It is Jan. 14, 2012. Barack Obama is wrapping up his first presidential term, the 2008 financial crisis is finally beginning to subside and “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO is on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The millennial generation is either coming-of-age or in the throes of young adulthood. Saturday Night Live (SNL) host Daniel Radcliffe introduces a singer-songwriter little known to those not immersed in the internet: Lana Del Rey.
Her glamorous dress and dramatic makeup do not match her demeanor. Never looking anywhere but the ground beneath her, she tensely holds the microphone up to her perfectly-drawn lips and croons out the first verse of viral sensation “Video Games.” Lana’s voice, perfect on YouTube, falters. Clearly anxious, Del Rey pushes through the rest of her first performance on live television. It is not the worst performance to grace American television, but it is far from the best.
Del Rey’s performance was universally panned by critics and the public. Some questioned if it was the worst in SNL’s history. Unfortunately, the oldest members of the generation that would eventually understand her the best — Generation Z — were only just entering junior high. Del Rey was destined to become the artist of a generation – but not her own. The now-38-year-old songstress was rejected by the millennial generation she technically belongs to because she does not share their optimistic worldview. Instead, she will be remembered as a defining artist of Gen Z, which has a fatalistic outlook on American culture.
Strangely, Del Rey’s increasing cultural importance has correlated with a rise in online Gen Z versus millennial culture wars — mostly initiated by Gen Z. TikToks tagged as “#millennialcringe” have over 5.7 million views, and individual videos made by Gen Z creators poking fun at millennials often have million-plus view counts. Lana Del Rey has avoided this criticism and instead has been adopted by Gen Z as one of their own.
Del Rey had a tumultuous – but privileged – childhood: she struggled with alcohol abuse, depression and anxiety for the majority of her adolescence. Financial crises and the War on Terror created a tumultuous landscape as all millennials entered adulthood in the 2000s. Brash, dance-forward pop music offered escape from uncertainty. Hits from the decade include “Yeah!” by Usher, “Low” by Flo Rida and “Boom Boom Pow” by The Black Eyed Peas.
Del Rey faced her demons head-on. She began making original music under her nickname, Lizzy Grant, and by the end of the decade she adopted the “Lana Del Rey'' moniker. “Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant,” her first LP, was released in 2010 under an independent record label. The effort lyrically tackles toxic relationships with both men and drugs through sparse, jazzy instrumentation. Consider the slow-tempo melancholy of Del Rey’s early recordings in relation to the brash escapist pop hits of the time: It’s no wonder she took nearly a decade to break out into the mainstream.
She finally hit it big with her 2011 internet sensation “Video Games” and released her major label debut album “Born to Die”two weeks after her ill-fated SNL appearance. The addition of radio-friendly uptempo production to many of the tracks propelled the album to commercial success, despite her perceived failure on SNL.
To say that the lyrical content and visual imagery of “Born to Die”drastically contrasted the cultural tone of its period is an understatement. Lyrically and visually, the album romanticized the aesthetics of old America; an America we had worked endlessly to improve. People started questioning her political beliefs. Her romantic depictions of the outdated, even if used to satirize the modern, were disparaged. Was she not a feminist? Was she racist? If things are better now, why dig up the past? After all, racism, misogyny and the like were almost water under the bridge – almost.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 completely altered our cultural outlook. No longer was there room for optimism: America took a gigantic step back. The America of the latter 2010s appeared to have more in common with the ’50s – a decade that Del Rey references heavily in her music and visuals – than it did with the former half of the same decade.
It is in the burning cultural landscape of the late 2010s that Lana Del Rey finally found her audience. Lana’s political outlook aligns with Gen Z’s fatalistic worldview. The world is burning, and we cannot change it, so we might as well be beautiful while it happens.
While I certainly agree that Del Rey’s work romanticizes ’50s and ’60s Americana, I find it difficult to understand how early critics saw her vision as promoting those time periods as political ideals. Maybe her interest in the aesthetic was merely superficial, but “National Anthem” and its music video are compelling evidence to the contrary. “Money is the reason, we exist / Everybody knows it, it's a fact / Kiss kiss,” she raps on the post-chorus. The music video juxtaposes flawless domestic scenes of the Kennedy family with the “love, the drugs, the drink and the rage” transpiring behind the scenes of America’s most famous couple. I, and many others in Gen Z, recognize Del Rey’s choices in her art for what they are: Intentional, ironic and cutting comparisons between the old and the new.
As she has matured as an artist, Del Rey has refined her imaginative vision of America. Her 2019 effort “Norman F****** Rockwell” solidified her status as a Gen-Z-defining artist. On the album cover, Del Rey and model Duke Nicholson sail away from a burning city as the American flag blows behind them. “Norman” garnered critical acclaim for its masterful lyrics and spectacular production. Even older generations began to finally respect her as a generational talent. Leaked unreleased tracks, some from the early “Lizzy Grant” days, routinely go viral on TikTok along with her later releases. Because Del Rey is reluctant to officially release leaked music, her impact on Gen Z through social media cannot be quantified.
By depicting the collision between America’s past and present, Del Rey has managed to create some of the most politically interesting music in pop music history. Del Rey still faces criticism for her political incorrectness, and some even accuse her of romanticizing problems that she has no right to as a white privileged woman. Inevitably, her artistry will not resonate with many because of her privileged background.
But I know that many in Gen Z, regardless of background, see her music as painfully representative of their own life experiences. Rising stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo routinely cite her as a major artistic inspiration. Del Rey’s music depicts a tone that just worksfor Gen Z in a way it never did for her own generation. After all, Gen Z struggles with depression and anxiety in unprecedented numbers, according to the American Psychological Association, just as Del Rey did in her adolescence. I mean, seriously, there is nothing more Gen Z than building a career for over a decade just to bottle a big-break moment on SNL because of anxiety.
Abby Charak (26C) is from Lincolnshire, Illinois.
