Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 02/15/2012 at 9:28 AM News

The Popdust Files: jeremy lin, lana del rey

Few people in the pop world right now need to change the discussion about them more than Lana Del Rey. You know the story with Lana by now—the SNL performance, the internet backlash, the album, the lousy reviews, the many questionable interviews, etc. A common theme among the latter has been Lana revealing Just Like Us information about herself in an attempt to seem human, such as when she divulged to MTV that she was still holding on to her old babysitting gig. Fair play, but this seems a little far to us. Check out what piece of information she “revealed” about herself in a recent interview with T Magazine:

Before she goes, I ask her where she lives. She’s looking to buy a place, but for now is in Williamsburg. “Staying with my ex-boyfriend,” she says nonchalantly, then bursts into nervous laughter and admits, “I live on his couch.”

Hmm. Suddenly famous internet-exploding person still lives on somebody else’s couch? Sound a little bit familiar to you? Well, if you live within a 200-mile radius of the New York metropolitan area or have even the slightest of passing interests in the National Basketball Association, it damn well should—it’s the same backstory as unexpected star New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin, who has been crashing on the couches of teammates and relatives while single-handedly resurrecting one of basketball’s historic franchises. (Hell, his brother’s couch even got featured in an article on Buzzfeed, an has become part of the entire Lin mythos/creation story.)

We suppose we can’t really blame Lana for wanting to leech off Lin’s backstory—after all, the dude is being universally celebrated and venerated in a way that she, uh, wasn’t, and his sales are way better—but damn, LDR, try not to be so transparent about it next time. If we see you and M.I.A. “appropriating” the Lin / Landry Fields handshake ritual thing, we won’t be terribly forgiving.