{"id":84,"date":"2019-12-07T18:20:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-07T18:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/?p=84"},"modified":"2020-04-25T17:13:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T17:13:01","slug":"video-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cVideo Games\u201d \u2013 Lana Del Rey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lana Del Rey - Video Games\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cE6wxDqdOV0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m not going to pretend to have a new angle on what Lana Del Rey represents, or her disastrous SNL debut, or her sustained popularity in the aftermath of all that hate to close the decade as one of the most widely admired artists in pop. That story is an interesting one. Her music is great. Good takes, for once, are plentiful.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I do have a few thoughts on \u201cVideo Games\u201d specifically. This was Lizzy Grant\u2019s debut single as Lana Del Rey, and it captured enough attention upon its release in 2011 that she received that infamous SNL spot before the album was even out. It was probably too much too fast, and SNL went the way it did (not as disastrous as I\u2019d remembered, FWIW, but still very uncomfortable). Many assumed she\u2019d had her 15 minutes and that was that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, she stuck around. Her first properly released album, <em>Born to Die,<\/em> sold well. She had a hit on <em>The Great Gatsby<\/em> soundtrack, and an even bigger hit with the \u201cSummertime Sadness\u201d remix. Then another hit album in 2014, another in 2015, and 2017, and 2019. No one else has had this kind of sustained prolific output throughout this decade. And it\u2019s all been increasingly well-reviewed, to the point that the swooning over her most recent LP, <em>Norman Fucking Rockwell!<\/em>, leaves it the clear consensus choice for Album of the Year per Metacritic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So why, all that being the case, are so many of us inclined to go back to the beginning with \u201cVideo Games,\u201d the song most associated with Lana\u2019s rushed missteps out of the gate? Because it\u2019s her best song. And it\u2019s a perfect song. It\u2019s so good that it made a contemporary tidal wave of public shaming completely irrelevant, and now that we\u2019re in the age of universal Lana adoration it\u2019s clearer to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like so many of her songs, it can be read both as a straightforward modern love ballad and as a deeper feminist elegy. Lana got a lot of criticism at the time for leaning in and out of a baby voice affectation, but who in this song is being infantilized? Is it the narrator, performatively submissive, saying \u201cyou da bestest,\u201d or the guy she\u2019s giving permission to play postcoital Xbox?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cVideo Games\u201d describes the settling-down options Lana had on the table, enticing in their romantic serenity, foreboding in their shallow execution of 21st century gender roles. The alternative life choice was to sing songs like \u201cVideo Games\u201d on SNL by herself and get publicly roasted for it. It may not have been so clear in 2011, but in 2019 it\u2019s safe to say Lana Del Rey chose right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not going to pretend to have a new angle on what Lana Del Rey represents, or her disastrous SNL debut, or her sustained popularity in the aftermath of all that hate to close the decade as one of the most widely admired artists in pop. That story is an interesting one. Her music is&hellip; <\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-201x-favorites","tag-lana-del-rey"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Video Games - Lana Del Rey | Rich Bradley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Like so many of Lana&#039;s songs, &quot;Video Games&quot; can be read both as a straightforward modern love ballad and as a deeper feminist elegy.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Video Games - Lana Del Rey | Rich Bradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Like so many of Lana&#039;s songs, &quot;Video Games&quot; can be read both as a straightforward modern love ballad and as a deeper feminist elegy.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"RB.org\/songs\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/richlbradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/richlbradley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-07T18:20:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-25T17:13:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/scott3icon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rich Bradley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@rlbradley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@rlbradley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rich Bradley\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rich Bradley\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/#\/schema\/person\/20a932bf4ce1b2724037a850355d507c\"},\"headline\":\"\u201cVideo Games\u201d \u2013 Lana Del Rey\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-12-07T18:20:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-25T17:13:01+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\"},\"wordCount\":466,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/#\/schema\/person\/20a932bf4ce1b2724037a850355d507c\"},\"keywords\":[\"Lana Del Rey\"],\"articleSection\":[\"201X Favorites\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/video-games\/\",\"name\":\"Video Games - 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