I know the the three named singer/muse has been bringing out her fake Latina accent as of late, but it is still nothing compared to the wife of the killer/actor.

Lana Del Rey

Hilaria Baldwin

Dialect Dissection: Lana Del Rey’s Chameleon Voice

There’s an interesting shift in Lana’s use of accent. Her early career as a folk singer featured a more or less constant use of a type of Southern accent. She kept this accent at the start of her jazzy/surf-rock period when she went by some variation of Lizzy Grant, but it started to decline in frequency. We know “Lana” as a name was on her mind by 2008 because it comes up in a song of hers, but she starts going by Lana more in 2009. After that period, her musical style changes and is based more on electronic instrumentation and even upbeat pop sounds, while her lyrics become more cinematic. By 2010, when she’s recorded demos for Born To Die, she’s already started using parts of a New York accent and some Lana-isms like the hip-hop slang and the old-fashioned pronunciation of “diamonds.” She made special use of the New York accent on Ultraviolence, but by the time she released Honeymoon and Lust For Life, she was starting to leave the choice accent bits out.

Lana is famous for cultivating a very particular aesthetic, one that is mostly visual and lyrical. I would argue that part of this aesthetic is also dialectal. Being that she is not from the South, did not grow up in New York, is not a native Spanish speaker, and is not a film star from the 1950s, her little appropriations would be hard to explain using the argument that she actually speaks all these variants. They only have a vague connection to genre – sure, folk music can be associated with the American South, but surf rock? What genre is a New York accent associated with, show tunes and 80s hip-hop? It’s clear that she’s lifting from other accents to take advantage of the existing associations they already have. In doing so, she’s created a linguistically diverse oeuvre and carved out a voice for herself in a competitive market. Like Taylor, she’s learned you don’t have to be Southern all the time, but Lana has instead operated outside typical genre. Some people may find her schtick repetitive, but it is unmistakably hers. – Source

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