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When Lana Del Rey Was Lizzy Grant

Posted on: January 17th, 2012 by

Lana Del Rey is everywhere these days. She performed a rather mediocre set on SNL this past weekend, and is scheduled for Letterman and Ellen, all in anticipation of her major label debut at the end of the month. Time for two cents from the Boogie!

As Lizzy Grant; National Underground, 2008

Lana Del Rey is the stage name of Lizzy Grant, and that’s how we were acquainted long before all the hype. Through some friends in the music business, we first discovered her sultry yet addictive style during CMJ in 2008, catching a pair of back-to-back performances at the Living Room and National Underground. Shows that revealed the dueling forces of her star power and crippling stage fright. At the time, the Kill Kill EP had just been released, and she had already been gaining some small-time buzz during the annual music fest. Her strong songwriting, vocal delivery, and beauty were enough to captivate, leading to the 2010 release of her self-titled debut on 5 Points Records (as Lana). Now she’s blowing up like whoa, thanks to a major label deal with Interscope.

These days, everyone and their mother seems to be all over the chanteuse, whose second album is due at the end of the month. Her mere presence in the musical landscape, as Gawker noted back in September, is quite polarizing. There are some major “authenticity” issues at hand – fans are split between the old guard who cherish the pre-collagen-lipped singer and those who discovered her way after-the-fact. Not to mention her stylistic about-face from the debut. Chalk it up to artistic evolution.

Although some of the new stuff is seemingly more ambitious, it still holds onto that amalgamation of Hollywood Pop and “sad-core.” Billboard now carries the full track list for Born to Die (dropping January 31) and a full expose on the upstart in the current issue.

Here’s one of our faves from the last record:

  • cats

    Aside from the Millionaire father and the plastic surgery, she had already signed to Interscope before Video Games and Blue Jeans were even uploaded on youtube. She signed with Interscope in July 2011, Video games was uploaded 19 Aug 2011,
    Blue Jeans Sept 9 2011. “Ferdy Unger-Hamilton of Interscope denied that LDR is manufactured he said that he did not sign the singer when he first met her a year prior to when the star agreed a deal with him back in September.”

    We already know the contract was signed in July, It’s here where her labels, which provided her a budget for videos (now debatable if she even made them herself) and album completion, as well as hired a publicity firm Shore Fire Media, deviate from standard practices remember Video games was uploaded 19 Aug 2011, Blue Jeans Sept 9 2011 according to Interscope they hadn’t signed at this point.
    LDR had industry and financial support right from the start, a recent interview with David Kahne, who produced Grant as well as albums for Paul McCartney, Regina Spektor and Kelly Clarkson, believes something else was going on.
    Agreeing to work with her in 2008 after 5 Points connected them, he witnessed the beginnings of her reinvention from a platinum blonde guitar-cradler to an alt-indie princess. Contrary to what Del Rey asserts, Kahne is under the impression that she bought the rights back from 5 Points to stifle future opportunities to distribute it an echo of rumors that the action was part of a calculated strategy.

    “I think Lizzy Lana owns it, so [her team] wanted it out of circulation. That’s why they bought the rights from them,” Kahne says. “I think she wanted to be Lana Del Rey and didn’t want to be Lizzy Grant. That was her family name, and she’s very dramatic. She wiped [out] this other person. I think she actually thinks that she’s that other person, and she probably is. So that was the decision that she made, that she didn’t want traces of that whole person around, as far as I can tell.”

    So the whole youtube internet sensation is a lie they tried to sell us the idea that the momentum or interest in this girl was based solely on her music and the interest it was generating, but we know that she already had Interscope behind her and Shore Fire Media before Video Games was even uploaded. The interest in LDR was nothing more than heavy internet ‘guerrilla’ marketing, planting meme after meme after meme. People took the bait but the facts started to be uncovered.
     
