When and where was AKA written and recorded?

[evilentity 13,303]

When was AKA was recorded? I mean, I know it was recorded in 2008, but like, from which month to which month? Earlier I pointed out that the large gap in her performance history between November 18, 2007 December 5, 2007 and June 18, 2008 correlates well with the time she claimed to be in Alabama (after which she began listing New Jersey as home). But I also wonder if that's when she was busy recording AKA and if that's what accounts for the gap. Is it possible she wrote any of AKA in Alabama? Do you think she went to Alabama and began recording AKA when she got back? (The Kill Kill EP was put out October 21 and AKA was originally planned for release in February 2009. See here. Would that have been enough time?) Or perhaps Monicker's right that Alabama was merely a state of mind for her. Maybe it was just a state of mind she wanted to be in from which to record the album, and she actually stayed in the New York/New Jersey area the whole time.

 

Also, I assume the desired name change, creative differences, and contract wrangling accounted for the almost year-long delay in finally releasing AKA digitally in January 2010, but is there anything explicitly saying so? David Nichtern also talks about taking time to hone her live act and build buzz.

Edited April 7, 2013 by evilentity
Updated dates.

[Trash Magic 26,889]

She was physically in Alabama. I found a quote earlier while looking for the Pawn Shop Blues quote

[Trash Magic 26,889]

RE: that intro thing that was posted online about being a trapeze artist in Alabama etc.. "I did visit [Alabama] but in not a trapeze artist!"

[evilentity 13,303]

She was physically in Alabama. I found a quote earlier while looking for the Pawn Shop Blues quote

Yes, of course, she says she lived in Alabama in a couple interviews. But was she really there during the time she listed it as her location on her MySpace pages, or even ever?

 

 

RE: that intro thing that was posted online about being a trapeze artist in Alabama etc.. "I did visit [Alabama] but in not a trapeze artist!"

Link?

[Trash Magic 26,889]

NME magazine January 2012

 

The complex (?) interview from 2008 is probably the most info we have regarding the album + writing process. I suppose we could always contact David Kahne via Facebook as he has tried his best to answer any previous questions.

 

Btw can someone post that photo of lana + David in the studio

[lola 6,617]

[Trash Magic 26,889]

Maybe the photo will help distinguish a date, one sec

[Trash Magic 26,889]

nope haha

[ednafrau 831]

i think these photos are a bit more helpful in indicating a recording timeline for AKA

 

 

lizzy's hairstyle suggests 2007, maybe even late 2006 (her hair's length and color are similar to the yayo rock version performance from mid-2007 and in line with the look she sported in the jezebel wlsc concert, though maybe a bit longer)

 

P.S. i think she looks so cute like this! i wonder if she'll ever go back to this style (i doubt that she will, for now)

[evilentity 13,303]

lizzy's hairstyle suggests 2007, maybe even late 2006 (her hair's length and color are similar to the yayo rock version performance from mid-2007 and in line with the look she sported in the jezebel wlsc concert, though maybe a bit longer)

This is gonna sound creepy... but Lizzy cut her hair short sometime between May 10, 2007 and May 29, 2007.

[Monicker 3,030]

When was AKA was recorded? I mean, I know it was recorded in 2008, but like, from which month to which month? Earlier I pointed out that the large gap in her performance history between November 18, 2007 and June 18, 2008 correlates well with the time she claimed to be in Alabama (after which she began listing New Jersey as home). But I also wonder if that's when she was busy recording AKA and if that's what accounts for the gap.

 

...

 

Also, I assume the desired name change, creative differences, and contract wrangling accounted for the almost year-long delay in finally releasing AKA digitally in January 2010, but is there anything explicitly saying so? David Nichtern also talks about taking time to hone her live act and build buzz.

 

From the German KulturSPIEGEL interview that was just translated and posted:

 

KulturSPIEGEL: And how did you get to your record deal?

Lana Del Rey: I took part in an amateur-songwriter-contest. I didn't win. But one of the judges had a little label and offered me a record deal and a producer. I took the pseudonym of Lizzy Grant and recorded an album at night for seven months that was shelved for two years in the hope that a bigger company would acquire the record. But that didn't happen. The songs were dark, not suited for a wide audience. Besides, the back-and-forth of the music managers was tedious: people that first tell you you're brilliant think you're missing something one week later. I then came to terms with not making any music. Except just for myself. I produced video clips with friends which I put on the internet myself. Just like "Video Games" with which I got myself a record deal after all.

