Valley of the Dolls cosplayer and Internet darling Lana Del Rey hit the stage of SNL this past weekend and the results— unlike her curtain-y hair— were not pretty as she mumble-moaned her way through both performances with the dead eyes and quaalude-slacked limbs of an American Apparel model.
SNL has had its share of terrible performances, but few have exploded the Internet in the way that Lana Del Rey's did. From the minute she took the stage at Studio 8H until this very moment, the Twitterverse has been abuzz with criticism coming from celebrities and normals alike (even Brian Williams hated it. BRIAN WILLIAMS!)
Lana Del Rey's career, for all intents and purposes, was born online— "Video Games" has nearly 20 million views on YouTube and she has yet to even release a studio album— but will it die online as well? Many Twitter users and Internet commenters are hailing this as the abrupt end of her quick rise to fame. Lana Del Naysayers, who have long since dismissed the performer (perhaps accurately) as a contrived hipster robot assembled from Instagram filters and hair falls during the hottest night of Coachella, seem to think that SNL was merely the lifting of a veil to finally show the lack of talent and originality that her style had previously covered. Lana Del Yeasayers (you can pry this pun from my cold dead hands), however, are forgiving her shaky performance, blaming nerves and an audience overly used to autotune (this hardly explains the musician's seeming inability to pronounce full words).
Assuming that all of us didn't stab our own ears out after hearing what was without a doubt the worst performance in the history of music (JK, it wasn't that terrible and I have plenty of doubts!), it will be interesting to see if Lana Del Rey's career will recover. Ashlee Simpson's didn't, but lip-synching is a way worse crime than being sloppy. Also, Lana Del Rey is very young! That gives her plenty of time to recover and learn that it's "James Dean," not "JUH DUUH."