“Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?” is one of the great quotes from Lana Del Rey’s repertoire. In the same chorus, Lana responded to herself: “I know you will.” But a feeling of uncertainty prevailed (in reality, Lana did not know) and above all of immense melancholy for the memories experienced and for the inevitable end of that golden era of our life that we call youth, a moment in reality (many times ) plagued by worries and anxieties that make us unhappy.
‘Young and Beautiful’ was a love song, but it admitted a second reading related to the reality of growing older in the music industry. Lana Del Rey was also singing about being immensely popular today and not tomorrow.
Belén Aguilera returns to this reflection – like so many pop artists – in her new single. ‘Lolita’ talks about the reality of “aging” and therefore becoming a (supposedly) expired product as a woman in the music industry. This is what the chorus states: “I want to be your Lolita, always be young and pretty.” When Aguilera sings that she wants to “make a pact with the devil”, that it gives her “courage that they can replace me”, that “they can give you what I can no longer give” or that “you won’t remember my name”, that’s what refers without half measures.
But the shadow of death – media but also romantic and physical – runs through ‘Lolita’, as it did in Lana Del Rey’s classic. Which means that ‘Lolita’, actually a danceable house-pop production, is added to pop’s archive of sad bangers. Aguilera gets “anxious thinking that I won’t be there” and literally sings “I don’t like goodbyes, I don’t want to grow old, I just want your love.”
In ‘Lolita’, Pablo Rouss’ production represents Aguilera’s demons by distorting her voice in various ways throughout the recording. She can sound extremely serious and mournful, or extremely high-pitched and smurfy. As if Aguilera looked in the mirror and what she saw was a reflection of her own emotional instability. Surely seeing how María Bas de Nebulossa or Kylie Minogue succeed in their respective careers today, at 55 years old, she gets a little over her head.
