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Lana Del Rey · S1 E4
Kill Kill
David Kahne, a three-track EP, and the first time anyone hears Lizzy Grant
A recording studio in New York, 2008. A 22-year-old philosophy graduate named Lizzy Grant steps up to a professional microphone for the first time, and producer David Kahne hits record.
"Doin' Time" (Lana Del Rey, 2019). Lana covers Sublime and turns a ska-punk classic into something haunting and cinematic. Same instinct David Kahne heard in those first sessions: this girl takes songs from other worlds and makes them sound like they were always hers.
The Producer
Kahne is a heavyweight: Sublime's self-titled album, Sugar Ray, head of A&R at Warner Bros. Records. He could be working with anyone. Instead he books session after session with a girl from Lake Placid who has no manager, no label, and no audience, because he hears something in her voice that he can't explain to anyone else.
Sources
Wikipedia
Billboard
Doin' Time, Lana Del Rey (2019)
A cover of Sublime's 1996 original, reimagined as a hazy California daydream. Lana strips the ska-punk energy and replaces it with her signature reverb and a lazy, hypnotic vocal delivery. Listen for how the production keeps the original's bass line but wraps it in something that sounds like a sunset dissolving. David Kahne heard this same ability in 2008: the gift of taking someone else's song and making it sound like it was always hers.
Sources
Norman Fucking Rockwell! liner notes, Interscope / Polydor, 2019
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened when iTunes gave Lizzy Grant its biggest break?
“I didn't think I was gonna make it.”
— Lana Del Rey, The Fader, June 2014
Kill Kill: The Facts
Diet Mountain Dew, Lana Del Rey
From Born to Die (2012). "Baby put on heart-shaped sunglasses, 'cause we gonna take a ride." This track has the reckless, youthful energy of the Kill Kill era baked into every line. Diet soda, bad boyfriends, and the feeling that none of it matters. This is the Lizzy Grant who hadn't learned to be careful yet.
Diet Mountain Dew, Lana Del Rey (2012)
"You're no good for me, baby you're no good for me, you're no good for me, but baby I want you." The whole Lana Del Rey thesis statement in one chorus. She was writing this before anyone cared.
How many tracks were on Lizzy Grant's Kill Kill EP?
David Kahne has enough material for a full album. Next: Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant drops on iTunes in January 2010, and within three months it vanishes from every digital storefront as if it never existed.
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