Controversial YouTube singer and major-label starlet Lana Del Rey dropped her new music video over the weekend and it’s already been viewed more than 460,000 times.
Dubbed a “bio pic” in the summary, “Carmen” uses cut up and antiquated stock footage by the likes of Paul Synnott and Frank Ramblings in a manner similar to her previous hit “Video Games.” Del Rey’s YouTube fanbase has barely managed to contain it’s glee in the comments section.
“Everything about this… oh my god,” wrote highonflowers in a top comment. “Especially the ending, so beautiful.”
“DOPE, SICK, GORGEOUS” commented pjortt, just one out of the 2000 comments on YouTube that, for the most part, were zealously positive.
“Carmen,” on the other hand, is currently being savaged by critics, much like everything she’s done since appearing on Saturday Night Live.
Popular hater blog Hipster Runoff accused Lana Del Rey of “being out of ideas” and ripping off her old video in her new video (Del Rey does use some of the same footage), while The Huffington Post called the video “discomforting.”
“I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I’m completely over these faux-retro, smash-edited, low production quality Lana Del Rey videos (as in, all of them),” wrote a Stereogum reader going by the Vonnegut moniker Kilgore Trout. “It’s played out, don’t her handlers get it? This sort of stuff is only going to make the backlash worse.”
The Awl noted whatever Del Rey does on the Internet will always be hounded by “inflamed vitriol and hyperbole that no one of us will ever be able to consider this person’s music separate from the controversy that surrounds her image and authenticity or lack thereof again.”
At least YouTube, for now, is a safe haven for the controversial singer.
“[M]y life is reflected in this video,” wrote aikalemir in another top comment on YouTube. “[S]he is [a] genius, being only at 25.”