I, like millions of others, are drawn to Lana Del Rey like moths to a flame. But just as her fans can't get enough of her and hang on to every poetic phrase or doomed romantic lyric, her detractors are repelled by accusations of cloying image conciousness and moody cliche.

Lana never fails to say something that sets people off. Earlier in her promotion cycle for her latest release she rankled the feminist contingent by seemingly distancing herself from the movement:

"For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept," she says. "I'm more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities. Whenever people bring up feminism, I'm like, god. I'm just not really that interested."

However, Del Rey adds, "My idea of a true feminist is a woman who feels free enough to do whatever she wants."

Now I suppose I can see how someone could take offense to that, but what I got out of it was that the subject in itself just wasn't interesting enough to create art around. When it is attempted you usually end up with something like this:

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Lana's image centers around doomed romance. Of men not worthy. Who usually leave her alone and broken hearted, pining and crying. As an adult I can recognize it for what it is and enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the image and the aurals. The question people ask is is it appropriate for her growing young fanbase? Is it OK for lana to make it look cool to obsess over doomed romance? And it does look cool. Lana to me learned the same lessons that Madonna did long ago about the importance of iconography and photography. Camille Paglia made a reference to it in terms of why Madonna went over so hard. Lana is an obvious fan of old Hollywood and photography. Just look at her latest video, about the most beautiful video I've ever seen:

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Problems start where plaudits end; Lana and her co-star scream glamour and cool, even if he's the bordering on three times her age older man that she lost her younger lover to as she was frolicking on the beach in her "West Coast" video. A gun and a reign of bullets signify a death later on, just like in her magnum opus "Ride", a poetic tale of the thoughts of a singer-turned-prostitute, which could be a double for her own life and time in the music business. Can any amount of Walt Witman she's read disguise the presence of inappropriateness to a young audience? Her most troubling move to me was the breathetaking "Summertime Sadness". I'll let you guess why:

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This all comes to a crescendo with her latest statemet, possibly taken out of context but heard around the world:

“I wish I was dead already,” Del Rey, born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, reportedly said in the interview. “I don’t want to have to keep doing this. But I am.”

Adding:

“I’d been sick on tour for about two years with this medical anomaly that doctors couldn’t figure out,” she told her interviewer. “I have a complicated personal life. It’s not just my life… it’s always about someone else, even with the people I work with.”

So lana was actually talking about her own health, but when questions of artists she's liked that have died young surfaced, including Kurt Cobain and Amy Whinehouse, it made it look like a singer seemingly obsessed with tragedy and death already, was glamourizing death for fames sake. It didn't please Frances bean Cobain:

"The death of young musicians isn't something to romanticize," Frances Bean wrote on Twitter, mentioning Del Rey in a series of tweets. "I'll never know my father because he died young, and it becomes a desirable feat because people like you think it's 'cool.' Well, it's f**king not. Embrace life, because you only get one life. The people you mentioned wasted that life. Don't be one of those people. You're too talented to waste it away." After a Del Rey fan tweeted at Frances Bean to "leave her the f**k alone," the grunge icon's daughter clarified her tweets.

But doesn't this all play into the obvious character that Lana has conjured up as the "Gangster Nancy Sinatra"? And if it is does it then give her a pass? Is this the new Madonna except as opposed to pushing overtly sexual boundaries she's instead pushing a passive femininity, sadness and death? Are Lana's obsessions with "Money, Power, Glory" just honesty? Is it honesty to know that your man mistreats you because I'm "Pretty When I Cry"? There's no denying though that all this together makes Lana Del Rey one of the most controversial, and fascinating, artists to come out in some time.

Lana Del Ray is boring as fuck. And all this ''i wanna die young'' shit is just to sell records. It's all for publicity and nothing more... are people this dumb? it's 2014 do people not realize when shit is a gimmick

Gunsnhalen said:

Lana Del Ray is boring as fuck. And all this ''i wanna die young'' shit is just to sell records. It's all for publicity and nothing more... are people this dumb? it's 2014 do people not realize when shit is a gimmick

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But is it troubling? Is it appropriate for her growing young audience?

