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This perhaps, explains some of the hate that came well-nigh immediately after the first flush of love. Instead, her first night in Melbourne ends with the house lights going up to reveal faces that read: is that all there is? Related articles Just 45 minutes after she wanders onstage behind her band, she slips off before it. Lyrically she's being bad - getting high with boyfriends or "stealin' police cars with the senior guys" - visually, this night, she looks like a goody-goody 60s prom queen with a thing for the Kennedys and Camelot.Īlmost as I register my confusion over what this might mean, she's gone. More curious is that her image - and the images looping on the screen - seem out-of-sync with her music. Her image projects confidence, yet conversely her body language on stage seems hesitant, almost shy. The band, along with the large rubber plants around the side and back of the stage, the video loops featuring doomed, romantic figures like Elvis and the Kennedys and the melancholy stage lighting, do for mood while Del Rey - in bouffant hair, Alice headband, pleated, silver brocade dress and a necklace that catches the lighting - channels Jackie Kennedy, though I'm sure Mrs K would not have shown quite so much leg.ĭel Rey's voice is strong, but her stagecraft is limited. Del Rey has chosen to take her songs on the road with a string quartet, a bass player and pianist seated at a grand. They sway but they don't dance what beats there are on her record are mostly absent for this performance. They know all the words, gently singing along with the swoony, slightly loony enthusiasm of girls half their age. If Del Rey's lyrics tend toward long-after-the-fact explorations of a brittle, lust-lorn adolescence or warmed-over teen angst, this doesn't seem to bother the mid-20s women standing next to me in Melbourne.

More than 20 million people have now watched Video Games on YouTube more than two million people worldwide own a copy of her album.Īnd there is much to like about the dozen torch songs and her smoky, not-quite-jazzy voice on Born To Die - especially, it appears, for the many, many women in the capacity audience of 1800 at the Palace. And she's been signed by one of the world's largest model agencies, Next. 1 in 11 countries while Del Rey won (ahead of Bon Iver and Foster the People) the "international breakthrough act" gong at the Brit Awards in February. Since January, the record has been to No. Within three months of uploading it, she had been "discovered", landed a record deal with a major label and recorded her album Born To Die. She recorded a song called Video Games last year, made a video for it herself and last June posted it on YouTube. At face value and at first, the Lana Del Rey story seemed to follow the familiar narrative of the overnight success. Now - in Australia more than anywhere else in the world - she's a somebody. Lana Del Rey is just a few songs into the first of two sold-out nights at Melbourne's Palace Theatre, but the crowd has been crazy for her from the moment she tottered out on to the Edwardian venue's stage.Īctually, it isn't so much that there's a lot of love in the house tonight, more that there's an unexpected cult-like zeal for the young American singer who, little more than year ago, was pretty much a nobody from nowhere. God help me, but I feel like a spy in the house of love. On stage, the source of all this gooey, almost love-sick adoration - a tall, auburn-haired beauty dressed like a baby doll - pauses mid-stage to coo back, "I love you, baby." More obsequious shrieking erupts. The crowd, mainly female, completely adoring, joins in, squealing their own benedictions.

Out of the dark and above the thrum, a voice.

Greg Dixon talks to the singer about the internet backlash, what she wants from music and why she prefers writing alone to being on stage. Lana Del Rey has become as reviled as she is revered since making it big.