Hear Me Out: Lana Del Rey deserves awards more than anyone
At the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, Billie Eilish, Boygenius and Taylor Swift won big. It was a huge night for emotive lyricism, sung with a clear aestheticism and a direct gaze at the female experience, telling tales of womanhood with a glamorous edge. It was a tremendous night for music that could never – and would never – have been made if it wasn’t for the influence of Lana Del Rey. So why should she be standing applauding her disciples as she was snubbed once again?
“You really paved the way for everyone,” Billie Eilish once told Lana Del Rey in Interview. “People have been trying to look and sound like you since you first started,” she continued, attempting to make the singer recognise her immeasurable impact, “You changed the way the music industry hears and sees music, and you changed the way people sing.”
When Del Rey tried to return the compliment, adding, “That’s amazing because you do that,” Eilish was quick to hammer the comment home with the ultimate summarising point; “It’s because of you.”
Eilish is one of many artists who talk openly and often about the way Lana Del Rey completely changed their view of music. After her breakout in 2012 with Born To Die and songs like ‘Video Games’ or ‘Blue Jeans’, Del Rey sent shockwaves through music with her unmatched commitment to wistful feelings and mixing audio nostalgia with something totally fresh.
Within seconds, her voice is instantly recognisable as an original, borrowing influence from the likes of Marilyn Monroe or 1940s blues singers rather than her peers. It has always felt like Del Rey lives in a work that is utterly her own, rejecting modern trends or references to instead pack her lyricism with poetry, nods to literary and musical greats or romanticised retellings of her own life. From that debut album to now, hers has been a world that others are desperate to get into, so why do they get the praise instead of her?
While Lana Del Rey’s impact has been spoken of at length by both critics and her peers, awards routinely ignore her. Her history of wins and losses is bizarre. She’s picked up major accolades like Variety’s Decade Award, deeming her the most formative artist of the last ten years, or Billboard’s Visionary Award, as a reflection of her artistic drive. But when it comes to awards season and honouring her actual music, the industry seems to be blind, or maybe deaf.
Throughout her career, Del Rey has been nominated for nine Grammys. This year, more than any other, her record Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd was nominated for six awards in high power categories like ‘Album of the Year’. But despite being one of the most well-known, successful, and influential artists of our time, she’s never emerged victorious from the event.
Sure, it could be shrugged off that these categories are steep competition. But when artists like Billie Eilish, who has spoken openly about trying to be like Del Rey, are winning big, it seems unfair that the originator is shunned. It’s hard to think of modern albums quite as defining as Born To Die or Norman Fucking Rockwell, or of contemporary songs that seem as set to be written into history quite like ‘A&W’, so why can’t the voting academy see that?
Del Rey, of course, appears to know why. “Can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money – or whatever I want – without being crucified or saying that I’m glamorising abuse?” she wrote on Instagram back in 2020. Finally sick of the constant, misguided critique that her work is problematic, aligning her with repressive republican beliefs or conservative values that she has never expressed, she spoke out against the misunderstanding of her art.
“With all of the topics women are finally allowed to explore, I just want to say over the last ten years, I think it’s pathetic that my minor lyrical exploration detailing my sometimes submissive or passive roles in my relationships has often made people say I’ve set women back hundreds of years,” she said. Calling out the way her peers like Ariana Grande or Doja Cat are treated in comparison, she suggests that it’s her penchant for writing wistful, romanticised lyrics rather than empowering or overtly feminist songs that has held her back.
“I just want to say it’s been a long ten years of bullshit reviews up until recently, and I’ve learned a lot from them, but also, I feel it really paved the way for other women to stop ‘putting on a happy face’,” she added, addressing the critics that refuse to understand her.
It seems that with every album, more vitriol is fired in Del Rey’s direction. Since her first release, Del Rey’s lyrical voice has always differed from her peers. While mainstream media began to veer more towards outright feminism and empowerment, making chart-topping hits out of songs about female empowerment, owning your sexuality and dominating the spheres of sex and work, Del Rey’s world has stayed the same.
Del Rey tells stories of bad or violent men, complex relationships and clear toxicity viewed through the rose-tinted lenses of love. She writes music for the hopeless romantics, refusing to act like that is always a good thing as she dives deep into darkness. She routinely references controversial works like Nabokov’s Lolita or The Crystal’s ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)’ or borrows from the eras of the Beat Generation poets or 1950s Hollywood. While the singer builds dream worlds that prioritise glamour, there is genuine substance there, too. But awards bodies, every year, refuse to look any deeper than the surface. Instead, they just see the Tumblr aesthetics, beehive hair, and eyeliner and think that’s surely not what a vital artist looks like.
Regardless of anyone’s view on Lana Del Rey’s music, whether you like it or not, there is no way to deny that it has been a pioneering and industry-changing force. Without her, there would be no Boygenius to win ‘Best Alternative Album’, and no Billie Eilish to win ‘Song of the Year’. There would be no Gracie Abrams, The Last Dinner Party, Katie Gregson-Macleod or Etta Marcus, with a whole lineage of exciting up-and-coming names coming directly from the Del Rey school of music.
Regardless of opinions, there is no reason why an artist as defining and vital as Lana Del Rey should be snubbed so routinely while her impact is so visibly on display at every ceremony.
