation and subsequent meh live recordings. I saw her Monday, hoping she would be talented. She is not. She is more than awkward. She is warbly. She is kind of… ummm…. unfriendly seeming, and not in a diva sort of way, but just in a trust fund kid sort of way. It was annoying from the beginning with the “technical difficulties”, to the high schoolish lyrics where she seemed to need to show off some street cred?! (songs about getting high, every other song had to have fuck in there somewhere, that kind of thing).
Now I know, there are people who put out great albums and who aren’t so great live (Winehouse- yeah, I said it), but we’re talking amazing music, lyrics and larger than life persona. This one is…mmmm… well, see above. She messed up words to Video Games, she then closed the show with “We’re doing a short set- I’ll play more when I have more material” and this gem: “I’m not doing an encore, so I’m not coming back out.” Bitch, what? Didn’t she have an unreleased album that is widely available on the internet- and those songs, while not groundbreaking, aren’t terrible, but she does have other songs. This wasn’t the show to come do a short set of half-assed songs (yeah, the band isn’t great either) when you pissed off a goodly bunch of your new potential fan base by cancelling the other venue because you sold out and needed to do a bigger tour. And I can handle musicians with record labels and weird stage presence (Fiona Apple, for example) but this show sucked. (The crowd also sucked, btw, especially the 4 guys in the back who seemed to know her and kept yelling shit at her that was wildly inappropriate.)
I like the stage name. But she is totally amateur hour- debuting a song she’s never done live is one thing, but I paid to see a show, not to have her “practice” on me. And the look. I just can’t. I’m done.
she’s notoriously shy and inexperienced playing live still ‘duuude.’ save the Roller Stone-ish overly worded panning reviews for later. if you have doubts in the future sit home and save your money and your whinging.
I’m hoping they re-record National Anthem for the new record, OR at least for the next one, that song has mega hit written all over it.