Pop quiz

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• rotch says:

  January 26, 2012 at 10:48 am

  Here too? There’s no escap­ing her while you browse the internets…

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 26, 2012 at 10:50 am

  Sorry, rotch. Just struck me as funny, is all…

• MH says:

  January 26, 2012 at 4:08 pm

  Poor Lana.

• Rob says:

  January 26, 2012 at 10:50 pm

  Live per­form­ances aside, Glenn, have you heard any of her music? Some of its not half bad, even if you have to plug your ears to deafen the petu­lant Internet buzz.…

• Russ Queen says:

  January 26, 2012 at 11:03 pm

  Video Games is a great fuck­ing song.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 26, 2012 at 11:45 pm

  I was mainly amused by the ad art­work. Her whole scen­ario reminds me of what Robert Christgau once said about Lenny Kravitz: “That’s a lot of mar­ket­ing to live down” As for the music, well like my old buddy Martin Newcott said in 1974 as he returned the copy of Nico’s “The End” that I’d prac­tic­ally forced him to check out, “Yeah, it’s fine, but there’s about 500 oth­er albums I’d rather listen to first.” Lately I’ve been listen­ing mostly to Thelonious Monk, you know…

• Frank McDevitt says:

  January 27, 2012 at 8:40 am

  LDR is pretty ter­rible. I remem­ber show­ing my friend the SNL per­form­ance, and even aside from the hor­rible singing and awk­ward stage pres­ence, she was struck by how asin­ine the lyr­ics to Video Games are. I don’t know how a song that dumb man­aged to fool so many people into lik­ing it.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  January 27, 2012 at 8:43 am

  A and C are from “Zabriskie Point.” Not at all famil­i­ar with B.

• Graig says:

  January 27, 2012 at 10:52 am

  I second my man Russ Queen. Video Games is a great song. And by the time Brian Williams has joined in, you know the back­lash has become tired and obvious.

• LondonLee says:

  January 27, 2012 at 11:02 am

  I loved ‘Video Games’ too but, as is the speed-of-light way repu­ta­tions get ruined and buzz is instantly overkilled these days, was expect­ing the album to be crap. But, you know what, I like it a lot – even after listen­ing to “Monk’s Music”.

• rotch says:

  January 27, 2012 at 11:28 am

  I third the thoughts on ‘Video Games’.
  And in all hon­esty, I’ve listened to the album a couple of times now. It’s a train wreck, but a rather enjoy­able one.
  In a world were people like LMFAO dom­in­ate the air­waves, I really don’t get what Lana Del Rey did to deserve such pas­sion­ate hatred.

• Bob Solo says:

  January 27, 2012 at 11:37 am

  I know music­al tastes are among the most sub­ject­ive but … man … that Video Games song … I could­n’t get past the 40 second mark. Reminds me of that utter shit Imogen Heap song that people could­n’t get enough of. So mannered and pre­pack­aged for a cer­tain type of lad.
  Thanks for tip­ping me to this, GK. Crawling back into my depriva­tion cham­ber now.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 27, 2012 at 11:43 am

  @ Bob Solo: Hey, wait, come back…this Anna Calvi record is actu­ally pretty good.…!

• Claire K. says:

  January 27, 2012 at 11:50 am

  I think lots of the LDR hatred comes from her label-created per­sona, which makes full use of ideas and icon­o­graphy that are actu­ally mean­ing­ful to lots of people, but which she can­’t seem to inhab­it in any kind of legit­im­ate or con­vin­cing way. It’s as if she’s too lazy to really learn the lan­guage of that world, and she and her team think that their tar­get audi­ence is just so dumb and cred­u­lous that they’re just going to buy whatever cheap hip­sta­mat­ic ver­sion of a truck­er bar lounge sing­er they can find. It’s insult­ing. And it’s not that there’s noth­ing at all appeal­ing there–I first heard about her when I heard “Kinda Outta Luck” some­where, and I thought it was super-catchy and enjoyed it until about the third listen, when I actu­ally listened to the lyr­ics and real­ized that she kept repeat­ing “my daddy’s in the trunk of his brand new truck.” Have you ever been in a fuck­ing truck, Lana Del Rey? There’s no trunk.

• Bob Solo says:

  January 27, 2012 at 2:54 pm

  I knew noth­ing about her per­sona but hated it imme­di­ately. Maybe I’m in an eas­ily rankled mood or some­thing. But I have trouble con­nect­ing with most au cour­ant music. I’ve been listen­ing to Hunky Dory and Houses of the Holy on repeat for weeks. I’m hardly a judge of what’s hip. The last new-ish album I got all uppity about was prob­ably Kurt Vile’s Smoke Rings for My Halo.
  “whatever cheap hip­sta­mat­ic ver­sion of a truck­er bar lounge sing­er they can find”
  Now THAT’S poetry.

• c.t.h. says:

  January 27, 2012 at 4:28 pm

  I’ll stump for Anna Calvi’s future, if not every second of her present.

• Thurgood Douglass says:

  January 27, 2012 at 11:01 pm

  As not to besmirch these hol­lowed grounds, I won’t provide a link to the half-smart/half-stupid Gawker essay pos­ted recently refut­ing the notion that her repu­ta­tion as a “sell out” has any bear­ing on her “artist” per­sona, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. But it did have some almost-reasonable points re: that par­tic­u­lar label float­ing around the internet-sphere. That said, Glenn said it WAY bet­ter in recent tweet, and in less than 140 characters!
  As far as music goes, Calvi for sure. But that new Albini-produced Cloud Nothings albums simply rocks, and deserves a listen from the kind of folks that fre­quent this page.

• haice says:

  January 28, 2012 at 11:31 pm

  There’s a cow on the roof?
  Thanks again Glenn for anoth­er edu­ca­tion­al screen­grab (sorry Lana).
  I watch Antonioni’s gem every year (maybe I anti­cip­ate Daria and the kids too much) and nev­er noticed the Rumpus Room was a west­ern ver­sion of the Cocteau bar.