Gunsnhalen said:

Lana Del Ray is boring as fuck. And all this ''i wanna die young'' shit is just to sell records. It's all for publicity and nothing more... are people this dumb? it's 2014 do people not realize when shit is a gimmick

We don't always agree, but we agree on this b----.

“I wish I was dead already,” Del Rey, born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, reportedly said in the interview."

You're not the only one.

BlaqueKnight said:

Gunsnhalen said:

Lana Del Ray is boring as fuck. And all this ''i wanna die young'' shit is just to sell records. It's all for publicity and nothing more... are people this dumb? it's 2014 do people not realize when shit is a gimmick

We don't always agree, but we agree on this b----.

I'll high five you on this blaque

Camille Paglia: Miley, Go Back to School

Cyrus’ derivative stunt reveals an artistically bankrupt music culture

Lucas Jackson / REUTERS

Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke perform "Blurred Lines" during the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City on Aug. 25, 2013

“Disgusting!” “Raunchy!” “Desperate!” So went the scathing reviews that poured in after once wholesome Disney star Miley Cyrus’ recent bizarre performance at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Bopping up and down the catwalk in hair-twist devil’s horns and a flesh-colored latex bikini, Cyrus lewdly wagged her tongue, tickled her crotch with a foam finger, shook her buttocks in the air and spanked a 6-ft. 7-in. black burlesque queen.

Most of the media backlash focused on Cyrus’ crass opportunism, which stole the show from Lady Gaga, normally no slouch in the foot-stamping look-at-me department. But the real scandal was how atrocious Cyrus’ performance was in artistic terms. She was clumsy, flat-footed and cringingly unsexy, an effect heightened by her manic grin.

How could American pop have gotten this bad? Sex has been a crucial component of the entertainment industry since the seductive vamps of silent film and the bawdy big mamas of roadhouse blues. Elvis Presley, James Brown and Mick Jagger brought sizzling heat to rock, soul and funk music, which in turn spawned the controversial raw explicitness of urban hip-hop.

(MORE: Miley Cyrus Really Is the...and Boring)

The Cyrus fiasco, however, is symptomatic of the still heavy influence of Madonna, who sprang to world fame in the 1980s with sophisticated videos that were suffused with a daring European art-film eroticism and that were arguably among the best artworks of the decade. Madonna’s provocations were smolderingly sexy because she had a good Catholic girl’s keen sense of transgression. Subversion requires limits to violate.

Young performers will probably never equal or surpass the genuine shocks delivered by the young Madonna, as when she sensually rolled around in a lacy wedding dress and thumped her chest with the mic while singing “Like a Virgin” at the first MTV awards show in 1984. Her influence was massive and profound, on a global scale.

But more important, Madonna, a trained modern dancer, was originally inspired by work of tremendous quality — above all, Marlene Dietrich’s glamorous movie roles as a bisexual blond dominatrix and Bob Fosse’s stunningly forceful strip-club choreography for the 1972 film Cabaret, set in decadent Weimar-era Berlin. Today’s aspiring singers, teethed on frenetically edited small-screen videos, rarely have direct contact with those superb precursors and are simply aping feeble imitations of Madonna at 10th remove.

Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value. But those once powerful avant-garde gestures have lost their relevance in our diffuse and technology-saturated era, when there is no longer an ossified high-culture establishment to rebel against. On the contrary, the fine arts are alarmingly distant or marginal to most young people today.

(MORE: 4 Reasons You’re Still ...erformance)

Unfortunately, the media spotlight so cheaply won by Cyrus will inevitably spur repeats of her silly stunt, by her and others. Image and profile now rule the music industry. At a time when profits are coming far more from touring than from CD sales, performers are being hammered too early into a marketable formula for cavernous sports venues. With their massive computerized lighting and special-effects systems, arena shows make improvisation impossible and stifle the natural rapport with the audience that performers once had in vaudeville houses and jazz clubs. There is neither time nor space to develop emotional depth or creative skills.

