Lana Del Rey has been a video vixen since day one.  Most of us saw “Video Games” before we heard it, and that video’s DIY/found footage aesthetic didn’t take long to go viral. Since then, Lana’s video releases have been events, with “official audio” versions and promo pictures leaked days or weeks in advance. The videos have gotten longer and their characters more complex; this past summer we saw Lana as Jackie O., a suicidal lesbian, and a David Lynchian chanteuse singing “Blue Velvet” in an extended ad for H&M.

Excluding “Blue Velvet,” “Ride” is the first single off of the extended cut of her album and its video went on YouTube yesterday. LDR plays a singer/streetwalker living carefree on Kerouac’s open road. She swings like a pendulum on a tire swing in desert, as if suspended from the sky. She rides on the backs of motorcycles, shoots off fireworks while wearing a Native American headdress, and gets physical with older men on pinball machines and outside motels. Her hair is curly, but she’s still our Lana, fringed denim jacket and all. She’s in character, but a theater marquee lists her as Lana Del Rey, perpetuating and perhaps mocking criticism that she’s fake and always in character.

The “Ride” video is over ten minutes long and the actual song doesn’t start until three minutes and thirty seconds in. Lana provides voice over narration, which she wrote, at the beginning and end. “I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer,” she begins. Later: “I was born to be the other woman. Who belonged to no one. Who belonged to everyone.” The sentiment is powerful at times, trite at others. Anthony Mandler directed, as he did Lana’s “National Anthem.”

Unlike Lana’s previous songs, the Rick Rubin-produced “Ride” is less “ghetto Nancy Sinatra” (Lana’s words, not mine) and more  ”Sam’s Town”-era The Killers (who director Mandler has also worked with). Lana’s look is more Americana and less flash.

Lana still has tricks up her sleeve, and for now at least, we’re still along for the ride.

Watch the video below.

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via ATRL

It’s no secret how we feel about Lana Del Rey. But there’s something going on between her and her sister and no one seems to be talking about it.

cecilfloyd's tumblr

Back in April photos surfaced of Lana kissing kissing a blonde girl who bloggers claimed was Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger Games. Those bloggers eventually updated, identifying the girl as Lana’s sister, Chuck Grant. The photos were for an art project in which the girls were recreating a scene from the film Gia starring Angelina Jolie. This isn’t innocent sister kissing. It’s closed-mouthed – as in Gia – but they’re passionate. Chuck has her hand on Lana’s neck and Lana’s head is tiled sideways. There are two photos of the sisters like that, plus a third one of them gazing into each other’s eyes.

Then there are the nude photos that surfaced this week. There appear to be five photos, all from a photo session five years ago for Lana’s “Kill Kill” EP back when she was Lizzy Grant. Chuck took the photos, and all Lana is wearing are a few plastic leis.

Here’s what we know about Chuck Grant: She’s a photographer. She hangs out with Lana all the time. She has a Tumblr and a website. Most of her photos are of Lana. They take selfies. She shot some of Lana’s “National Anthem” video.

(Sidenote: I find it interesting that Chuck is boy’s name when in these instances she’s taking the position of the male, first when kissing the overly-feminized Lana, and second when acting as a male voyeur objectifying Lana’s body.)

What’s most odd about their relationship and these pictures is that despite the intense scrutiny the media put Lana through earlier this year, no one is talking about it. Does that mean the public is ready to accept Lana as an artist and let her do what she wants? Or does that mean no one cares anymore?

via Stereogum:

It’s amazing that stuff like this can slip through the cracks even now, but word around the internet campfire this morning is that some unspecified amount of time ago, Lana Del Rey recorded an album called Sirens under the name May Jailer. This would predate the soon-to-be-reissued debut album Lana Del Rey A.K.A. Lizzy Grant, and it would mean Sirens is, actually, Del Rey’s first album. I should stress that none of this has been officially confirmed anywhere, but the tracks from Sirens are out there now, and if they aren’t LDR, they’re a pretty amazing fake.

The songs on Sirens find LDR (or a gifted imposter) singing tremulously over acoustic guitars, showing plenty of the languid mystique that would later come to define her but also displaying a different sort of fragile Lee Hazlewood narco-haze vibe. On first listen, I like it! Listen to some songs below.

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Sorry. We don’t hate her and we like this video:

In Honor of the 15th Anniversary of Biggie’s Death, DJ Terry Urban has released an album that mashes-up B.I.G.’s Ready to Die and LDR’s Born to Die. Yep. It was bound to happen and it now it has. Urban is a skilled masher-upper so if anyone was going to do it, we’re glad it’s him.

Download the soon to be much discussed album here.

I’m no huge fan of Lana Del Rey, but the backlash to her SNL performance was pretty astounding.

Since I’m pretty confident most of our readers only watched her performance after the show aired, (because really, who spends a Saturday night watching SNL?) here is a clip from last night’s episode, Kristen Wiig as Lana:

The music stage on ‘Saturday Night Live’ is hallowed ground, and I failed to reach the high bar set by past guests like Bubba Sparxxx, the Baha Men, and Shaggy.”

Oh yeah, you can add Bon Iver to that list. He played on the show last night.

lana pic via flickr

Is that Lana Del Rey on the cover of a fictional magazine in MTV’s I Just Want My Pants Back? No, probably not, considering the network shot that first episode in September 2010 when Lana was still Lizzy. But wouldn’t you readers have hated it if it was?

But seriously though, Lana did travel back in time to appear in the John Hughes classic Sixteen Candles.