Students are always in search of interesting things to study, and things are about to get musical at New York University. From next month on, a course will be introduced on American singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey at the Clive Institute of NYU.
Her music has been impactful enough to stir up conversations about raging issues like Me Too and Black Lives Matter. And now, with the introduction of this course, students can get deeper insights into how her music creates the noise we’re desperately in need of.
The subject will be named Topics in Recorded Music: Lana Del Rey, and would result in two credits. Popular journalist Kathy Landoli will reportedly be taking these classes from October to December. The description of the course reads: “Over the course of eight critically-acclaimed albums, the six-time Grammy nominated artist has introduced a sad core, melancholic, and baroque version of dream pop that in turn helped shift and reinvent the sound (and mood) of mainstream music beyond the 2010s. Through her arresting visuals and her thematic attention to mental health and tales of toxic, damaged love, Del Rey provided a new platform for artists of all genders to create ‘anti-pop’ works of substance that could live in a mainstream once categorized as bubblegum.”
In an interview given by Landoli, the journalist stated, “This is both a blueprint and a cautionary tale, a complicated pop star who resonates so much with her fans, not because of how she makes them feel about her, but rather how she makes them feel about themselves. She has changed the parameters of baroque pop and now more specifically ‘sad girl pop’ through her music, by expanding the subject matter which at times is controversial and challenging. There are so many pieces in this mosaic that we have now come to know as Lana Del Rey, and this course examines every dimension of it.”
Surprisingly, this is not the first time that a peculiar course of this nature has been introduced. At the beginning of this year, a course at the Clive Davis Institute of NYU made headlines, after it centered around Taylor Swift. While the course ended in March, it created quite a buzz.
Lead Image: Nicole Nodland