 

Seven months is a pretty long time. That's interesting that someone unknown would be given so much time to cut a debut record. Do we believe Lizzy? Oh, the uncertainty.

[lola 6,617]

From the German KulturSPIEGEL interview that was just translated and posted:

 

 

 

Seven months is a pretty long time. That's interesting that someone unknown would be given so much time to cut a debut record. Do we believe Lizzy? Oh, the uncertainty.

 

Well, she did say that they recorded in the evening and at night so maybe they had to spend seven months on recording it.

[ednafrau 831]

david nichtern, head of 5 points records, has said that lizzy had a bigger budget than she's stated and that they did invest a lot in the recording of AKA and in promoting her and getting her good gigs:

 

 

What happened? Did she come to you guys or did you discover her?

I had a guy, Van Wilson, who was doing A&R. He found her at a songwriting conference in Brooklyn. I don’t think she won, but I think she had a prize in it. He thought she could be good and put a lot of energy into working with her, as did I. We wanted to develop her so we signed her to a multi-record deal. Then we went out scouting for producers and we got a lot of interest from very interesting people, because she was so unusual at the time. [David] Kahne (Paul McCartney, Regina Spektor, the Strokes) was one of the first few people we reached out to and he responded very, very quickly. She and I went down and met with him and they seemed to hit it off. She was ambitious and liked the fact that he was a known producer. We gave him a deal to make the record, which is another thing. They said the budget was $10,000, which is false. Have you read that?

 

I did read that. Was it more? Less?

It was way more. It was an all-in budget of $50,000. And we also gave her a significant advance. So I don’t know why … I’m not sure who’s saying what about anything; it seems like people are grabbing at loose facts, but nobody is verifying with anybody.

 

Did you retain the recording rights?

What happened was, we first put out an EP under the name Lizzy Grant. She got quite a nice notoriety from that. A guy at Apple, who’s a programmer for the new stuff, he loved it. So we got featured based on the EP as one of the iTunes emerging artists of that year. So that was a very positive circumstance. And then we were moving towards the whole album and that’s when things shifted. She wanted to change her name, got new management, they wanted to change the record. A lot of things happened that made it difficult to figure out exactly what image she was going to have, what she was going to support, and [she] clearly didn’t seem that excited about the record. The manager came in and was insulting about the record, and I thought, “Wow, we’re an indie label, we got David Kahne to produce this record and you’re negative about it.” I think it had some masterful elements to it and a huge amount of work went into it. He worked hard to get the vocals to where he wanted them to be. It was like any of those projects: there was a certain amount of friction between the artist and the producer. I went in a couple of times to kind of make peace. I always asked Lizzy if she was okay with this, does she want to be doing this? And it was emotional, but she did. So all along the way, I told her the right way to go, with the name, but she made certain decisions. That’s why I laugh pretty hard when someone said she was put into an image. There’s no way you can do that with her. She’s very headstrong and knows what she wants. That’s a mistake, too. She wanted to be known as Lana Del Rey pretty early on. That was her name, she cooked that up, I thought it was a little wack. [Laughs.] She was this beautiful young songwriter named Lizzy Grant, it was a cool name. But she wanted to create this thing, Lana Del Rey. We put out the album digitally and at first she wanted it “R-A-Y” and then we did one version of it that way, and then she wanted to change it to “R-E-Y” so that was now the third name we were using to promote that artist. Shortly after that, her and her new manager came in and said “We want to get this off the market. We’re going for a completely new deal. We’ll buy you out of the deal.” So we made a separation agreement.

 

So that’s why it never came out.

They literally insisted. That’s in the contract. We can’t have any reference to it anywhere. They were following up on it weekly, “Oh, there’s an obscure website in outer-Mongolia that still has a reference to it, can you tell them to pull it down.” We did. We took it off iTunes and never released it as a hard CD. When I read that it was shelved, that borders on libelous. It’s annoying.

(...)

 

There was a small run of a physical CD?

Only to sell at gigs and to give as promo to people. The hard CD was not released. We put a lot of money into getting her live act together, marketing people, promotions. I’d say we easily spent … take the $50,000 on the budget, take the advance we gave her, and then you can double that all up again. Anybody that says there wasn’t a certain amount of investment here is not telling the truth.

