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Lana Del Rey Might Sing Better Than Isabella Rossellini on Her 'Blue Velvet' Cover for H&M

By Emily Yoshida at

It's unclear if songwriters Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris were aware they were penning such a subvertible ditty when they wrote the textile-fixated 1950 ballad "Blue Velvet," which was first performed at a fashion show in Boston. On the surface, it's a somewhat bland, syrupy torch song, but plenty of other artists have picked up on its ineffably troubling undercurrents, and since Bobby Vinton's chart-topping 1963 recording, the song's more notable appearances have been in decidedly dark contexts — Kenneth Anger's 1963 experimental film Scorpio Rising, and of course, David Lynch's Blue Velvet in 1987.

Now, Lana Del Rey, whose '60s fetish is half of her act well documented, and whose vaguely derivative Lynchian femme fatale persona is about 53rd on the list of Things Bloggers Can't Stand About Her, is throwing her particular brand of Ambien haze over the track. A predictably sleepwalky cover that will serve as the soundtrack for her H&M campaign this fall, was just released today, and the TV spots are already airing in Poland.

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SPECIAL FEATURES

The Robins Return: A Guide to the Lost Footage of Blue Velvet

By Chris Stangl at

"I'm seeing something that was always hidden," Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) says, trying to explain the compulsion behind his ethically questionable forays into amateur investigation. Speaking of the unearthed, and mysteries brought to light, when David Lynch's Blue Velvet made its North American Blu-ray debut in 2011, the superb package included 51 minutes and 42 seconds of theretofore lost deleted scenes, thought to be missing until located in a Seattle warehouse in 2010 and given a final polish by the director. The Blu-ray remains worth seeking out for its own A/V merits, but for the curious, this most remarkable bonus feature has inevitably surfaced on YouTube, making it available for the masses to peruse and dissect.

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