冉冉新星拉娜·德蕾:我的音樂我做主
The traditional sound of summer music is light-hearted beats and catchy melodies. But this summer, a retro and slightly dark album has emerged as an instant hit.
傳統的夏季音樂大都節奏歡快、朗朗上口，然而今年夏天，一張充滿復古風，略帶暗黑氣質的專輯卻突然火了。Ultraviolence, Lana Del Rey’s latest and third album, sold 182,000 copies in the US during its first week (June 17 to 22), according to Nielsen SoundScan. It’s the largest album sale week for a female artist since Beyonce’s self-titled surprise album in December. It also became Del Rey’s first No 1 album on the Billboard 200 album chart.
根據尼爾森公司的音樂數據，拉娜?德蕾的第三張最新專輯《超暴力》，在美國發型首周（6月17日-22日）就賣出了18萬2千張。這個銷量也成爲自去年12月碧昂斯發佈同名專輯之後，女歌手專輯單週銷量第一。同時，《超暴力》也是拉娜?德蕾首張位列《公告牌》200專輯榜單的冠軍專輯。Just about two years ago, when the 28-year-old US singer released her major-label debut album Born to Die, everything about her was the target of critics: her hip-hop-inflected baroque-pop music style, her awkward live performances, her background, and even her physical appearance.
就在兩年之前，這位28歲的美國歌手發行首張個人專輯《爲死而生》，當時她廣受批評：不論是帶有hip-hop風格的的巴洛克式流行音樂風格，亦或她蹩腳的現場演出，甚至她的外形與家庭背景都成爲衆矢之的。
As time went on and the outrage died down, somewhere in between the unexpected success of Summertime Sadness and the sweeping Great Gatsby theme Young & Beautiful last year, the people screaming “Lana Del Rey sucks” changed their tune. She was embraced — and even adored.
而隨着時間的推移，媒體對她的各種詬病漸漸褪去，不知不覺間，她的單曲“Summertime Sadness”取得了出乎意料的成功，去年爲電影《了不起的蓋茨比》演唱的主題曲“Young & Beautiful”亦是橫掃千軍，那些高喊着“拉娜?德蕾遜爆了”的人們也一改論調。如今，拉娜?德蕾已經爲人接受，甚至大受寵愛。Ultraviolence is very much a response to all of that. It seems that the storm has passed, and now, Del Rey has something to say. It’s an album filled with a deep rage and a strong sense of sarcasm. The hip-hop beats and yelps in the distance, which colored her debut and the follow-up EP Paradise, have gone. Instead, the songs are more structurally complex, muted by a lo-fi vintage rock haze — a “fuzz”, according to Del Rey herself.
新專輯《超暴力》在很大程度上正是對這一切的迴應：暴風雨似乎已經平息，輪到德蕾有話要說了。這張專輯充滿了深深的憤怒和濃烈的嘲諷。新專輯中，那些曾裝點過她第一張專輯與後續EP《天堂》的hip-hop節奏與融在背景裏的尖叫都已消失不見 ，取而代之的是更加複雜的編曲，更柔和的低音質音色，以及朦朧的復古搖滾風。用德蕾自己的話說，正是一種“朦朧美”。There are angry songs, such as Money, Power, Glory, mocking her imitators and knowingly feeding into her critics. There are also melancholic ones, for example, Shades of Cool and West Coast, in which she whines about her failed relationships, or describes the numbness of living in crowded and noisy cities.
這張專輯裏不乏表達憤怒的歌曲，比如“Money, Power, Glory”，在這首歌裏，德蕾嘲諷了那些模仿她的人，並且故意給評論家留下了話頭；與此同時，也有憂鬱的小調，比如，“Shades of Cool”與“West Coast”，在這兩首歌裏，德蕾爲她失敗的感情經歷傷懷哀訴，並描繪了喧囂、擁擠的大都市裏麻木的生活。You have to give her credit for making a rather cohesive album that works better when listened to as a whole. But what I admire her for the most is that, with her current popularity, Del Rey could have continued to make more accessible music, like her previous works, and become a mainstream and marketable pop singer. Instead, she has chosen a different path, and created this world of her own – a dark, twisted, yet intriguing fantasy.
你不得不爲她這張一氣呵成的新專點贊，尤其是全部聽完這張概念完整的唱片之後。不過，最令人欽佩的還是拉娜?德蕾的個人定位：以她現在走紅的程度，德蕾本可以像之前一樣，繼續創作一些更加大衆化的歌曲，成爲一名具有商業價值的主流歌手，但她毅然選擇了另一條道路，並創造出了專屬於自己的世界——一個黑暗、扭曲，卻引人入勝的幻境。
