![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Del Rey’s voice is oddball enough that she’s in little danger of becoming a faceless presence, but you can’t say that house producer and “Sadness” remixer Cedric Gervais, who gained notoreity for putting together a track centered on a double-entendre about looking for a woman named Molly, doesn’t do his damndest to try. Meanwhile, the version of “Summertime Sadness” making waves shaves off many of the track’s weirder edges, particularly the Lynchian unsteadiness that characterizes so much of Del Rey’s work, in favor of EDM-by-the-numbers bombast. Previous Del Rey singles like the sing-songy “National Anthem” and the frenzied “Off to the Races” got enough airplay to have limited success on Billboard‘s Rock Chart they also fully showcased Del Rey’s singular aesthetic, from baby-talking interludes to flip lyrics about materialism. Although given Del Rey’s propensity for showcasing tragic heroines in her lyrics, this fate might be appropriate. (Number two? “Young and Beautiful,” her contribution to The Great Gatsby soundtrack.) But even those who were skeptical about Del Rey when she first crashed into the Internet music world might see the current success of “Summertime Sadness” as somewhat bittersweet. Post Malone Addresses Concerns About His Weight Loss: He Isn't Doing Drugs, He's Just a DadĪs of September 15th, “Sadness” had sold 1.1 million downloads, making it Del Rey’s best-selling song. (There’s also a lyric that might be a slightly garbled reference to Jack Nicholson’s “have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” taunt from the first Batman movie.) It’s one of the album’s better tracks Del Rey’s voice, with its implied permapout, meshes beautifully with the Angelo Badalamenti-recalling music, even when it slips into her weakier, breathier upper register. In some ways, the song’s fate isn’t too much of a surprise: “Summertime Sadness” was co-written by Rick Nowels, who’s racked up hits from Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” to John Legend’s “Green Light.” It originally appeared on Born to Die, Del Rey’s highly ambitious second album her vocals, multiplied, swirl over militaristic drums and strings, as she sings of romance so sweetly doomed that it could propel her into a happy afterlife. “Summertime Sadness,” a wistful ode to a lover who’s on the verge of dissipating like the quicky fading season, inched up from Number 10 to Number Nine on the big chart, receiving 94 million radio impressions. And it seems even sillier this week, Del Rey’s third with a song in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. As with most online debates of two years ago, it all seems a little bit silly now. Del Rey was either the next coming of Feist or the harbinger of indie being fully co-opted by major labels she was either playing with calcified ideas of femininity or playing into them she was either a master stylist or a singer slightly less talented than the Shaggs’ Wiggins sisters. Around this time two years ago, the mysterious singer Lana Del Rey played Brooklyn’s Glasslands Gallery, setting off a hype cycle that, at the time, littered the Internet with thinkpieces and garment-rending. ![]()
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