Lana Del Rey: Ride, A song analysis, presentation

Today I’ve chosen a song by my favourite female artist, Lizzy Grant, aka Lana Del Rey. Her full name is Elizabeth Woolridge Grant. This New York based American singer and song writer was born on June 21, 1986. She started off her career singing at bars and clubs in her home place, New York, at the age of 18. Lana was 21 years old when she signed her first recording contract with 5 points record and released her album “Lana Del Rey a.k.a Lizzy Grant in January 2012. She ditched 5 Points Records in April 2012 and signed on to Stranger Records later to release her debut single Video Games. She creates her own music videos and explains how she loves to put together short clips of old Hollywood movies, her singing, and adventures filmed in New York. Her video for Video Games, which she created herself, went viral on YouTube. She sold over 2.8 million copies worldwide when she released her second studio album “Born to Die” in 2012. It became one of the best-selling albums in 2012. Various hits from the album were “Blue Jeans”, “National Anthem”, and “Summertime Sadness”. I love all her songs so I don’t think I could give you my favourites, but a couple are “Million Dollar Man”, “Mermaid Motel”, “Put Me in a Movie”, “Blue Jeans”, “Bel-air”, “Trash(Miss America)”, “Hundred Dollar Bills”, “Kinda Outta Luck”, “Yayo”, and “Lolita”. Her singing/song style, persona, videos, and clothing style is really reminiscing of 1950’s/60’s Hollywood and Americana. She’s been compared to Nancy Sinatra a lot. I first heard Lana in grade eight when I read about her in a blog (BlogSpot). The blogger wrote that Lana reminded her of a more rugged Nancy Sinatra when it came to her voice and persona. I then immediately listened to all of her 70 plus songs and became obsessed. The song I chose today is called “Ride”. I was very torn when I was deciding a song to choose by Lana but I finally came down to this one because found that I could analyze it easily. I think it’s pretty relatable