Lana Del Rey's 'Ultraviolence' Live is "Life Imitating Art," And Not In A Good Way
Real talk: I've seen Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney and Nine Inch Nails twice in the past year, and I have never, ever, ever heard a crowd shriek with unadulterated joy and unhinged rapture the way they did on the second night of Lana Del Rey's Ultraviolence tour. The Little Monsters may let loose with blood-curdling screams and no one shouts "WHERE MY RING AT" louder than the Beyhive, but I have no idea what the girls in the flower crowns and American flag capes are yelling about when the chorus of "Young and Beautiful" comes around.
I went to the WaMu Theater in Seattle on Tuesday night with low expectations, to be honest. I wasn't impressed by Lana's Saturday Night Live performance from 2012 where she sang like she'd cleaned out a drugstore's antihistamine section before taking the stage. And for me, her out-of-it stage demeanor reinforces the disconnect between the words sliding down her dipping, perfectly controlled vibrato and the claim that these lyrics are personal to her experience. (She does have a co-author credit for the majority of her work, despite the lounge act of yester-century.) Lana is very much the vessel for "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans," but it seems she's not the owner of them—her voice is more of a passenger than the force behind the driver's seat of a great song.
Still, news of a supposedly killer set at Coachella, her take on "Once Upon A Dream" for Maleficent and the new stuff—especially the creepy as hell and totally addicting "Shades of Cool"—had me hoping to change my tune. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to see why Dan Auerbach wanted to produce Ultraviolence in the first place, and if Lana Del Rey could shake the negative press from her industry-engineered beginnings, especially the SNL debacle. I wanted to see if Lana singing "National Anthem" in the flesh shined a different light on the young talent with the vintage voice and epic music videos. And most of all, I wanted to see if Lana would prove me wrong.
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