Her fans believe she is genuine and admire her glamorous hippie aesthetic. Relatability is not the only thing keeping fans with Del Rey. An artist that I can only resonate with when I am sad or lonely, or worse, an artist who’s music is going to make me even more sad than I already am… is that really a great artist? One of her self proclaimed biggest fans, CAS rising sophomore Magdeline Vasatka, calls Del Rey her “cocaine princess.”Īnother fan, SPA and SOC rising sophomore Camille Perrault, claims that she only listens to Del Rey when she is depressed, and would never listen to her when she is happy. However, are these relatable lyrics really something we want people relating to, or more importantly, something we want people reminded of while listening to the chorus of Lana’s new song? SIS rising sophomore Andrew Morgan, a self-proclaimed die-hard fan, said, “I love her because she uses her own style of music and is much more relatable and interesting than most artists these days.”
Many Del Rey fans talk about the relatability of her songs and the beauty in her honesty and transparency. Many people resonate with this type of music and the lyrics she proclaims, thus explaining her massive following. She explicitly states that she wants to die in her song, Dark Paradise: “Your soul is haunting me / And telling me / That everything is fine / But I wish I was dead (dead like you).” In an interview, she said that she wanted to be one of the greats, like Amy Winehouse, and the only way to do that was to die. Additionally, she promotes addiction and glamorizes death. She fantasizes substance and drug abuse by singing about it in at least half of the songs on one of her most famous albums, Born to Die. Many of Del Rey’s lyrics are promote abuse, addiction and toxic relationships. In her song, Ultraviolence, she glamorizes these toxic relationships: “I can hear sirens, sirens / He hit me and it felt like a kiss.” She even dedicates an entire song about unhealthy sexual relationships and power dynamics called F**ked My Way to the Top. Lana is the lyrical queen of unhealthy relationships.
To make it worse, she glorifies abusive relationships. In Off to the Races, she talks about her man owning her, and explicits states that he is not a good guy: “My old man is a bad man but I can’t deny the way he holds my hand / He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart.” Blue Jeans is about her ex-husband that ran away from her and Off to the Races is about the man in her life suffering from drug addiction. Two of her most popular songs are about the men in her life. She milks her daddy issues to the point that it is not sad anymore, it is just annoying. Her lyrics are focused around drugs and men not loving her back, be it about her dad or her ex-husband that ran away. I know it is a bold statement, but listen to my case.