    Prior to this she had other financial help with this transformation that took place over a one and a half to two year period from 2009 to 2011. Lizzy Grants efforts to hide her past started to unravel, the trailer park life didn’t go hand in hand with the discovery of her millionaire father that she was and is still in close contact with and the man who helped to market her first album and EP. Pictures of Lizzy and Grant were discovered through his involvement in T.R.A.F.F.I.C and photos taken of Lizzy with her Father in casinos dated the same time that she said she was living in a trailer park and starving started to expose a very different background to what Lizzy wanted us to believe. The trailer park life was also given as the reason Lizzy couldn’t afford to have surgery but the pictures taken with her father tell much more than lizzy wanted you to know.

    Rob Grant started his life as an advertising guru in Madison Avenue and then went on to property development when Lizzy was born and eventually real estate and online real estate in 1995. Lizzy had even tried to deny her fathers wealth saying he was just an entrepreneur and that didn’t mean he was rich then she tried to deny they had money when she was growing up although he had made a serious amount of money in real estate when she was a child and by 1995 he was in online real estate where he made his fortune Lizzy would have been 9yrs old. Lizzy was also afforded a private boarding school eduction. 

    When you discover all of this and then realise that Lizzy can’t actually sing that well Live, and hasn’t taken sole credit for anything she has written, you can’t help but feel the music industry are trying to get dirty and take you for a ride you don’t want to go on, I can’t get into Lizzy/ Lana and not just because she clearly can’t sing live or deliver songs with realness and passion but mostly because she went along with all of this and when I realise why she did I know why I don’t like her.

    http://www.billboard.com/features/lana-del-rey-the-billboard-cover-story
    http://webmediaproperties.com/dn_journal_april_08/april-page2.htm
    http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/news/a358142/lana-del-rey-is-no-puppet-says-record-label-boss.html
    http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=rob+grant+daughter+lizzy&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:

    http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/jam-session/2012/jan/16/lana-del-rey-on-snl-coup-or-crap-locals-reactions/

  • RobbieTheK

    Or check this out: http://news.yahoo.com/brian-williams-rips-lana-del-rey-email-gawker-011801355.html

  • http://esquared.tumblr.com/ esquared

    Is that Lady Gaga?….

    burt seriously, I did not know this. Nonetheless,  I like the when Lady Gaga was Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta story better.

  • Bombed_pop

    I would say this boils down to some AR people wanting a thin Adele look-a-like to appeal to “hipster”/tumblr young adults.  It seems to have worked.  

  • Guest 1

    All “new” people that are inducted into show biz have a fake persona. Such as Madonna, etc. But their not doing a good job of it. And that’s the problem. First she’s coming across like Stevie Nicks/Jane Fonda? Then her music reminds me of the song “Wicked Games”? Mixed with David Lynch?
    They should have done their homework first. But, then again, she can re-invent herself like so many before her. Again and again and again.

    • Guest 1

       Oh, and let’s not forget. Fiona Apple.

    • Anonymous

      She signed to Interscope in July 2011 before Video games and blue jeans were even uploaded, the Lana Del Rey story goes she exploded on the web a diy artist that made such an amazing tune/ video that within a month millions of people had viewed it and everyone was talking about it……Obviously not, she signed with interscope and Sure Fire Media were hired to market lizzy online……… so it’s more about the deceit that was used, it’s too much.

      We then find out that the transformation from Lizzy to Lana had happened over a period of about 2-3yrs Lizzy’s previous producer speaks about her buying the rights to her first album so she can wipe out any links to her family name and no longer be Lizzy Grant (it was removed very quickly from itunes, whiffs of a new deal on the cards). So she comes on the scene as a retro girl from a trailer park and uses this poor background as the reason she couldn’t have possibly afforded plastic surgery. We then find out her dad is a multi millionaire and she isn’t so poor that she couldn’t buy the rights from her previous label and fund her blatant facial surgery.

      Bottom line if the girl was really that good it would be all okay but she’s not and I’m not just going to fund her little fantasy world when she can fund it herself 

  • Keilsonky

    Sounds like she needs a newer personna. Maybe one that doesn’t sing.

  • Anonymous

    Lizzy Grant went to Fordham University at Rose Hill. I don’t know if she ever finished but this is what she looked like in 2008 which would have been during her senior year:

  • Annie

    Sounds like shes got the Vanilla Ice Syndrome….. Wants to come from hard times so that people will believe her songs or story but the reality is that she is not!!!

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