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Lana Del Rey · S1 E6
Video Games
A homemade video of old Hollywood clips goes viral and changes everything
June 2011, and a girl named Lana Del Rey uploads a homemade video to YouTube: old Hollywood clips, skateboarders, and a webcam pointed at her face. Within weeks, every music blog on the internet is asking the same question: who is this?
"Video Games" (Lana Del Rey, 2011). The homemade video that changed everything: grainy clips of old Hollywood, skateboarders, Paz de la Huerta stumbling out of a cab, and a webcam pointed at Lana's face. It looks like nothing else because it cost nothing to make. This is the moment Lizzy Grant becomes Lana Del Rey.
The Internet Explodes
On a random day in June, a video appears on YouTube from an artist nobody has heard of. It looks like nothing else: grainy, handmade, haunted. Within weeks, every A&R executive in New York and London is Googling the same name, and nobody can figure out where she came from.
Sources
Wikipedia
NME
TAP TO REVEAL: How much did the Video Games music video cost to make?
“She is a genius. And I don't use that word lightly.”
— Justin Parker, co-writer of "Video Games," The Guardian, 2012
Video Games, Lana Del Rey (2011)
Built on a bed of strings, harp, and a drum machine that sounds like it's playing from another room. Producer Robopop helped shape the arrangement, but the raw vocal is all Lizzy Grant. Listen for the way her voice drops into a low register on the verses, then lifts into something almost childlike on the chorus. She sounds like she's singing from inside a memory, and the homemade video matches perfectly: grainy, nostalgic, impossible to look away from.
Sources
NME
Pitchfork
Video Games: The Numbers
Lucky Ones, Lana Del Rey
From Born to Die (2012). "We were born to be the lucky ones." After years of failure, rejection, and reinvention, this is the payoff. The girl from Lake Placid, the philosophy student, the open mic nobody, Sparkle Jump Rope Queen: she finally got lucky.
Lucky Ones, Lana Del Rey (2012)
One of the most straightforwardly hopeful songs Lana has ever written. After the boarding school, the open mics, the album nobody bought, these words land differently.
What award did the Q Awards give Lana Del Rey in October 2011, just months after Video Games went viral?
The blogs are on fire, the labels are calling, and Lana Del Rey has done what Lizzy Grant never could: make the world stop and listen. Next season: Interscope Records, a disastrous SNL performance, and Born to Die.
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