I think the biggest lesson to be learned from the Lana Del Rey fiasco is that if you’re going to make art by committee, you better make damn sure it’s really great art. The Sex Pistols and the Strokes were both coldly manufactured cool, these beasts created out of the times they lived in, epitomizing some strange aesthetic of their era, and being one of the best examples of the art they were trying to create. Defining it, but still cheating by reading the definition of it out of a dictionary.

LDR could be accused of a lot of these things. ‘Born to Die’ is a cold and manufactured attempt to define an age, to be important merely by the fact that it SHOULD be. But it’s just not good. And it just becomes meaningless, since if it’s not good it doesn’t serve the one purpose it was supposed to fulfill. The backlash is both disappointment at what could have been and some kind of critic-inflicted hubris: how DARE she try to manufacture art like she owned some indie-alt rock factory? We criticize most not because of how bad she did, but that she got caught doing it.

The real lesson is: don’t get caught.