Lana Del Rey is set to celebrate the one-week anniversary of her near-disastrous (or completely disastrous) debut performance on "Saturday Night Live." And now that the dust has settled a bit, the Twitterverse has calmed and the pundits have spoken, the show business newcomer can survey the landscape and determine who out there has her back and who she can safely delete from her concert guest list for the foreseeable future.
Surprisingly, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams was first out of the gate as a foe. Soon after the performance, the normally impartial newsman purportedly emailed Gawker owner Nick Denton to encourage him to do something on Del Rey, which he described as "one of worst outings in SNL history." (Much to Williams' chagrin, Gawker editors posted his email in full on their site).
Gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who once took a vow to be nicer to celebrities, tweeted, "Just watched SNL. Not only was @LanaDelRey vocally WAY off, but watching her utter lack of stage presence was cringe-worthy. #DontBuyTheHype."
And actress Eliza Dushku just had to ask, "Who.....is.....this wack-a-doodle chick performing on #SNL..? Whaaaa?"
Even record labels came out swinging against the lovely Del Rey. DFA Records, the label co-founded by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, took a pre-emptive foe stance when it tweeted on Jan. 7: "Lana Del Rey plays Saturday Night Live next week... LCD Soundsystem tried for 6 years to play Saturday Night Live. Isn't 'too soon' ok advice?"
Sonically, I always knew exactly what I wanted," Del Rey said. "That's really the only thing I do know. The rest of it was sort of up in the air. I've been a writer for a really long time, and a sort of bad composer, but a composer nonetheless. It was something I did alone for some time and then became a collaborative effort as I met better and better people."
Those people include Brit Justin Parker, who composed much of the music on the album, Philadelphia legend Larry Gold, who's arranged strings for the likes of Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, and producer Emile Haynie, best known for tracks by Kanye West and Eminem. Del Rey calls them "her crew," and they helped shape her ideas into an album that mixes both the light with the dark, the sadness with the sweetness.
"Justin started lacing the tracks with melancholic chords, brought out the bittersweetness that I wanted, and Emile kind of kept it really dark and f---ed up with his heavy beats, and Larry kept it soaring and gorgeous with his strings," Del Rey explained. "Everyone knew the direction I was going in, and it was very much a collaborative effort."
And of course, though she's been suffering the slings and arrows of her critics following her "SNL" performance, Del Rey is most definitely planning on spending the next few weeks promoting Born to Die with a spate of TV appearances. And she's also making plans for a full-blown tour tentatively scheduled for October — one that she's already making special arrangements for. And given the past few weeks, perhaps that's a good idea.
"I'm capping every venue at 900 capacity, because I don't want to perform for more [people] than that," she said. "So what I want to do is do three nights in New York, at like Irving Plaza, and then three nights at the El Rey in L.A., and then, in between, do 15 cities, and cap it at 900 venues. And everybody at her label, Interscope is onboard, so that's what we're going to do.
Surprisingly, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams was first out of the gate as a foe. Soon after the performance, the normally impartial newsman purportedly emailed Gawker owner Nick Denton to encourage him to do something on Del Rey, which he described as "one of worst outings in SNL history." (Much to Williams' chagrin, Gawker editors posted his email in full on their site).
Gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who once took a vow to be nicer to celebrities, tweeted, "Just watched SNL. Not only was @LanaDelRey vocally WAY off, but watching her utter lack of stage presence was cringe-worthy. #DontBuyTheHype."
And actress Eliza Dushku just had to ask, "Who.....is.....this wack-a-doodle chick performing on #SNL..? Whaaaa?"
Even record labels came out swinging against the lovely Del Rey. DFA Records, the label co-founded by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, took a pre-emptive foe stance when it tweeted on Jan. 7: "Lana Del Rey plays Saturday Night Live next week... LCD Soundsystem tried for 6 years to play Saturday Night Live. Isn't 'too soon' ok advice?"
Sonically, I always knew exactly what I wanted," Del Rey said. "That's really the only thing I do know. The rest of it was sort of up in the air. I've been a writer for a really long time, and a sort of bad composer, but a composer nonetheless. It was something I did alone for some time and then became a collaborative effort as I met better and better people."
Those people include Brit Justin Parker, who composed much of the music on the album, Philadelphia legend Larry Gold, who's arranged strings for the likes of Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, and producer Emile Haynie, best known for tracks by Kanye West and Eminem. Del Rey calls them "her crew," and they helped shape her ideas into an album that mixes both the light with the dark, the sadness with the sweetness.
"Justin started lacing the tracks with melancholic chords, brought out the bittersweetness that I wanted, and Emile kind of kept it really dark and f---ed up with his heavy beats, and Larry kept it soaring and gorgeous with his strings," Del Rey explained. "Everyone knew the direction I was going in, and it was very much a collaborative effort."
And of course, though she's been suffering the slings and arrows of her critics following her "SNL" performance, Del Rey is most definitely planning on spending the next few weeks promoting Born to Die with a spate of TV appearances. And she's also making plans for a full-blown tour tentatively scheduled for October — one that she's already making special arrangements for. And given the past few weeks, perhaps that's a good idea.
"I'm capping every venue at 900 capacity, because I don't want to perform for more [people] than that," she said. "So what I want to do is do three nights in New York, at like Irving Plaza, and then three nights at the El Rey in L.A., and then, in between, do 15 cities, and cap it at 900 venues. And everybody at her label, Interscope is onboard, so that's what we're going to do.
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