Lana Del Rey

baffled to hell by all this stuff about this woman's name change;
why on earth should it matter?? seriously someone explain this to me.

i'm hoping her skin falls off and turns out she were a lizard all along like Diana outta V or some shiz.

It doesn't really matter, but talking about if it matters or not does.

her HAIR was different then too. it's all just very suspicious.

I don't think I've heard a note from this person, but if I understand correctly, it's not the name change but the fact the record label tried to bury her earlier career. It's not the crime, it's the cover-up, etc.

(Also, Bowie changed his name for practical reasons).

I think this person rubs people the wrong way because she's closer to ... wasn't there a singer or author or something a couple of years back who was heralded for her preciously young age when in fact she was much older? Not so much an issue of authenticity or whatever, but the feeling that someone has pulled a fast one.

practical reasons = commercial reasons. same as LDR.

When Romeo Blue wisely changed his name to Leonard Kravitz his career finally took off.

*Engelbert Humperdinck waits impatiently in wings, stomps foot*

Not so much an issue of authenticity or whatever, but the feeling that someone has pulled a fast one.such feelings are horribly overindulged by a certain class of celebrity-watcher

Reminds me of the controversy surrounding Alanis Morrissette at the time of Jagged Little Pill. The "alternative" crowd were doubting her authenticity because she had done teen-pop records when she was a teen.

wasn't she also on You Can't Do That on Television?

xpost Come on, Bowie shared a name with an actual, existing singer. Commercial reasons? I'd call changing your name so it's not confused with the famous lead singer of the Monkees is a practical reason. It's why Sting changed his name from Reginald Dwight. Bono, too.

I doubt Lou Reed's authenticity because of those Pickwick Records he did under the name Louis "Butch" Firbank.

if reginald dwight is taken the next logical name is definitely "Sting"

It's my number 2, for sure.

It's why Sting changed his name from Reginald Dwight.

lol

new borad description

Commercial reasons? I'd call changing your name so it's not confused with the famous lead singer of the Monkees is a practical reason.

And I'm saying that when you're attempting to establish a marketable artistic identity, commercial reasons = practical reasons.

the manufactured thing is a strawman brought up by everyone else

It's why Sting changed his name from Reginald Dwight. Bono, too.

have to admit that this is pretty amazing

This Lefsetz yutz isn't bemoaning the existence of her pre-LDR music or insinuating some record company jiggery-pokery. He seems to be amazed at the idea of someone performing under an assumed name *at all.* Like, "Oh ho, Ms. 'Del Rey,' I happen to have Wikipedia here PWNED." It blows my mind that an adult human being who purports to write about popular culture would write such a sentence in 2012.

I mean, I don't give a crap about her or her music, which I find boring to an unlistenable degree, but this name thing is just stupid.

(The most instructive example to me here is Y Kant Tori Read/Tori Amos. Or that shrieking Irish chick who was on American Idol a few seasons ago.)

the whole lefsetz steez is "the industry is terrified and not innovative and bad at fairly selling customers what they want..." (fair enough) "...which is more classic authentic music like ryan adams!" (uh)

Leftsetz shouldn't gripe. His real name is Greil Marcus and he had to change it to 'Bob Lefsetz'. Which, of course, is understandable.

I read that on Wikipedia, by the way.

very good call on Y Kant Tori Read.

saying ppl don't like lana's snl performance bc of sexism is wtf.

saying ppl don't like lana's snl performance bc of sexism is wtf.

i think the sexism thing is bigger than just that. women artists get clobbered especially fucking harshly compared to men, as a general rule. men receive criticism and maybe a mild amount of snark (unless they're effeminate/non-manly/prissy/pretty-boy in some way, then the anvil really comes down). lots of artists "suck" -- no matter what their gender. but i always notice the *way* the criticism is delivered. with women, there's an element of shaming and bullying and "oh, go cry about it, little girl" that, like i said, men don't get unless there's something in the mix that questions their masculinity.

male artists get dismissed all the time for all kinds of reasons, sometimes even for being hyper-masculine parodies of themselves (see large number of rock/metal bands)

or frat bands, nickelback, pantera, dmb, sublime, etc - for reasons having nothing to do w/ being non-manly/pretty-boys

xxp but of course men will read that and say it's bullshit. they're the default sex; they've never really *needed* to think about any of this as a means to their own survival.

mordy come on

mordy, what does it say that i can't tell you what 99.9 percent of those artists look like but ldr's fucking LIP is a topic of constant discussion? hint: it means that because they're guys, they're allowed to make shitty music and have their looks still be free from dissection.

