This past Saturday, a young lady who goes by the stage name of Lana Del Rey had a pair of terrible performances on Saturday Night Live. The two songs that she sang, “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans” are soulful, moody pieces that require quite a vocal range. She was off-tune and stiff, quite visibly nervous. To make matters worse, it seemed her backing band refused to slow down or speed up or do anything to help their lead singer during the second song (“Blue Jeans”).
Here is one of the poor performances.
Then the internet exploded.
People who have no platform to criticize ripped into Lana Del Ray. An actress named Juliette Lewis… someone who was relevant maybe fifteen years ago in the film industry and has struggled to gain any traction in her musical “career” had a few things to say. Asshats on Twitter and commenters on entertainment sites decided to say things like “Rather watch Ashlee Simpson pretend to sing live than this two-bit ditch pig open her mouth.”
I decided to look into Lana Del Rey’s work. She’s basically a YouTube sensation who has an amazing publicist that got her a gig on SNL. Or she is rich and has rich friends (as I’ve seen remarked here and there). That’s a double whammy of schadenfreude fuel.
Have you listened to her songs on YouTube? They’re quite awesome. I’d call her music a cross-pollination of early Tori Amos and the husky soul of Adele. Perhaps the experienced hand of a music producer polished her work (in the book business that job is called ‘editor’). There is a reason she was on SNL. I’m just surprised Lorne Michael had her on since she’s yet to release a full length album and has very few live performances under her belt.
So I’d like to thank the asshat who called Lana Del Rey a two-bit ditch pig. Your anonymous and brave insult encouraged me to take a minute to research her music a bit more, and now Lana Del Rey can count me as a new fan. Stay classy, bro.
I leave you with the official version of ‘Blue Jeans’.
