“Why is pop music the only art form that still inspires such arrantly stupid discussion? The debates that surround authenticity have no relationship to popular music as it’s been practiced for more than a century. Artists write material, alone or with assistance, revise it, and then present a final work created with the help of professionals who are trained for specific and relevant production tasks. This makes popular music similar to film, television, visual art, books, dance, and related areas like food and fashion. And yet no movie review begins, “Meryl Streep, despite not being a Prime Minister, is reasonably convincing in ‘The Iron Lady.’ “—
Lana Del Rey’s Image on “Born to Die” : The New Yorker
(via judyxberman)
SFJ is on the money, per usj. And the other question to ask: why are female artists the only ones who inspire such “discussion”, or “authenticity” “discussions” where sexism is masked as discernment? I am literally counting the hours until the long thing I wrote about her/this for SPIN comes out. Spoiler alert: I did the homework no one else was interested in doing. Ze End. (link)
I agree with this to some degree… in that, yes, debates about the authenticity of pop music performers tend to be tedious and beside the point when they relate primarily to actual identity (as in, passport/ driver’s license/ hospital birth records). I could not care less if “Lana del Rey” is middle-class, from Compton, raised by folkies and trained in fiddle camps in the woods of far Northern California, or whatever. I do know however that in “Video Game” (albeit undeniably somewhat catchy/ eye-and-ear-grabbing) and especially on the SNL performance, she comes off as a weak actor. A poseur, someone trying to put on an identity (in this case, some kind of tragic noir ice queen) and missing her marks. This kind of authenticity failure can sometimes actually be compelling in pop music, as when someone tries to become one thing, fails, and ends up somewhere else unforeseen (Darby Crash? A lot of early work in any evolving genre?) but often, Occam’s Razor or “the law of parsimony” leads one to conclude in this kind of situation that the artist in question is simply a poseur, or is such within these uninteresting/ not-very-good performances (again, it’s not unchanging identity we’re looking for, but the effect of the particular performances).
So, Sasha Frere-Jones’s imagined example about Meryl Streep seems like a straw man (at least, ruling out the most obviously stupid commentary). Someone very well would say, “this actor, attempting to play Margaret Thatcher, comes across more like an over-eager associate in a prime-time network law firm” or whatever. Inauthenticity of performance remains a fundamental target of criticism of popular forms, and there is no reason is should not be.
For example, here’s a question, why is Blue Hammer’s “real down-home Delta blues” music bad? Is it because the performers are not actually poor African-American musicians from the mid-century South? Or could there be something else involved in this judgment?
That said, I will maintain an open mind about the Lana del Rey album. If she manifests any sign of a sense of humor, that would be a plus. And I will look out for this Spin profile.
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Filed under: music Tagged: | Blues Hammer, Lana del Rey
I think you’re right that authenticity only seems to become a issue if the musician doesn’t convincingly inhabit his or her chosen persona. If he/she does, then it usually becomes irrelevant whether the persona is real or assumed. To wit, no one holds it against Elvis Costello that he was a computer geek, or that Joe Strummer was an art school student and child of the upper-middle class.