Since her 2010 album failure, Lana has switched up her style a bit. The former bleach blonde has gone red. That combined with the name change has led some to question her authenticity. “This whole thing about her name is absolutely insane,” says her manager, Ben Mawson. “David Bowie, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Lady Gaga are not using their real names. Why is she being picked on? She came up with the name herself. She had three Myspace pages. One was Lizzy Grant, one was Lana Del Ray, another was Lana Del Rey with an ‘E.’ I was like, ‘You can’t have three—decide!’” After three months she settled on Lana Del Rey. “It makes me laugh,” Mawson adds. “I’ve represented 60 to 70 artists and I’ve never gotten more of the real deal than I’ve gotten from her. She’s absolutely a self creation. I guess it’s sort of a weird compliment because she appears to be so perfect. People can’t believe it’s true.”
I'm interested in the gorgeous side of life, but also familiar with the dark side too.
Lana herself didn’t waste any time refuting the naysayers. She was too busy fielding label bids. Interscope Chairman Jimmy Iovine got her, but Lana is nobody’s prefab pop star. She’s the one driving her career.
“If you consider the definition of authenticity,” Lana says, “it’s saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.” Web-savvy skeptics can check for themselves. Lana’s older songs aren’t too hard to find. And there hasn’t been much of a transformation from her early work to now—just progression toward a more orchestral feel.
“Why would it be a different thing?” she asks, sounding genuinely confused. “I never changed my sound. I never stopped writing about what was actually going on in my life. There’s nothing to hide.”
But she does keep quiet about some portions of her life. All her singles to date revolve around affairs of the heart—specifically, drowning in and even dying for love. Lana’s music would make a perfect soundtrack for the scene where the girl is dumped by her man and, pistol to skull, decides life isn’t worth living anymore.
The video for her latest single, “Born to Die,” was shot in Paris by Yoann “Woodkid” Lemoine, who directed Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and Taylor Swift’s “Back to December.” It starts with castle gates swinging open to reveal Lana seated on a throne—with tigers reclining to her left and right. (Kanye West tweeted the stunning image soon after the video dropped.) Lana’s expression is somewhere between pissed and heartbroken. What follows is a compulsive affair that leads to fiery explosions and, yeah, bloody death.
Lemoine and Lana became friends after he saw the first version of “Video Games” in the spring. “She naturally has a lot of drama coming out of her,” the French-born director says. “When you work with her, you get trapped in a twister of comments and reactions from people who are so intense about her.”
But if you think her fans have an intense relationship with Lana, imagine her old boyfriend. She confirms that the inspiration behind many of her songs comes from a wonderful long-term relationship that turned ugly. “We were both living life on the straight and narrow when we met,” Lana says. “And two years into it, I didn’t know it, but he was off doing other things that he got in trouble for.” Whether those “other things” included infidelity, a Scarface-like drug operation, or some white-collar Madoff stuff, she won’t reveal out of respect for her ex.
Was he perhaps the kind of guy she might have been helping if she became a mental-health social worker? “Exactly,” Lana affirms with a nod. “You get to a point where you run out of everything. You’ve gone through everyone. You have no money, you’ve done everything you could do. The last thing you can do is start over.”
Suddenly Lana apologizes for being a downer. “Sorry, this is really fucking depressing,” she says to Haynie.
“It’s actually interesting,” he replies. “I just heard ‘Blue Jeans’ kind of manifest itself. I never knew that.”
They may still be getting to know each other, but the pair make beautiful music together. As their works-in-progress blare, they frequently lean together to exchange ideas. Haynie says he knew they’d be a good fit when they first met months ago.
“What excited me was playing different ideas and seeing what would make her face light up,” he says. “I thought, ‘She likes the shit I like.’ She likes the hard, yet beautiful stuff. That’s when I thought we could do something special.”
“Emile knew that there was a heavier, more street side that needed to be brought out,” she says. “He knows that I'm interested in the gorgeous side of life, but also familiar with the dark side, too.” Lana also happens to be a big rap fan who’s been in touch with A$AP Rocky about a possible collaboration. But her love of hip-hop reaches back beyond last fall. “Eminem is sick and unbeatable,” Lana says when asked to name her favorite rappers. “50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Biggie Smalls—the way he talked stuff out was inspiring to me. It made me feel like music could be autobiographical and more of an art form than just rhyming over sugary chords.” There is an unmistakable hip-hop swagger to Born to Die. It knocks like a rap album, and careful listeners will notice that Lana delivers some lines as if she’s spitting rhymes. “You’re so fresh to death,” she sings at one point, “and sick as ca-cancer.”
jason chu January 24th, 2012 at 02:55 PM
That's cool, Complex. Call her performance "ever more radiant" and downplay (i.e., absolutely ignore) her millionaire-family background, while playing up her aspirations to social work? Oh, and the millions of record-company money going into constructing that image? I like the girl's music. But I Don't Believe the Hype(beast).
steez January 24th, 2012 at 03:20 PM
get a life man
Wind January 24th, 2012 at 08:38 PM
Eff off steez.
Declan January 24th, 2012 at 11:49 PM
How much did her rich daddy pay to have this article written?
SwaGMEN Chris January 24th, 2012 at 11:54 PM
Why you hating doe? Don't be mad cuz you ain't shit doe. I LOVE NEW YORK NEW YORK GIANTS WINNING DA SUPERBOWL LANA DEL REY I WANNA DATE HER TO SEE WHAT SHE ALL ABOUT AND WHEN I GET TO KNOW HER IF ALL IS GOD MA I WANNA MARRY YOU! Declan=failure son!
