New Reviews: Lana Del Rey's Voice Is 'Pinched and Prim'

In this week's slate of Rolling Stone reviews, Rob Sheffield pans internet star Lana Del Rey's first album, Born to Die: "Her voice is pinched and prim, and her song doctors need to go the fuck back to med school." Also, Joe Levy raves about Leonard Cohen's latest record, Old Ideas, in which the legendary songwriter "has shorn the ornament from his language to move from the personal to the universal," and Simon Vozick-Levinson praises the "aggressively adorable debut" of the New York band Hospitality.

ALBUMS

Lana Del Rey - Born to Die (stream one song)

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas (stream one song)

Hospitality - Hospitality (stream one song)

Imperial Teen - Feel the Sound (stream one song)

Ringo Starr - Ringo 2012 (stream one song)

Underworld - A Collection (stream one song)

Escort - Escort (stream one song)

The Internet - Purple Naked Ladies (stream one song)

Wilco - iTunes Session (stream one song)

Schoolboy Q - Habits and Contradictions (stream one song)

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
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  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
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  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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