Adopting a split personality for the sake of sensationalizing an image is nothing new in the pop industry. Recent notable alter egos include Beyoncé‘s Sasha Fierce, Lady Gaga‘s Joe Calderone and Nicki Minaj‘s Roman Zolanski. While these characters have allowed these pop stars to explore other aspects of their persona independent of their regular self (also possibly giving them carte blanche to make mistakes, all the while acting as a great gimmick to draw fans into a narrative), they are usually an afterthought to the performer, and are put on and taken off the same way one wears a hat.
However, in the case of Lana Del Rey, her alter ego is more widely known that her “real” self. (We’re not going to get into existential arguments of what’s “real” or not, but suffice to say that “real” in this context is who she was born as/lived her life as until she became Lana Del Rey.) As thousands of bloggers have noted, she was born Lizzy Grant, and even recorded an album under that name, an album that was released in January of 2010 but then quickly pulled from the shelves, adding to her mystique. Lana is currently in Europe promoting her new album Born To Die, and during an interview with the BBC, she noted that she’s planning to reissue her Lana Del Rey A.K.A. Lizzy Grant album, and we’re officially intrigued.
With the Lana Del Rey hype monster so engorged, is the overnight sensation now using her new found fame to promote the art she made and believed in prior to her transformation into tortured chanteuse? Will she reissue the album as Lana Del Rey, or will Lizzy Grant act as Lana Del Rey’s otherly doppelganger? Is the next chapter of the Lana Del Rey story going to be a nostalgic expose into the heart of Lizzy Grant, or just another great marketing stunt? And moreover, will audiences, critical blogging fingers at the ready, ever be able to reconcile the two conflicting sides of the Lana Del Rey coin?
