Though much has been made of Lana Del Rey's irrevocable rise to the top of the music mountain in a relatively short time, it will not be her ascent that will be truly remarkable should her song 'Video Games' win a prestigious Ivor Novello Award on May 17th 2012. Del Rey comes from a wealthy background and has already had a stab at the big time under her true name, Lizzy Grant; the story is a little different for her 'Video Games' co-writer Justin Parker who, should he win, will have capped a remarkable year which saw the 38 year-old Brit unemployed and down on his luck twelve months ago.
Sky News reports that Parker, who lives in Lincoln, UK, hooked up with Del Rey when she was unknownafter an unsuccessful initial foray into music. The pair would meet together in London when the 25 year-old singer could get money together to fly from her New York home and, working only at weekends, they managed to write 12 tracks over the year. Five have gone on to appear on the star's debut LP 'Born To Die' which made number one in the UK and took second spot in the US Billboard 200.
Talking to Sky, Paker said of 'Video Games,' "We wrote it in about three hours. I came with the chords for the verse and I played them to her and we started working on melody and things like that. She was amazing," he continued, "every chord that I played, she kind of followed in the way she does and it worked out perfectly - it was an amazing thing." Yet not everyone was convinced, and Parker commented "It's quite amazing because me and Lana thought it was brilliant, as soon as we wrote it, we were like 'listen to this, listen to this' and everyone was like 'oh, it's not really a single is it'." What a difference a year makes.