Immerhin liefert das Album Futter für einige brillante Verrisse:
The conversation surrounding Lana Del Rey has underscored some seriously depressing truths about sexism in music. She was subjected to the kind of intense scrutiny– about her backstory and especially her appearance– that’s generally reserved for women only. But the sexual politics of Born to Die are troubling too: You’d be hard pressed to find any song on which Del Rey reveals an interiority or figures herself as anything more complex than an ice-cream-cone-licking object of male desire.
In terms of its America-sized grandeur and its fixation with the emptiness of dreams, Born to Die attempts to serve as Del Rey’s own beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy, but there’s no spark and nothing at stake.
But Born to Die never allows tension or complexity into the mix, and its take on female sexuality ends up feeling thoroughly tame. For all of its coos about love and devotion, it’s the album equivalent of a faked orgasm– a collection of torch songs with no fire.
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Ohne Musik ist alles Leben ein Irrtum.