Pop flirtation

Never paid much attention to Lana Del Rey, until I bumped into Christopher Glazek’s online article (The Year in Pop) in Artforum’s December issue - I know my distraction might sound out-fashioned in a world of global multi-layered and overlapped interests, where “being in” means to know and like it all...
I clicked on the video Ride (directed by Anthony Mandler), and abandoned myself to the seduction of the moving image. It is indeed a charming, very well done video piece. In the beginning, Del Rey’s voice-over, going on and on about American carpe diem clichés is quite annoying, but the images do the trick on holding one’s attention to what’s coming next. And then she starts singing; no doubt, a great voice. Del Rey’s flexible voice is naturally powerful, and has all it takes to do whatever she wants to do with it. The lyrics glamorise the errant lifestyle of a certain white American uneducated fringe, preaching “craziness” and triviality as the foundation of freedom. The music itself falls into the patterns of the sharp simplicity meant to reach out to the broader possible audiences, and of course, to fit also the purpose of the song-turned-into-ring-tone. And it works, the whole thing together works perfectly, as it always will when restraining reason to emotion.
Would I have the same opinion if I had listened to the music before watching the video? Well, I’m not sure, but maybe it doesn’t really matter, what matters now is the result and impact of the mishmash, the interweaving, the jumble of information. This is the fabric of contemporary reality, the tool, the trap, and the addiction that caught intellectuals, scholars and classicists into pop flirtation...