Beautiful Freaks 2010-2020

20
Boredom is essential to human nature. And this is the
age of boredom. There is, for girls and boys like Lana
del Rey, no struggle for life. Neither is there some romantic
philosophical idea that drives them; no protests
for freedom or an heroic search for knowledge. There is
“
Human life must be some kind of mistake. […] If life–the
craving for which is the very essence of our being–were
possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no
such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy
us in itself, and we should want for nothing.” – Schopenhahauerer,
On the Vanity of Existence
the artificial pleasure of reality TV, celebrity news and
parties. But those are boring, too. On Ultraviolence‘s
title track, Lana del Rey quotes The Crystals’ ‘He Hit
Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)’. As in A Clockwork Orange
(which is where the term ‘ultraviolence’ comes
from), boredom leads to violence. But it’s as less of a
crime and more of an escape from a dull world.
Lana del Rey is the embodiment of boredom in the
21st century. She does not, like Lorde, act against it.
Lana del Rey resignedly accepts the times we live in.
She puts on her red party dress again. On record, her
voice sounds bored, and the way she is in control of
her voice is almost robotic. The same with the music.
Ultraviolence is cool, distant. The album lacks distinctive
up-tempo melodies – ‘West Coast’ actually slows
down for the chorus. It is no wonder that Del Rey has
been attacked by some feminists: she does not describe
life as if she is under control (but men control her).
‘The Other Woman’, with its 50s sound, is the most
obvious example. But on ‘Sad Girl’, she sings: “Being a
mistress on the side / It might not appeal to fools like
you / We been around on the side / Wanna be somethin’
you would do.” And, just like on ‘Video Games’
and ‘Blue Jeans’, even when it’s not explicitly as ‘the
other woman’, her ever-changing boyfriend is central
in Lana’s lyrics. On ‘Brooklyn Baby’, she muses how
he plays guitar while she sings Lou Reed. “Well my
boyfriend’s in a band”, proudly.
But I don’t see Ultraviolence as an opinion piece. Lana
is not laying out a case for a way of life, she is simply
describing hers. At best, she confronts her listener with
the vanity of their existence.
But there is hope. Sometimes Del Rey opens a window
into her escapist vision. The spoken words “I love
you the first time / I love you the last time / Yo soy la
princesa, comprende mis white lines / Cause I’m your
jazz singer / And you’re my cult leader / I love you
forever / I love you forever” on ‘Ride’ have her to love
as a goal in inself. And on ‘Black Beauty’, she knows
something that her man doesn’t: “Life is beautiful but
you don’t have a clue.” Whether that’s true or not, it
is a powerful message you can believe in. When Lana
said in an interview that she wanted to die (words that
she later retracted), I do not think she meant it in the
most literal sense. In boredom, you do not live; you
exist. Death is more beautiful than that, but there is a
sense in which really living is to let your bored self die.
July 30, 2014
LANA DEL REY ULTRAVIOLENCE
EMA EXILE IN THE OUTER RING
BEAUTIFUL FREAKS
The other day I was listening to EMA while writing about
Lana Del Rey: an interesting juxtaposition, to say the least.
EMA’s music is gritty, bleak, full of industrial noise and military
drones, unpleasant, while the darkest description one
could give of Lana Del Rey is that she seems uneasily content
with an empty life. But when you think about it you
can see the overlap, and the question arises: are
they really all that different? After all, both Lana
Del Rey and Erika M. Anderson offer, in their
own way, a ‘vision’ of America – a vision, furthermore,
that isn’t entirely positive. Both, too, seem
fond of the outcasts – the inhabitants of the Outer
Ring, in Anderson’s terminology; biker crews
and The Other Woman’s and failed film stars – and a certain
strand of nihilism runs through the songwriting of each.
On ‘I Wanna Destroy’, EMA sings “We’re arbitrary, we’re
temporary, we are the kids from the void” and while Lana
would never put it that way, the essence is the same. To use
the title of another track on Exile In The Outer Ring, both
are ‘33 Nihilistic and Female’.
It’s funny. EMA’s records sound so uncompromising,
so harsh, so full of rage and scepticism and nihilism and
self-destruction that you must absolutely brace yourself before
pressing play. But in an interview with The Quietus,
Anderson strikes an especially conciliatory tone. “All the
songs on this record were written before the US Presidential
election. I think that one of the things I was tapping into,
subconsciously, was a resentment of the ‘liberal coastal elite’
in America. […] I have a bit of that resentment.” That reconciliation
is what the Outer Ring signifies: the outer ring
of a city “where the people who are being forced out of the
cities, due to being economically disadvantaged, meet with
the people who have to leave the countryside in order to
get jobs.” The Outer Ring is “the place where the weird shit
goes down”, a vibrant meeting place of cultures. It is where,
perhaps, discourse is a little bit less polarised, understanding
a bit more mutual; a new birthplace of tolerance. So
when Anderson asks “What are we hoping for?” on ‘Down
and Out’ (despite the title the catchiest track on the record),
it’s a genuine question.
How to reconcile the empathy with the outer ring with the
intolerant sounds of Exile? The clue, I think, is to separate
personal from political. This record is not about Trump –
it was written before Trump, and it’ll be frightening years
after Trump, and perhaps Trump isn’t even that frightening,
ridiculous as he is. This is primarily a record by and about
Anderson. The outer ring may be where we can find new
hope, but it is also where she found a dark basement, “the
darkest place I could find”. The world we live in simply isn’t
beautiful.
That brings us to the Big Question: what happens in the
end? “See, God,” Anderson addresses on ‘I Wanna Destroy’,
“no gleaming, no proof”. And over the course of Exile
In the Outer Ring, the Lord pops up in a couple of places:
“I felt sure I would be judged / This is between me, God
and Satan” she speaks on ‘7 Years’, and “Now only God
can judge me” she sings on ‘Blood and Chalk’. Well, what
the fuck is He doing here? Is this the logical consequence
of nihilism, a (desperate) search for meaning? Or is this an
allusion to the religious red states Anderson grew up in?
Or else is this a personal reckoning, God merely existing in
Anderson’s (and in our) own heads? It’s these incongruous
references that puzzle me, because the hope that they offer
is of a twisted kind. I’m not sure how to place them; to be
honest, they frighten me. It’s an absurd joke indeed, that
what frightens me most in EMA’s songs is the presence of
some benevolent higher power. But that’s just the way it is.
August 29, 2017