Are you a fan of Lana Del Rey? Considering she has amassed a following of 57 million monthly listeners on Spotify and 13.1 million Instagram followers, it is safe to say that most music fans from Xaverian college will have heard of her, and some of you may be fans.
However, despite her astounding achievements in the music industry since an early age, Lana Del Rey has never won a Grammy award.
Del Rey has a discography of 9 albums alongside a poetry book, ‘Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass.’ In addition, she is seen by many fans as a fashion icon, having influence in the movement towards different fashion trends such as ‘coquette’ fashion stemming from music videos such as ‘Ultraviolence.’ She’s been nominated for 10 Grammy awards, 5 of these nominations being for songs from her 2023 album, ‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’ in the recent Grammy ceremony of 2024. However, she has yet to win.
Fans feel that she has been snubbed and have expressed their resurfaced anger from the 2020 award ceremony, where her fan favourite album ‘NFR’ lost its two nominations.
Dylan Porter, a fan from Xaverian College has said ‘People who have admitted to being inspired and influenced by her music have won Grammys, yet she hasn’t.’
Billie Eilish, a Grammy winner, said to Del Rey while interviewing her, ‘You really paved the way for everyone. People have been trying to look and sound like you since you first started.’ As well as this, ASAP Rocky said ‘I fell in love with her voice the first time I heard it.’
Her song ‘Summertime Sadness’ has reached over 660 million streams on Spotify and ‘Born to Die’ has reached over 600 million. Additionally, her music has been featured in movies such as ‘Young and Beautiful’ in The Great Gatsby and ‘Once Upon a Dream’ in Maleficent. Her 2023 album became the fastest selling of 2023 when it was released, and up to now has sold 1.405 million copies within a year. Despite this number being astounding, it is far from the 18.714 million copies of ‘Born to Die’ that have sold up to now.
In order to decipher what has prevented Lana Del Rey from winning a Grammy? Fans have turned to statements that anonymous academy voters have leaked. One critic said they, ‘haven’t taken Lana Del Rey seriously as an artist since her infamous SNL performance and never will.’ Is it fair to scrutinise an artist’s work over a controversy from 12 years ago?
Now of course this is a response from one critic and may not be the overall reason she is not chosen by voters. However, it is disappointing to see scrutiny for any artist who has come so far from their past.
Patrick Mclaughlin, a student from our college says, ‘People who have recovered and grown from their past should be given a second chance.’
Many fans have called her 2023 album her best one yet and can now only hope that her upcoming country album ‘Lasso’ will do well enough for Lana Del Rey to achieve what fans have been hoping for since her first nomination in 2014.
