People are not saying nice things about Lana Del Rey's performance on Saturday Night Live

By Steven Hyden  |  January 16, 2012 | 4:42pm
Aux Features Music

If you've been in the vicinity of a social-media platform or music website in the past 24 hours—or you happened to be home watching television last Saturday night—you're probably aware that indie-ish chanteuse Lana Del Rey didn't exactly go over swimmingly on SNL. Cutting the proper slack for the show's notoriously sketchy sound and the irrationally high expectations for a young, inexperienced singer who's still two weeks away from releasing her first album (first official album anyway), LDR sounded, well, pretty listless and lost singing the snail-paced "Video Games" and somewhat more upbeat "Blue Jeans," moving rigidly about the stage in front of a terrifyingly professional band whose apparent readiness to tour the world behind the forthcoming Born To Die offered a stark contrast to the singer's clear discomfort with performing. In short, she didn't look the least bit ready.

To be fair, LDR should improve as she spends more time in the spotlight, but considering that she's already more famous than some people believe is justified, the ho-hum SNL gig has added dozens more gallons of Haterade to an already toxic stew of media coverage. So strong was the urge to pile on that even anti-LDR tweets from one of Studio 60's favorite celebrity targets made news this weekend.

Of course, there's also a backlash to the backlash, with more sympathetic critics arguing that LDR is being crucified before given a chance to develop into a fully formed artist. Which clearly is the case, and it will be interesting to see how this impacts her long-term prospects as a pop star. The SNL appearance certainly didn't succeed in providing LDR with the big roll-out her handlers seemed to be expecting.

Then again, we are talking about this, right? On that count, at least, the SNL gig was a smashing success. Whether that will make people want to buy (or even steal) her record is another story.

 
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