With the title “Video Games,” one might expect a song extolling the virtues of Halo or Call of Duty. However, “Video Games,” the debut single by Lana Del Rey, is just boring. To be honest, the entire persona of Lana Del Rey is boring. So why are we so obsessed with her?
She’s not especially talented. Her voice isn’t necessarily bad in its slow, jazz-esque drawl, but it’s not breathtakingly, soul-achingly beautiful either. Her style isn’t tabloid-worthy like Katy Perry’s and her back story can be summed up in a sentence: bored 20-something girl with musical aspirations decides to make money in the most fun way possible.
Illustration by Noa Kasman '12The most legitimately exciting thing about Lana Del Rey, who by birth is Lizzy Grant (a much better-suited name due to its blandness), is her disastrous performance on Saturday Night Live. Even then, while she was flat and stiff and her spot on the show was unwarranted (at the time of her performance, she had yet to release her debut album), it wasn’t horrible. Lana’s voice was only subpar, but the girl has nothing on Ashlee Simpson.
The cult of Lana Del Rey is probably the most appalling aspect of her personage. When “Video Games” first came out, listeners, though intrigued, weren’t hung up over who sang it. The indie industry perpetuates the image of Lana Del Rey to the point of oversaturation. It seems that the indie music scene wanted their own sexy spokeslady, and Lana Del Ray got the part. She has been popular with the Pitchfork crowd and has had crossover appeal, making her popular with plaid shirt-coveting CEOs.
Unfortunately, she’s just not that fascinating of a figure to be worthy of all of this attention. In fact, dedicating even an inch of space to her is a disservice to popular culture. For some reason we are obsessed with talking about the things and people that we hate. Telling people to leave her alone seems absolutely futile.
So what does it matter that Karl Lagerfeld apologized for saying her breasts were unnatural? We’re living in a post-Whitney Houston world now, and that’s infinitely more interesting than anything Lana Del Rey has to contribute to society. Play an actual video game instead. They’re more entertaining and their replay values generally last longer than four minutes.
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