Lana Del Rey
photo: raph_ph · cc by 2.0 ↗Lana Del Rey built a persona out of American tragedy — Old Hollywood glamour, doomed romance, faded flags — set to hip-hop-inflected trip-hop beats and a smoky, downshifted vocal delivery indebted equally to the Great American Songbook and to gangsta rap's slow-motion menace. Since 'Video Games' turned her into an internet phenomenon in 2011, she has become one of the most influential vocal stylists in contemporary pop, an acknowledged reference point for a generation of younger melancholic pop singers, Eilish included. She writes almost exclusively about longing, violence, and Americana, and rarely breaks character.
Del Rey has repeatedly named Frank Sinatra among the 'masters' she studied, and his intimate, behind-the-beat phrasing — treating a song as a piece of acting rather than just a melody — runs through her own deliberately theatrical, slow-motion delivery.
listen forPlay Sinatra's 'Fly Me to the Moon' next to Del Rey's 'Young and Beautiful' — both singers let the song breathe far behind the beat, luxuriating in a note rather than rushing to the next one.
Del Rey named Elvis Presley directly as an influence in a 2012 BBC interview, and his mythologized, doomed-Americana persona — the boy who became a symbol before he became a person — is a clear template for the flag-and-heartbreak iconography she builds her own songs around.
listen forPlay Elvis's 'Suspicious Minds' next to Del Rey's 'National Anthem' — both stage private romantic drama against a backdrop of unmistakably American myth-making, string sections and all.
Del Rey has cited Nina Simone among the classic singers she absorbed on her way to her own style, drawn to the same unhurried, jazz-rooted phrasing and willingness to let a vocal turn genuinely dark rather than merely sad.
listen forPlay Nina Simone's 'Sinnerman' next to Del Rey's 'Ultraviolence' — both build slowly from a hushed, almost conversational opening into something far more ominous, letting dread accumulate instead of announcing itself.