Heart Shaped Box – Lana Del Rey

Is this going to be a problem? I don’t see any reason why it should. Lana Del Rey does her thing exceptionally well. She plays with convention around what makes a high camp neoclassical luxury pop record and she exudes a classy danger when she’s at the top of her game.

On this take she’s part Nancy Sinatra, part Mona Demarkov from Romeo Is Bleeding and she turns the grungy rager with its lurid screeching into a string laden acoustic reflection point.

Kurt Cobain was enthralled to femininity. His songs almost always sound deeper and richer when in the hands of talented women. Many have brought their take on Nirvana’s songbook to the world since the heady days of the early 90’s.

When Nirvana were inducted in the The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame a few years back a revolving door of female indie icons played his role in absence alongside Dave and Chris.

Lorde, Joan Jett, St Vincent and Kim Gordon all made up that incredible performance… We will get back to that later in the week.

Sampling strings and double tracking herself in places adds depth and yet for the most part this is a girl and a guitar singing a beautiful melody and some poetic lyrics.

It’s a nice touch that a ‘big hair big production’ player like the artist formerly known as Elizabeth Grant can show the world that she too would have at one point tipped up at Jam night in a bar, stood on that stage (probably in a checked shirt and jeans) and played a Nirvana song like it was their own personal statement.

Lana is on record as saying Nirvana had a huge impact on her as a kid. It was this track that conveyed the sadness from artist to fan instantaneously for her and Cobain.

Everyone was a teenager once. Even todays megastars… .  .   .      .      .                .

*SCANDALOUS UPDATE*

Inch High Private Eye J at VinylDaftDad has come back into the room Columbo style and casually dropped into conversation that the track linked below is NOT, Lana Del Rey.

The thick plottens…

Yes! She did grab headlines for covering Heart Shaped Box in recent internet ‘istory. Courtney is reported to have waved her bits in the young chanteuses’ face a little (proverbially speaking of course) by pointing out when Lana covered the track she was singing Kurt’s words about Courtney’s foof.

Yep. The internet went hog wild for Ms Love bringing up the fact Kurt wrote Heart Shaped Box about the Hole Front Lady’s… erm.. Lady Front Hole.

So of course many a ‘tinternet music Dr Jones went looking for the Idol in question. Some bright spark did a LimeWire on us all dug up a great female cover and passed it off as Lana. So here I am back in Letters To Cleo/ Raincoats territory all over again.

The similarities between the arrangements of the two of them are striking. One is definitely riffing on another’s output. But who held the smoking gun and who took the bullet? There are videos and audio tracks below. the answer is staring us in the face but I guess we’ll never know for sure…

Oh, just one more thing before I go. This glass looks like it was broken from the inside…