Pop is an artistic tradition that deserves as much respect as any other. Its lineage stretches back to 17th century Appalachian folk songs and African-American blues, all of which can still be heard vibrating in the lyrics and chord structure of contemporary music. But our most visible young performers, consumed with packaging and attitude, seem to have little sense of that thrilling continuity and therefore no confidence in how it can define and sustain their artistic identities over the course of a career.

What was perhaps most embarrassing about Miley Cyrus’ dismal gig was its cutesy toys — a giant teddy bear from which she popped to cavort with a dance troupe in fuzzy bear drag. Intended to satirize her Disney past, it signaled instead the childishness of Cyrus’ notion of sexuality, which has become simply a cartoonish gimmick to disguise a lack of professional focus. Sex isn’t just exposed flesh and crude gestures. The greatest performers, like Madonna in a canonical video such as “Vogue,” know how to use suggestion and mystery to project the magic of sexual allure. Miley, go back to school!

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This, to me, is what Lana learned most. I've always said that newer artists always tried to do the image thing just like Madonna but always failed. This is probably the reason.

Lana Del Rey is like the messiah of pop music today.

It's not troubling at all that she's doing this. This isn't going to make kids go and wish themselves dead. Cause if they died... how will they hear their idols new single? :O she's just using a gimmick to sell and people will eat it up.

Lanas music is as fake as her tits and lips. ''I'm a bad girl cause i smoke and have affairs with married men! and i smoke more and i'm a lonely girl who really needs love and listens to Nina Simone & Nancy Sinantra i'm misunderstood now let me take my lemo to the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and drink a diet coke with this cig''

she looks fine....

Y'all be careful though! the homos love Lana Del Ray (for whatever reason) so don't diss her in front them. Or they will attack you in internet drones, snazzy comments, tell you how much youa nd your life aren't worth shit, and tell you how irrelevant you are to life.

^I survived hating that talentless whore since the beginning in boystown, a badge I wear with pride, its a walk in the park hating this privileged bitch.

[Edited 6/25/14 18:24pm]

Her lack of talent is argueable. I know she gets dogged for her ill prepared stint on SNL, but she has given sublime vocal performances, and her love of poetry is evident. This lament about beautiful youth and all things material is pitch perfect. A talentless woman was NOT behind this:

[Verse 1]
Blue hydrangea, cold cash divine
Cashmere, cologne and white sunshine
Red racing cars, Sunset and Vine
The kids were young and pretty
Where have you been? Where did you go?
Those summer nights seem long ago
And so is the girl you used to call
The Queen of New York City

[Chorus]
But if you send for me, you know I'll come
And if you call for me, you know I'll run
I'll run to you, I'll run to you
I'll run, run, run
I'll come to you, I'll come to you
I'll come, come, come

[Verse 2]
The power of youth is on my mind
Sunsets, small town, I'm out of time
Will you still love me when I shine?
From words but not from beauty
My father's love was always strong
My mother's glamour lives on and on
Yet still inside, I felt alone
For reasons unknown to me

[Chorus]

And if you call, I'll run, run, run
If you change your mind, I'll come, come, come

Blue hydrangea, cold cash divine
Cashmere, cologne and hot sunshine
Red racing cars, sunset and vine
And we were young and pretty

lazycrockett said:

“I wish I was dead already,” Del Rey, born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, reportedly said in the interview."

You're not the only one.

I dont know why but I just don't relate to her.. at all. Her music isn't bad but I'd never play any of it. Just being honest.

CynicKill said:

I liked her first couple joints but I did not rush out for this one. Ironically, it's her first #1.

Cinny said:

I liked her first couple joints but I did not rush out for this one. Ironically, it's her first #1.

I thought you were about to say her first STD. And i know that's not true