Lana Del Ray, Bowery Ballroom, 12/5/11

A Photograph Of a Polaroid Of A Terrified Girl: On Lana Del Ray, Bowery Ballroom, 12/5/11

I’m not sure what I was expecting from seeing Lana Del Ray live. My opinion on her music since the beginning has been that shared by many others, namely a measured distaste for her “borrowed nostalgia” (to use James Murphy’s words). But, well, the tickets were free and I’d had the chorus of her ubiquitous single “Video Games” stuck in my head for days (“heaven is a place on earth with you/tell me all the things you want to do”—not a message that’s a very good look right now, for music or society in general, but admittedly pretty damn catchy), so I figured why not? It’s not like I had anything else to do.

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