Declan January 25th, 2012 at 06:52 AM
Wow. It's so rare to encounter an actual medically retarded person on the internet. Mind if I take a blood sample? You know, for science.
kevin January 30th, 2012 at 06:15 PM
Declan, your response made me laugh really hard. And I'm a scientist (seriously).
suckitmarshall January 25th, 2012 at 09:19 AM
Who gives a fuck if her folks have money or don't? The songs are good. Bob Dylan was a complete fraud and made some of the most significant songs of the 20th century. If you don't like the music, that's fine, but hating on someone because they're beautiful or born affluent is the corniest shit ever.
Declan January 25th, 2012 at 10:13 AM
How much did her rich daddy pay you to post that comment?
TotallyAgree January 31st, 2012 at 06:41 PM
1thing iDon't understand whyTry toDeceive theConsumer theMusic isFantastic eitherLove itOr leave itAlone FYI* theBeats areSick &theLyrics areDope Enough toCure Them
sicknastywitit January 25th, 2012 at 11:50 AM
Not for nothing, journalist should fact check. "Homegirl" graduated from Fordham University. Done sat with her in classes during her senior (final) year.
Kerda January 25th, 2012 at 02:43 PM
I would agree that much of the internet backlash aimed at Ms. Grant has been a bit extreme, but her meteoric rise over the course of 6 months, from viral video obscurity to Interscope record deals and SNL performances before she's even released an album, has been equivalently extreme. Such is the vicious cycle of internet insta-celebrity, as breakneck fast as it is heartbreak cruel. But this article very much reads as hagiography. It makes a concerted effort to downplay the most odious aspects of her backstory (having a millionaire daddy to fund her roleplaying ventures), and casually brushes off all critiques as just examples of "haters gon' hate". I'm all for letting Lizzy have her moment in the sun and giving people a chance to judge the album on its own merits, but there's no denying that Lana feels in a way like the Lehman Brothers of pop music, the bursting of a cultural bubble, where the baseless nature of modern music is laid bare to even the most casual observer.
angeline January 26th, 2012 at 04:17 AM
It´s not her on that moped, it´s some Swedish guys. There´s even an interview with them up on youtube.
LOLSH January 26th, 2012 at 02:53 PM
HATERS GON' HATE!!
Lama Dell PC January 30th, 2012 at 09:36 PM
suckas gon suck.
2257 January 26th, 2012 at 07:18 PM
I could give one shit about any of it. Homegirl is hot. Music is dope. Done dada. What? So her daddy's got some bread? If your pops had loot, you'd use it, too. You trying to tell me if your folks were filthy rich and offered you opportunities, you'd be like, "Nah. Thanks, though. Do this one on my own." Hell nah. You'd deposit that check with the quickness and get to doing your hustle. I don't give a fuck if they actually manufactured Lana in a Chinese factory using child labor. She's still talented. And beats some random, junkie broad wearing a meat dress and showing her sandwich on stage. WTF.
Justin January 26th, 2012 at 07:40 PM
I really do like Lana. She's awesome. I completely get her, too. Sometimes we take people so seriously - as if they're god-like figures solely because they're in the limelight, and we ultimately forget that they're just human beings with the same emotions and desires as everyone else. She fucked up her SNL performance. So what? The girl can sing. She's proved it many times, and it's all the proof I need. I admire her because she "rose from the ashes" and reinvented herself; developed a persona reflective of her inner being. She's got a strong heart, from what I can see. If I had a choice, I'd love to meet her... but I have no idea how. Oh well! All I know is that I'm working on my life and it's inspiring to see someone fall perfectly in place... almost meteorically... within the pop culture landscape. I'm a visual artist: a painter, a designer, a photographer... an artist. And I feel as though living a nameless life isn't for me. It's not why I am on this earth. Some people can live with it... I don't think Lana could have, and that's why I feel comforted by her success. She took the bull by the horns and got what she wanted in the end. Hell, she even wrote a song about it called "Radio". Proud of you! Can't wait to see where your journey takes you.
plokzee January 26th, 2012 at 11:15 PM
gotta say, her PR team is doing a great job with these comments. Dunno how much daddy's paying them, but he's getting his moneys worth.
Declan January 27th, 2012 at 06:56 AM
Seriously. I ran a syntax analyzer on the comments in this thread; all of the positive comments come from two distinct styles of writing, meaning two people. I'll betcha they were posted from the same IP too. With a support team like this, LDR doesn't have to have any actual talent, yeah?
Holyladies!!! January 27th, 2012 at 10:54 AM
@Declan the time you put into posting how fake this Lana chick is, is time you could've been using to see enough success to remove all that bitterness. She blew up off one song, her SNL performance was terrible, but (I feel) she made a good album. Whether she did or not however isn't your concern if you don't like her, are you really going to read an article and then comment on it? You realise people like you are why she's famous? If you took all the youtube hate away, you'd have a good song that was at a push a moderate hit. But when everyone tells everyone else to look at this chicks fake lips, fake hair, bad voice, the views go up, and now she has a record deal. So really if anyone's being paid by the pr team it's you. And just incase her daddy decides to cut her off from her trust fund, why don't you spend more of your time hating and get her mansion?
Litmus January 29th, 2012 at 07:28 AM
@ Declan: Damn, are you a spambot? You just keep posting the same useless comment over and over again!
Declan's IP Comment January 31st, 2012 at 03:23 PM
I was just thinking the same thing!!
Justin January 27th, 2012 at 07:21 AM
You people are seriously nuts in the head. Do you honestly think I'm some "PR" guy from Lana's team? Too hysterical... I wish I was, though. Sorry to disappoint.
homer January 28th, 2012 at 09:25 PM
I actually like what I've heard from her, despite the awkward stage presence & bad personality. But this article is embarrassing. She's a very plain looking woman made kind of ugly by the inflated top lip. Nobody is hating on her because of "beauty", there are a few legitimate things to pick on.