Lana Del Rey - Born To Die: The Paradise Edition (2012) {Japanese Edition}

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Lana Del Rey - Born To Die: The Paradise Edition (2012) {Japanese Edition}

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Lana Del Rey is a femme fatale with a smoky voice, a languorous image, and a modeling contract. Not coincidentally, she didn't lack for attention leading up to the release of her Interscope debut, Born to Die. The hype began in mid-2011 with a stunning song and video for "Video Games," and it kept on rising, right up to her January 2012 performance on Saturday Night Live (making her the first artist since Natalie Imbruglia in 1998 to perform on SNL without an album available). Although it's easy to see the reasons why Del Rey got her contract, it's also easy to hear: her songwriting skills and her bewitching voice. "Video Games" is a beautiful song, calling to mind Fiona Apple and Anna Calvi as she recounts another variation on the age-old trope of female-as-sex-object. Her vacant, tired reading of the song rescues it from any hint of exploitation, making it a winner. Unfortunately, the only problem with Born to Die is a big one. There is a chasm that separates "Video Games" from the other material and performances on the album, which aims for exactly the same target – sultry, sexy, wasted – but with none of the same lyrical grace, emotional power, or sympathetic productions. Del Rey doesn't mind taking chances, varying her vocalizing and delivery, toying with her lines and reaching for cinematic flourishes ("he loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart," "Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice"), and even attempting to rap. But she's unable to consistently sell herself as a heartbreaker, and most of the songs here sound like cobbled retreads of "Video Games." An intriguing start, but Del Rey is going to have to hit the books if she wants to stay as successful as her career promised early on.

The Paradise Edition added a second CD for a total of 23 tracks. Even after selling nearly three million copies of her debut album worldwide, Lana Del Rey still faced a challenge during 2012: namely, proving to critics and fans that Born to Die wasn't a fluke. In that spirit, she released Paradise, a mini-album close to Christmas, one that finds her copying nearly wholesale the look and feel of her vampish Born to Die personality. The sound is also very familiar. Strings move at a glacial pace, drums crash like waves in slow motion, and most of the additional textures in these songs (usually electric guitar or piano) are cinematic in their sound and references. Del Rey is in perfect control of her voice, much more assured than she was even one year ago, and frequently capable of astonishing her listeners with a very convincing act, even while playing nearly the same character in each song. There's really only one difference between Born to Die and Paradise, but it's a big one. Instead of acting the softcore, submissive, '60s-era plaything, here she's a hardcore, wasted, post-millennial plaything. She even goes so far as to tell her audience that she likes it rough (in words that earned the album a parental advisory sticker), to ask whether she can put on a show, and at her most explicit, proffering a simile that compares the taste of an intimate part of her anatomy to Pepsi. Granted, at the age of 26, she still has a few things to learn about lyricism, also resorting to cliché and baby talk in a manner that may fit the persona in a song, but doesn't result in great songwriting. (For examples, check "Body Electric," with the lines "Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn's my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend" and "We get crazy every Friday night, drop it like it's hot in the pale moonlight.") For all the progress and growth Del Rey shows in the vocal realm, her songwriting appears to be in stasis and the productions behind her have actually regressed from Born to Die. (The inclusion of a cover, "Blue Velvet," is not only a perfect match for her style, but also a hint that she performs up to better material.) Still, all of this is merely the fodder for her continuing controversy and popularity. Del Rey puts it better here than anyone else, with another simile: "Like a groupie incognito posing as a real singer, life imitates art."

~ All Music

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Lana Del Rey - Born To Die: The Paradise Edition (2012) {Japanese Edition}

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Lana Del Rey - Born To Die: The Paradise Edition (2012) {Japanese Edition}

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Lana Del Rey - Born To Die: The Paradise Edition (2012) {Japanese Edition}

Close