Three 1970s artists to get into if you love Lana Del Rey
Press play on any given Lana Del Rey album and you’ll feel as though you’ve entered another timeline.
From when the singer-songwriter first began performing live at 18 years old, in clubs across Brooklyn, New York, there was something eternal about her. Of course, it would take a few years for Elizabeth Grant to fully realise herself as Lana Del Rey in the becoming of a true star, but she always had a talent for curating a sound and image that would remain in the back of your mind, no matter what.
In Del Rey’s world, jazz seamlessly merges with trip-hop, for instance, while the presence of a lounge singer comes together with the power of a modern pop star. In this curation, anything becomes possible.
The music of the 1970s had this promise of endless possibility to it, as well. To make a generalised statement of the decade’s impact would be trite, but considering all of the true genius that came from this time period, it would be safe to say that there was no decade like it. The ‘70s afforded us a wider spectrum of rock ‘n’ roll, from glam to punk to heavy metal and blues, and more, while disco dominated airwaves, alongside funk, soul and R&B, and this only scratches the surface.
Listening back, the ‘70s’ music seemed to suggest that with innovation, anything could happen, and with Del Rey being largely informed by the rock music of this decade, in particular, below are three of the biggest that have influenced her artistry in one way or another.
Three artists to get into if you love Lana Del Rey
Eagles
It is easy to see where Del Rey’s lore situated itself within the mystique that the Eagles curated, from their inception in 1971. Both artists use the concept of Americana as a muse, captured in the myth of the ‘American dream’ and the double-edged sword of its reality, or lack thereof.
Think of an Eagles song like ‘Hotel California’, for instance, a personal favourite of Del Rey’s, and its dismantling of idealism to expose a nightmare. In her songwriting, Del Rey adopts a similar storytelling flair: consider a song like ‘Gods & Monsters’ from her Paradise EP, a hedonistic twist on the toxic allure of Los Angeles and the powerful elite that inhabit the city.
Even on their more ‘lighthearted’ songs, like the calm of ‘Take It Easy’ or the nostalgia of ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’, the Eagles were the precursor to the singer-songwriters’ quality of inhabiting an energy. Theirs, in particular, happened to become synonymous with California, something that Del Rey could relate to, as a New York native looking to the West Coast as a symbol of glamour.
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen began his music career at 33 years old, a somewhat frustrated writer who found a new creative outlet as a singer-songwriter. The bliss of ‘Suzanne’ made Cohen a household name, and as he continued to merge his literary sensibility with song, he elevated the act of songwriting as an art form. Del Rey is a devoted fan, and one can imagine that her talents as a songwriter were surely informed by Cohen’s own.
Both Cohen and Del Rey have a sort of effortlessness to them, where they can make mundane experiences sound poetic and worth remembering, immortalised in song. Del Rey regarded him among the greats in her list of heralded icons, resting alongside Joan Baez and Bob Dylan as “the only person I ever really felt spoke my language,” she eulogised.
In tribute to him, she gave ‘Chelsea Hotel No 2’ a new life when she released her rendition in 2013, and performed it with Cohen’s son, Adam, in 2017.
Joni Mitchell
The lineage that exists between Joni Mitchell and Del Rey is clear: the folk songstress image, the poetic elements braided into their lyrics, the consistent notion of heartbreak, in all its forms, that forms a basis of their stories. Whether you’ve come across Mitchell’s discography first or Del Rey’s, the connections between them continue a singer-songwriter tradition of confessional storytelling.
Similarly to her love of Cohen, Del Rey’s reverence for Mitchell’s work shows in her tributes to the folk legend. She invokes Mitchell’s 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon on her 2019 song ‘Bartender’, singing, “All the ladies of the Canyon / Wearing black to their house parties”, and she made the inclusion of Mitchell’s song ‘For Free’ on the occasional setlist on her Norman Fucking Rockwell! Tour in 2019 (later released on Chemtrails Over the Country Club).
There are also the shared elements between the two women in their sheer dedication to their art, which are writing songs because of a compulsive necessity to communicate in such a distinct way, and making sense of the world through such a medium, as best as they can. Both, then, have an enduring appeal that persists, respectively.
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