Hundred Dollar Bill

So I was perched in the tinyleak chat. I had a lot of fun!
 
gah! the traders were discussing what songs to leak like:
Roses, Making Out, I'm Fucked, Midnight Dancer Girlfriend, and another song with a title like My Best Day (can't really remember for sure)
 
Another thing of interest was that Lana has another shelved album called Rock Me Stable and songs on the album are being traded around among the community.
 
One trader was really pissed because he had recently gotten a hold of unreleased songs but they were all leaked during the Holocaust. I told him that he had gotten everything only to lose everything. So now he knows what true freedom is.

"Million Dollar Man" really does it for me, and I see a lot of people hate it/prefer the demo. It's the most appropriate use of the Auto-Tuned Loon and it's so atmospheric.

So now we know Sitar sits naked in the dark with his headphones on singing give me the brite lights just like me. Fuck it, wanna touch dicks in the dark sometime?

TAKE IT BACK.
 
 
(Even the unreleased songs, Hellion? smdh)

Mommy's Mercedes and I think it's about K.

I personally don't think she would have included the monologue and made the video 10 minutes long if there wasn't a deeper message she was trying to convey. I mean, the deeper message can be as simple as freedom, sure, but there is always more to look into with Lana. She's just mysterious like that and it's a part of her appeal as an artist and celebrity. I agree with Mattiern here.
 
 
Art can be as simple or as complicated as the artist wants it to be, and it's the job of their audience/fanbase to figure it out to the best of their ability! Otherwise, I doubt Lana would have shared such an emotional video with us. She did it for herself as well as us, I think.
 
 
I think you're being quite self-contradicting here. I see you sometimes on the Lanalysis thread, reading between the lines with others and trying to find out how Lana's lyrics connect to things she's done. Why not do that with the music videos too? You're right in that we don't need to find a deeper meaning, but some people really enjoy doing that and you shouldn't scrutinize them for it. I think it's a beautiful video as well, and sometimes I think people look too much into things like you said, while other times, I love trying to find out why she did this and why she did that. Just my thoughts on things.
 
Anyway, onto my actual opinion of the video! I think it's gorgeous. I understand a bit of both sides of the headdress argument, and it's all speculation until Lana addresses the issue herself, really. Maybe she was trying to symbolize freedom or something, or just didn't think it would be such a big deal to people. I think it's insensitive too, but I'm kind of superficial like Lana is, so in all honesty my first thought when seeing the headdress was, "That's a really gorgeous headpiece, and Lana looks good in it." I do think the gun bit and its inclusion in that part of the song was overdoing it, but I see the points some other people made and it could have been intentional on her part to convey a different message. I definitely believe it's her best video yet and it got me even more excited for the album, which I didn't think was possible!

I personally don't think she would have included the monologue and made the video 10 minutes long if there wasn't a deeper message she was trying to convey. I mean, the deeper message can be as simple as freedom, sure, but there is always more to look into with Lana. She's just mysterious like that and it's a part of her appeal as an artist and celebrity. I agree with Mattiern here.
 
 
Art can be as simple or as complicated as the artist wants it to be, and it's the job of their audience/fanbase to figure it out to the best of their ability! Otherwise, I doubt Lana would have shared such an emotional video with us. She did it for herself as well as us, I think.
 
 
I think you're being quite self-contradicting here. I see you sometimes on the Lanalysis thread, reading between the lines with others and trying to find out how Lana's lyrics connect to things she's done. Why not do that with the music videos too? You're right in that we don't need to find a deeper meaning, but some people really enjoy doing that and you shouldn't scrutinize them for it. I think it's a beautiful video as well, and sometimes I think people look too much into things like you said, while other times, I love trying to find out why she did this and why she did that. Just my thoughts on things.
 
Anyway, onto my actual opinion of the video! I think it's gorgeous. I understand a bit of both sides of the headdress argument, and it's all speculation until Lana addresses the issue herself, really. Maybe she was trying to symbolize freedom or something, or just didn't think it would be such a big deal to people. I think it's insensitive too, but I'm kind of superficial like Lana is, so in all honesty my first thought when seeing the headdress was, "That's a really gorgeous headpiece, and Lana looks good in it." I do think the gun bit and its inclusion in that part of the song was overdoing it, but I see the points some other people made and it could have been intentional on her part to convey a different message. I definitely believe it's her best video yet and it got me even more excited for the album, which I didn't think was possible!

paradise bb

She puts controversial items in all her videos, she likes when it's extreme and deranged somehow.
In :
- Born to Die: the car crash/dead body scene
- Blue Jeans: fingers in the mouth scene
- National Anthem: the whole thing
- Summertime Sadness: suicidal tendency
- Ride: street walking, young girl/old men, headdress..
 