 

 

the whole interview is worth reading, in case any of you haven't: http://www.mtvhive.c...cords-interview

[lola 6,617]

Why did they spend that much money on her?

[Trash Magic 26,889]

In the index magazine video she said she wrote the whole thing whilst living in the trailer park and that interview was September 2008? She's been living there for a year so I guess started writing around August 2007? Do we know months of the demos on "No Kung Fu" demo

[ednafrau 831]

Why did they spend that much money on her?

 

if you read the whole interview, nichtern says:

 

I was excited. She was very original. I didn’t think she was the same as the other alt-indie girls. She also is a very intelligent and creative person. She would ride around on the subways all night sometimes, writing lyrics and stuff like that. When I was pitching her, I said, “Here’s somebody with the outer manifestation of Marilyn Monroe with the inner manifestation of Leonard Cohen.” That’s how I saw her. For people to say she’s just this created thing is wrong. She’s probably going to continue to evolve and in a way, that probably didn’t get her too much time to do that, now she’s engrossed in the public. As an artist, I’m very supportive of her.

 

i think we can all agree that his instincts were right

 

i do wonder where lana would be right now if 5-points records hadn't given her a chance to showcase her talent...would she have gotten her interscope record deal? i doubt it.

[Monicker 3,030]

Well, she did say that they recorded in the evening and at night so maybe they had to spend seven months on recording it.

 

Don't see what the time of day has to do with it. Most studios are open until very late into the night, and some even 24 hours. And that has been the practice, to my knowledge, since at least the '60s. It's totally common to have sessions at night.

 

He worked hard to get the vocals to where he wanted them to be. It was like any of those projects: there was a certain amount of friction between the artist and the producer.

 

I wonder about something. It's been stated before that there was a little bit of tension and friction between Lizzy and Kahne while recording the record. I wonder if most of it centered around the vocals, if he demanded a lot of takes out of her and if she maybe wasn't used to that and didn't like doing a lot of takes. I feel like i remember reading that she usually records a vocal (or likes to) in one or two takes (this was before she mentioned cutting the new Yayo in one take) and if maybe it was taxing for her to have someone demand more and sort of be a slave driver about it. That tends to be tough on a lot of people and it tires them out (though the results are usually very rewarding and totally worth it). And so i wonder if maybe this might explain, also, why there seems to be a lot more work put into her vocals pre-BTD. I know i've mentioned this a lot on here before, but there's a lot of stuff on BTD and Paradise where i cannot comprehend how the producer didn't ask her to do another take. There also seems to be more complex layering on AKA. I don't know, maybe Kahne worked her hard and she sort of resented that. He's definitely more "old school" than other producers she's worked with, and this is a quality seen more with older producers.

 

i do wonder where lana would be right now if 5-points records hadn't given her a chance to showcase her talent...would she have gotten her interscope record deal? i doubt it.

 

The age old question, eh? These sort of alternate reality scenarios could obviously go so many ways, but i feel another smaller label would have eventually come along regardless. But there's also being in the right place at the right time, which is crucial. If anything, i think it just would have taken longer, but i think it was inevitable.

[Guy 976]

in my basement

[Trash Magic 26,889]

"

Lizzy was signed to 5 Points Records in 2007 after Director of A&R Van Wilson heard her while judging a songwriting competition. She headed into the studio with renowned producer David Kahne (Paul McCartney, Regina Spektor, Sublime) and began recording an album. While the label and artist were working on setting up a future album release, Grant posted three of the finished songs on her MySpace page, and thus the Kill Kill EP was born. An executive at iTunes heard the songs online and contacted 5 Points Records with a request to release them digitally, with exclusive rights for one month. Grant and the label happily complied, and iTunes debuted Kill Kill on October 21, with wider distribution through ADA one month later.

 

Lizzy Grant is a singer-songwriter from New York. Her debut 3-song EP consists of the hypnotic title track “Kill Kill,” the narcotic and eerily beautiful “Yayo”, and the catchy uptempo “Gramma.”

 

Im just putting this here for future reference

[evilentity 13,303]

Bumping this thread since the OP also deals with the question of when did she live in Alabama, a claim she repeated in her Fader interview:

I’ve lived a lot of different lives. I lived down in Alabama with my boyfriend, I lived here in Brooklyn and in Jersey. I’ve been a lot of different people, I guess.