Exploring Lana Del Rey’s love of Sylvia Plath
Bursting into the mainstream in 2011 with the melancholic yet romantic ballad ‘Video Games,’ Lana Del Rey became a worldwide phenomenon. The following year, she released her major label debut album, Born to Die, crafting a unique world full of tragic glamour, doomed romance, and Americana aesthetics. After years of recording demos, even releasing an album that was soon shelved, Del Rey’s metamorphosis into an acclaimed alternative popstar was well-deserved.
The singer has since released a plethora of albums, including the rock-influenced Ultraviolence and the highly acclaimed Norman Fucking Rockwell!. Taking listeners on a journey through great American landscapes of love and loss, abusive relationships, and finding fulfilment, Del Rey has enraptured listeners with her words and images.
Del Rey is a very visual writer, often making references to specific pieces of clothing, hotels, sodas, cities, writers, musicians and films. She concocts worlds that we can see in our minds, and subsequently, a specific ‘Lana aesthetic’ has emerged online, with fans making mood boards or correlating certain movies and outfits with her music.
Del Rey’s writing style is inspired by a concoction of writers and artists, such as the classic American poet Walt Whitman and beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Another poet she loves is Sylvia Plath, citing The Bell Jar, Plath’s only novel, as one of her favourites. The singer is also a huge fan of her poetry, naming Ariel as one of her most beloved collections.
The poet died tragically young, her death by suicide often coming to overshadow much of her work, which, while frequently dealing with themes of depression, was much more than simply the musings of a suicidal, one-dimensional woman. In popular culture, Plath’s name is often used as shorthand to represent a troubled, complicated or introspective woman, despite the fact she was much more than that.
Del Rey seems to understand Plath, writing, “Stay on your path Sylvia Plath/ don’t fall away like the others,” in her poem ‘Barefoot on Linoleum’. She appears to be warning the late poet not to lose her spirit or let her problems eat away at her. Of course, Plath took her own life, but, as Del Rey knows, the poet had so much left to live for that she unfortunately couldn’t recognise. Thus, Del Rey’s words pay homage to the poet, using Plath’s life as an example of the importance of sharing worries with others and avoiding the despair of loneliness. Within the poem, Del Rey desires a sense of escape and identity, exploring themes similar to those that Plath often dissected within her work.
Plath is also referenced in ‘hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but I have it’, one of Del Rey’s most intimate songs. Clearly inspired by the poet’s openness and confessional style, Del Rey lays her soul bare. She also dedicates the poem ‘Patent leather do-over’ to Plath, referencing a passage from The Bell Jar in the lines.
Evidently, Del Rey deeply resonates with many of Plath’s poems, especially those in her seminal poetry collection, Ariel. While Plath succumbed to her mental health issues, Del Rey’s references to the poet seem to suggest that there is hope in getting better, even if, like the singer, you identify with the themes that Plath wrote about.
