RUMOR MILL
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
SET-UP STORY
THE LATEST IN AN ONGOING SERIES
| Lana Del Rey, whose new Ultraviolence hit this week, is an uncompromising, single-minded artist who has succeeded commercially on her own terms, scoring a massive worldwide hit with her 2012 debut album Born to Die without obscuring or diluting her painstakingly rendered aesthetic. In the grand tradition of Dylan, Bowie and Waits, the artist formerly known as Lizzy Grant has conjured up and fully inhabited a psychologically complex persona, one that boldly and defiantly pushes against the tides of the contemporary pop mainstream. As Del Rey, who’s 28, recently explained to The New York Times’ Jon Pareles in a profile bearing the apt headline "Finding Her Future Looking to the Past," "Think of what’s going on now. Where am I going to get my inspiration? I couldn’t think of a thing today that I would really genuinely want to be a part of." "Lana is an amazing artist," says IGA chief John Janick with unabashed admiration. "She has this vision, and whether it’s the photos, the videos—obviously—or the music, she handcrafts every piece of it, so it has a fantastic feel." The "feel" that Janick references hews far more closely to the old Hollywood notion of stardom, romanticized and charismatic, than it does to the modern-day practice of artist development, in which imaging is pragmatically referred to as "branding"—a term that would surely cause Del Rey to gag. |
| But if her persona is rooted in the past, LDR is thoroughly modern in the way she reaches out to the world around her. "It’s straightforward with Lana in that she takes advantage of technology," Interscope Vice Chairman and marketing guru Steve Berman observes. "It’s all connected to her in terms of the music, the visuals and how she uses the socials and connects to her fans. So, for us, the key is to make sure that all the elements come to the market into her fan base exactly as she wants them to be." Using Del Rey’s Coachella performances in April as the springboard, Berman and his marketing troops orchestrated a rollout that involved myriad vectors of micro-marketing targeting LDR’s adoring core constituency, in collaboration with the artist’s team, led by her co-managers, L.A.-based Ed Millett and Ben Mawson in London. Among the elements: Billboards around Coachella and the Williamsburg and Bushwick neighborhoods of Brooklyn before the fest and the release of lead track "West Coast"; using LDR’s social following as the first look for fans on all of the official campaign materials, including artwork, music on YouTube and incremental reveals; an exclusive 2:00 video trailer on iTunes synced with the album pre-order on 5/26; the creation of several different album packages, including what’s described as a "high-end art piece"—a vinyl box with lithographs offered to her fans before anyone else, and a special version of the vinyl album for Urban Outfitters (the Born to Die and Paradise vinyl have collectively sold north of 40k); multiple music videos conceived, as always, by Del Rey herself; and a U.S. tour "showcasing her confidence as a live performer," as described in the marketing plan. |
| "The great thing is just how rabid the fan base is, how authentic it is to them and how real she is—it’s really inspiring," Janick marvels. "So we’re trying to make sure we’re serving the core, and expand upon that by doing the right things by breaking through at other formats. The pre-orders are great, and for us, it’s always about exposing the music." Perhaps the biggest challenge for IGA on this project and in terms of LDR’s music overall is getting her songs on the radio—although Born to Die sold extremely well without any airplay to speak of. Ultraviolence is just as challenging. Produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach at his Easy Eye Studio in Nashville, with a seven-piece band playing the tracks live off the floor ("She was watching us and swaying while we were playing," Auerbach told Pareles), the new album is, if anything, more languorous than her previous recordings, and the experience of listening to it is the musical equivalent of watching David Lynch’s supersaturated, unsettling films. In short, there’s nothing on the new album that sounds remotely like anything being played on any format. Although a remix of the first album’s "Summertime Sadness" by Cedric Gervais gave Del Rey her first radio hit last year, that pumping, EDM-leaning track has little in common with the predominantly downtempo Ultraviolence material. "But she’s not writing for formats; she’s making art," Berman notes. "And what we’re trying to do is help her on this journey by exposing people to her art and bringing more and more fans to her every day." IGA’s promotion staff worked "West Coast" at a pair of formats that had eluded her previous radio offerings. "Although we hadn’t had a lot of success at Alternative and Triple A in the past," Janick acknowledges, "it feels like we’re getting a great start, and we feel really confident about it." In the latest encouraging move, KROQ hit "West Coast" last week. "She has unique talents, and there’s nobody else like her out there now in terms of how she puts all the pieces together," Janick continues. "She has this vision, and it’s her world. She’s a true creative talent, and I think it’s important that everybody—all the gatekeepers and everybody else out there—understands that." |
