Features | Awards

The Over Before It Began Award for Hyping Bands Seven Months Before They Even Record Their Debut

By Conrad Amenta | 14 December 2011

Tie: Lana Del Rey and King Krule

As far as I can tell, Lana Del Rey has an album she doesn’t want anyone to hear and a couple of pretty nice sounding if totally soft core singles with videos where she pouts at the camera and says icky-wittle-girl things like “I say you da bestest / Lean in for a big kiss” that are just totally uncomfortable. In her latest single, the accompanying picture is her once again pursing meaningfully in the viewer’s direction. Anyway, from the coverage she’s received you’d think she was changing music, but I think there’s absolutely no way anyone will be able to give her, say, a 3.2 if her album finally drops and just completely sucks. You can buy in now, but it makes it that much harder to distance yourself when she releases a video where she’s licking a lollypop with a big bow in her hair and a miniskirt on.

King Krule is much more interesting, having released an intriguing, if spare, little EP. He’s not old enough to drink in most states, but that won’t stop us from endlessly hyping him as if his music is a non-renewable resource that must be consumed and enjoyed before it runs out forever. Thankfully, he isn’t playing up the under-aged co-ed angle as much as Del Rey, but at the rate we’re exploiting cool new acts he’ll be washed up by twenty-one and might have to go in that direction. He’ll probably release a debut that will be overpraised, and he’ll play some festivals that summer, and then he’ll follow up the album within six months with something that won’t be an earth-shattering masterpiece, and that will just be completely unforgiveable and he will be destroyed. By then we’ll be praising this awesome new blender or phone booth or other inanimate object that just put out an internet-only Bluegrass slam-core mixtape.

I’m going to get ahead of the curve if it’s the last thing I do. I’m scouting preschools now, assessing two year olds for stage presence. Some Photoshop and a four-track recorder later and we’ll have that kid playing Bonnaroo by seven. They’ll have their drug habit kicked in time for university, and it can be like this whole hype nightmare never happened.