The Construction and Representation of Lana Del Rey as an Indie artist.
In terms of her image, Lana Del Rey is constructed to be unlike the mainstream style, where she is dressed in clothes and had her make-up and hair styled to look more like a 1950's vintage neo-noir pin-up model, where 'vintage' is a recurring theme associated with her in her song style, music videos and dress sense. The poses she is seen in make her seem sexually aware and sophisticated, unlike the playful and over-sexualised mainstream artist women. This gives her a sense of identity what her audience will reference her with, which makes her 'unique' - a common idea in the construction of 'indie' artists, where here she is almost like the American version of the 'Amy Winehouse effect'. However, with so much focus on her image and identity, this takes less focus off the actual music, where the music is what an indie artist is usually about, and image is usually considered a mainstream idea, and therefore can Lana Del Rey be then fully classed as an independent artist? Another idea that goes against her 'indie attire' is her plastic surgery, where she has physically reconstructed her face to fit her material image, and her style of music, which although makes her look different in order to fit 'indie' criteria, the idea that she has done this is normally associated with mainstream artists who have a larger focus on their image to impress a wider audience. She also contradicts herself when saying 'I'm not trying to create an image or a persona. I'm just singing because that's what I know what to do' when she clearly has been constructed with a vintage, sexual image for people to associate her with, however quoting her intentions like this does make her seem like she has constructed herself to be an indie artist to her audience.
Lana Del Rey's lyrics are extremely emotional and meaningful, and seem apparent that they relate to her personally. This sets her apart as an indie artist away from the mainstream culture where current popular music themes involves upbeat dance music about parties and fun and other related activities that are supposed to relate to a wider audience, whereas it is apparent Elizabeth's songs are about her and her life personally, or at least that's what she tries to put forward as a message, where a current independent music idea is that the music only reaches to a smaller audience who can relate to an artist because the music is only about that artist and their own opinions of what is important to sing about, where in this case, 'love' or 'abuse' or the idea of being damaged or living in a fractured world, are popular theme in her songs, as her producer David Kahne says: 'The country is fraying at the edges; she wanted to look at that edge, at destruction and loss, and talk about it.' Her actual vocals are deep, slow and don't have much of a range of pitch, which is almost like the neo-noir style of vocals in the 20th century, which again fits with her theme of 'vintage' to make her unique, and therefore 'indie'. However, there are a few factors in more of her recent songs that suggest she is trying to compete with mainstream artists, which then really destroys the whole point of being indie. These include trying to rap in 'National Anthem' and creating a lengthy almost cinematic video for 'Ride', including dialogue and credits, which has been compared to a lot of videos by Lady Gaga - a massive mainstream artist.
Lana Del Rey's music videos themselves have represented her as an indie artist to an extent. When she was only known as 'Lizzy Grant', her music videos were very obviously home-made and very poor quality, for example in the song 'Put Me In a Movie' which is based on the book 'Lolita', the quality of the camera was dire, and a series of clips from other videos which don't belong to Elizabeth are also placed in quite randomly, yet also still fit with the theme of the song, as well as filmed clips of her in quite obvious home settings and not a studio, to show how she has not made it big, does not have a large budget, and therefore is not mainstream. At this time she was not famous at all, but even when she did shoot to fame as 'Lana Del Rey' with the song 'video games', she still continued with the home-made style of video, with a hand-held low quality camera and a sequence of clips randomly shot to seem almost like home-video memories, with her unique vintage and personal dress-sense, different to the mainstream style videos, with an obvious lower budget, and to make it look like her music is personal to her. These are all characteristics of an indie artist. However, gradually, her videos began to get more and more professional. 'Summertime Sadness', although still very indie with the use of home-video techniques, obviously has a slightly higher budget with the use of special effects such as smoke and specialised lighting. These videos contrast highly with her more recent videos. For example, in the video for 'Born to Die', Lana Del Rey is shown sitting in a throne in a grand church or hall of some kind where the lighting makes it look almost like a studio, with very professional make-up and hairstyle, and Tigers sat at each side of her. This represents her to have a higher status, and also to be more wealthy, which typically a mainstream concept. Alongside this in the video is a narrative of a love story between Lana and a man, however narrative is also a very mainstream music principle, compared to the aspect of performance which is stereotypically indie. The same is applied to the video 'Blue Jeans', where although the budget isn't as high as typical mainstream videos, because the whole thing is simply shot in a swimming pool, the editing and filming is very 'polished' with a more diverse range of camera angles, editing speeds and editing techniques. This includes the use of tamed crocodiles, the fact the whole thing is shot in very high quality and black and white, and the use of techniques like slow motion. However, there are still running themes within all of Lana Del Rey's video that could make her still be considered indie. These include American Symbolism and sexual domination symbolism, such as the use of the American Flag in 'Born to Die', and a music video about JFK for 'National Anthem', and her lover acting violent towards her, such as in 'Born to Die' where he grabs her head and forces her to kiss him, and in 'Blue Jeans', where he forces his fingers into her mouth, and when he grabs her neck and pushes her under the water. These concepts are about things that are personal to her, and don't represent perfect and popular lifestyle like mainstream artists usually portray, which therefore still show 'indie' traits. Another recurring theme which makes Lana Del Rey's videos be perceived as 'indie' is her vintage look. For example, 'Blue Jeans' although quite polished for an indie artist, is all in black and white, and she still as an artist looks vintage in terms of her costume. At the beginning of 'National Anthem' the camera filter is made to look like an old black and white film camera, as she portrays herself as iconic vintage figure, Marylin Monroe.
