http://amyrebeccaklein.tumblr.com/post/10289462572/the-problem-with-lana-del-ray

The problem with Lana Del Ray is that she may be smarter than you. After all, here she is, half-formed and already fully famous, ready for her closeup, clothed only in fantasy and in nostalgia for an America that no longer exists.
Sometimes, on YouTube, in between shifting veils of 1950’s stock video, her image rises and squints at us, like a reflection of our own. Lana Del Ray is trying to figure us out—who we are, or at least, who we were. She is, or she associates herself with what we know of the romance of the past—with the Golden Age of cinema, Los Angeles in black and white, angels with sad, knowing eyes, trailer parks, chrome-sided motels in Reno, blue jeans, beer, drunken and wasteful nights, freedom from conscience, what gets codified as our collective memory, the fifties housewife, gangsters, James Dean, and the vision of American opulence that is slowly flickering out around us, dying down. But mostly, she is largely hidden. And everyone wants to know if she is real or not, if she writes her own songs, if she is being sincere. Here’s how the gossip goes: Is she an industry creation, her puppet’s strings pulled by some famous male producer, manager, or Svengali? Has she had plastic surgery? Is her father so rich that he is financing her entire career? Is she, dammit, sincere?
Lana Del Ray is exactly as real as the past, for the past is exactly what she recalls. She takes the days when women wore floral skirts and orange lipstick and waited at home for their husbands to come home from work so they (the women) could bring them (the men) martinis with olives and makes them real again (the men, the women, the martinis, and the olives.)
Lana Del Ray is sitting at home waiting for you to come home so she can fix you dinner and a drink. Lana Del Ray is waiting for you to come home so she can watch you play video games on the couch and ignore her all day until it’s time for bed. Lana Del Ray is waiting for you to come home so you can go to bed and act out all of your wildest fantasies which is exactly what she wants to do—what you want to do, that is. Lana Del Ray is waiting for you because she is your mirror.
So it doesn’t matter if Lana Del Ray is entirely sarcastic when she belts out, “It’s YOU, it’s YOU, it’s all for YOU.” It doesn’t matter that there is an edge to her voice that sounds something like rage and despair. Lana Del Ray has conquered America with plastic surgery, video games, a regression to nostalgia, and an appeal to the sex drive of every male music critic on the planet. It doesn’t matter if she has anything real to sell because Lana Del Ray has made us think about the relationship between selling fantasy and selling lies.
Lana Del Ray is the lie we like to tell ourselves—that America has always been, and will always be, this gorgeous woman who can make all our dreams come true. So it doesn’t matter if she loves you or hates you because she is going to take all of your money and you are going to let her get away with it. That’s the reality of who she is. We are narcissistic and self-obsessed and so is Lana Del Ray. We are a country in decadent, navel-gazing decline—fading, intoxicated, and longing for the past, but still so beautiful, staring straight into the lens and smiling as we shoot an American tragedy. Lana Del Ray has a voice that reminds you of something burning. When she sneers, her mouth curls around the word “You” so spectacularly, it sounds like the edge of a photograph curling in a fire. What was she a picture of? You can’t even make it out anymore. If you start paying attention, it almost hurts to listen to.