look, i'm not saying that you can totally disentangle criticism of LDR from her gender, and part of that is bc she so heavily genders herself in her own music (partic as the female-gazed-subject figure in video games). but there are legitimate criticisms of her technique, charisma, presentation of self, and condemning them all bc "sexism" is a really intellectually lazy way of defending her. i don't even know why we need to defend her. maybe bc to some ppl she seems like she needs to be protected bc her act can suggest that she's vulnerable?

and it's not as if guys who get tattoos and piercings all over their bodies AREN'T as narcissistic as women who do more conventional stuff to change their image.

but there are legitimate criticisms of her technique, charisma, presentation of self, and condemning them all bc "sexism" is a really intellectually lazy way of defending her

i'm not defending her. all i'm saying is: criticism of such things is fine, but it depends how you put it across, because words do matter. that's where sexism can come in.

some ppl who criticized her might have used sexist language, or used criticisms embedded in sexist ideology. sure.

that's what i'm getting at.

i had to stop reading HRO, which i otherwise enjoyed, because he was especially cruel/mocking towards women, and it just wouldn't stop. even with the arcade fire, who i don't care about -- win was always portrayed as being regine's pussywhipped little ball and chain. ugh.

HRO is fuckin tedious imo and faintly depressing to me for reasons i can't quite elucidate.

i feel like i've seen plenty of males artists who are awkward and a mess of nerves onstage but they don't get the cat power/LDR treatment.

re: get bent on sexism

That's certainly true in general, but I don't know that it has much specific relevance WR2 the overall tone of harsh negativity in responses occasioned by LDR's SNL performance. I mean, I'm sure that many of those responses were delivered in brutally sexist language (at least on the internet), because that's how people are (especially on the internet), but I suspect that the overall negativity-level is more a product of genuine awfulness than of gender. Cuz that performance really was awful.

Then again, we'd have to find a comparably hyped and unknown new male artist who recently delivered a comparably horrid "pleased to meet you" live performance to make a meaningful comparison. The only close comparison I can think of is Salem's 2010 Fader Fort performance, and maybe that makes your case more than mine (female member, queerness).

I really don't understand why LDR's lips are part of the discourse at all, everybody has lips. it's gross and makes me think of ed gein

everybody has lips. it's gross

Agreed!

i feel like i've seen plenty of males artists who are awkward and a mess of nerves onstage but they don't get the cat power/LDR treatment.

lol you mean like the wavves guy

I really don't understand why LDR's lips are part of the discourse at all

maybe it's part of what courtney love once referred to as "and she's not even pretty" syndrome.

not to open the courtney love can of worms here.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SHtepaTecT4/TTII-CbKpNI/AAAAAAAABuc/pvI9PTF3Cpk/s1600/spinal-tap.jpg

It's not so much the treatment of any one particular female artist but the disparity with which this stuff happens vis a vis male artists.

There's an... intimacy to the criticism a lot of the time, as if the writer is describing a one night stand to his friends the next day.

i feel like i've seen plenty of males artists who are awkward and a mess of nerves onstage but they don't get the cat power/LDR treatment.

― omar little, Tuesday, January 17, 2012 4:15 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cat power and elliott smith were coming up at the same time, and i remember reading/hearing exactly the same complaints about the stage presence of both.

elliot smith was "intimate" and "personal"

why does everyone focus on courtney love's worms

in a certain way sexism is all over this incident. we have an artist whose entire act is either enacting particular sexist tropes about female passivity, male domination, a whole dynamic of neglect + pining, or at the very least problematizing + dialoguing that it. she records one single that that gets her a lot of attention. i'm not going to pretend that my love of that single has nothing to do w/ gender + sex. i found her performance in that video really sexy, i found her vocal performance really arresting, and titillating. that's often going on w/ music of both genders. partially due to the attention she got from that video (a video that was itself sexually problematic, and attention that was certainly sexualized) she was given an incredibly rare opportunity for such an inexperienced artist -- playing on SNL.

now we have a notably terrible performance from that artist. part of what made the performance terrible is what i wrote about in a post above: that instead of seeming confident, in control, savvy she came off as amateurish, naive, overwhelmed. part of the problem is that instead of being sexy she was almost childish. so it's not like sex + gender aren't appropriate here. but i think calling criticism here 'sexism' without explicating exactly how sex fits into the whole thing, is just an intellectual duck.

then on top of it, there are actual technical stuff about her performance that were imperfect. but yes, if she were someone else, maybe someone who had different dynamics in her song, or someone coming w/ a wider range of material + tropes, the reaction would be much different. but this reaction has as much to do with how she was marketed upfront.