In terms of press and media, Lana Del Rey, (Elizabeth Grant) has had mixed reviews over her music and image. At first she had very positive headlines about her being a 'fresh new breakthrough in the music industry' and about her 'unique voices and themes that can inspire her dedicated audience', but that only happened after she re-released her music because it wasn't popular enough, which shows just how far away from mainstream it was considered. She is also being constantly put in fashion magazines for her specialised taste in her vintage indie image, and her sales figures and popularity is constantly being advertised by her supporters. However, purposely trying to bring her as a major icon in the positive press to bring her attention as a person as well as her music, creates a more mainstream effect than possibly an indie one. She became very popular through social networking site 'Tumblr' where meaningful lyrics and photos related to indie music is often posted where people can associate themselves with it, which gained a fan-base. However, after performing live on Saturday Night Live, the headlines turned negative where she was incredibly slated by her poor performance and poor live vocals. This portrayed her a 'fake' where her album vocals seemed clearly over-edited, and not what an indie artist is all about, where Crave claimed the outcome was 'a painfully embarrassing mess, a collapse of inflated promise', and also revealed that her twitter profile says "EVERYTHING I WANT I HAVE. MONEY, NOTORIETY AND RIVIERAS - I EVEN THINK I FOUND GOD - IN THE FLASH BULBS OF YOUR PRETTY CAMERAS",which portrays her as selfish and in the industry for the fame, which is by far not how indie artists are usually represented. This also gave way for other companies to start critisising her music in general, such as the USA Today saying 'an unevitable letdown, as one unconvincing, lethargic vocal bleeds into the next'. This kind of press can represent her as an indie artist depending on the interpretation. By suggesting she is a bad vocalist suggests that she isn't good enough to be mainstream, but also that she is still carrying on regardless, because of her dedication to her music, like most indie artists. However it also shows how in the industry she is just 'acting' to gain an audience and cannot pull off her own style of music, which is written by her, for herself, which is what indie artists should be able to do. Overall, although both negative and positive press can show Lana Del Rey as an indie artist, the general media hype from it has gained her loads of attention in the press, which continues to increase, which is usually based around mainstream artists - the idea that any type of press is good press because it puts them in the limelight, and so in terms of the media industry and the attention she receives, can is Lana Del Rey an indie artist in this sense?
In terms of my own opinion, I have mixed views about Lana Del Rey. Firstly, I think she has a lovely voice, only when edited in a studio though, and therefore some of her songs I really like, and this also applies to some of the lyrics in her songs. However, her voice isn't very capable of varying the style of songs, and therefore a lot of her songs sound the same, and her voice seems to 'drone on' a lot in a quite a monotone way, which then makes me feel like I would not be able to listen to a lot of her music without getting bored, and would therefore not be encouraged to buy her albums. I have never met her so I can't judge her personality entirely, but from what the press has portrayed, I don't particularly like her as a person due to her lying about her background and for lying about her plastic surgery, and from quotes like 'people who don't respect my music are the reason I want to drink again', I consider her too vain, and attention seeking for sympathy. The main thing I question though, is that how after all the factors that may show Lana Del Rey as more of a mainstream artist, can she still be considered 'indie'?
To conclude, due to recurring themes and editing styles and imagery of her music and music videos, Lana Del Rey can still be considered an indie artist, especially because she fits the definition of not being signed to a major record label in the industry, however, due to implications within her music videos, press and popularity, as an artist she has a lot of mainstream traits, which suggests that in the future, she will probably sell-out and become a mainstream artist herself.
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