She didn't appear to have "f***ed it up" or having "tanked" or "bombed" so completely as this gal claims in her column either!

You be the judge of that upon viewing Del Rey's performance in the video below!

Only a few truths can be extirpated from it all, really:

She became only the third female artist to have ever been so "honoured" as to having been the musical guest of the night (live, again) without having had an album out already. (Natalie Imbruglia was the first - remember her? A certain Jessie J was the second and she did it just last year too. Sign of our times, right Juliette Lewis? Wink-wink!)

Lana's performance was LIVE - it had to sound bad, it was a given. Everybody sounds worse LIVE than when it is a polished, worked over (over and over) studio recording!

She delivered like a veteran - truly, it was like a second coming of Kate Bush (let's hope she won't turn into a Tori Amos though.)

No one's ears were bleeding after this performance - which is certainly not always the case at an SNL show...

Her dress and hair were better than any current female SNL cast member ever had - ever.

Now let's watch the infamous performance in question - if we can:



Oh say can you see - indeed. On second thought... no. Don't say it.
Let's just... move on!

There were, in fact, three different performances during the show. As it is customary for every single SNL musical guest to do, Lana showed up at three different times, each time introduced by the guest host (which could be anyone between the former Spider-Man, the cutest Hobbit and that Potter boy - how can anyone ever tell these three apart?!? Cast them as a new age, cutesy-wootsy version of the Brothers Karamazov for the 21st Century and be done with it already!) and she performed three very different tunes.

But since the critic only focused on this one song to declare that the entire exercise "bombed" - I used the very same videographic evidence to prove that it most certainly did not!

And you will be hearing a lot more from Lana Del Rey from now until Kingdom Come - you can be sure of that!