Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 03/19/2012 at 9:00 AM Videos

The Popdust Files: blue jeans, lana del rey, music videos

Before we get into Lana Del Rey’s “Blue Jeans” video, we should probably mention the cover art, where she’s supposedly dead or being choked or something. This is ridiculous, and how it’s ridiculous has been stated much better than I could, so I’ll just quote: “If this is, in fact, a photo of Del Rey in a choke-hold, it is the daintiest choke-hold I have ever seen. This is how you hold your hand while choking a dormouse or a doll made out of light bulbs (to be fair, “glass doll” is not that far off course from Lana Del Rey’s image).”

Granted, the Artistic Angling might make this difficult to see, so let’s just rotate the image to see the nontroversy in all its dubious glory:

Yes. She’s lying down on the beach with her eyes closed, as one does, and the guy’s pose says nothing as much as “Huh. I never knew you had a freckle on your chin there.” This is not noteworthy, especially not from an artist whose covers half look like photoshopping Instagram and half like bra-clad American Gothic recreations. This is Aesthetics 101. Simple stuff.

Anyway, the video is nothing like the cover; it’s just a lot of black-and-white shots of those two at the pool in various stages of swimming, undress, blur and slo-mo, with some crocodile business that’s supposedly threatening but very missable. In other words, this is essentially a Twilight video. Replace Lana Del Rey and Tattoos Del Smolder with the proper characters, and this could count as a fanvid. Can’t you see it?