These are things that make her feel "electric", that make the video striking to the viewers, that leave a mark on us. Her videos are little parts of her, sometimes her message/images/lyrics are too personal for the outsiders to get it completely and cause controversy. She doesn't seem to care, she says what she wants to say, the way she feels it. That's what artists do, they're not always politically correct even though they should be careful.
 
That actually brings to philosophical questions: should artists be able to express themselves freely without boundaries? Where/what is the limit to art? Should art be censored because of its subject?...

Hello, I am litewave, of the old forum, which I'm happy to see has been resurrected and growing again. Now that Lana has released Ride and an impressive but controversial video I want to repeat my view that what she tends to represent in her art is not a balanced personality but rather a part of a personality. It is therefore necessarily exaggerated and imbalanced. This part, which I called the soul, has a holistic, open, inclusive, intuitive and ambiguous nature and has been traditionally identified with femininity, because it has been expressed, for both biological and social reasons, more by women than by men. Nevertheless, in all people it is only a part of the personality, and is complementary to the other part, which I called the ego. The ego, for its part, has been identified with masculinity, due to its analytic, focused, selective, separatist, firm and confident nature.

Because of its fragility, the soul has been suppressed and degraded in the Western culture and also in the world in general. In the process, mankind has built amazing structures of economy, science and technology, laying the groundwork for its escape from the forces of nature. But this separation from nature has also separated man from something vital within himself. This imbalance, the domination by the ego, needs to be corrected. The correction does not mean the negation of the ego or its achievements but their consummation in the reunion of the ego and the soul. As Richard Tarnas has observed, this change is already underway:


 

Richard Tarnas: The Passion of the Western Mind (epilogue)

Lana reflects this new social and psychological trend in her art. She embodies the broken soul of America, and of the world, that is now returning.

http://vimeo.com/31309318

(my first post from the old forum can be found on my blog here)

Am hiring hookers for people in here who need to get laid. Expect PMs soon.

FIFY

I, too, have a war in my mind. I don’t know how i feel about the video. I feel a little numb, but these feelings, or lack thereof, have little to do with the actual video and Lana as an artist and what she’s created, and more to do with how i feel about life in general lately (i think watching Samsara last night really fucked me up even more than i have already been feeling). I think i like the Ride video? But i should watch it more at a later time when i'm not feeling this way.
 
What i do have concrete thoughts on: Watching this, i realize how American i am and how inescapable it is. I really love things that are truly American. All of the imagery throughout the video is great--so classic, so iconic, so familiar but so vibrant and fresh. You know, if there was ever going to be something that hipsters latched onto and made them finally come around to Lana, it’s this video, as repugnant as that thought may be. I love the actors that were chosen and the authenticity they bring to the video. News flash for some of you: those guys are probably a lot more desirable to some women than you care to think. Man, i would KILL to be unit photographer on this set! The cinematography is great (though, in my opinion, still doesn’t top the BJ cinematography). The whole thing could have been a little rawer, but, still, this feels like real, early ’70s first wave of American independent cinema. My only problem in this regard is how fast the editing is--i HATE what has become the standard pacing of editing.
 
Re: the headdress: I cringed very hard during those shots. Not sure what she’s aiming for there. Why is that there? However, she wouldn’t be Lana Del Rey if there wasn’t something problematic about her, and i like that about her. It's interesting to see the image of a gun being held up to a Native headdress, that's for sure. What’s funny is that for some people (those who just don’t “get it”), it takes blatant mocking of a culture or explicitly stated disdain to consider something offensive/insensitive/careless toward a culture, and these scenes, it seems, would actually fit their narrow view of insensitivity, because they actually do seem to be mocking of Native cultures (acting “crazy” in the desert with alcohol and guns!) However, on the other hand, from my subjective standpoint, i myself as the viewer am also able to take away a completely different interpretation of whatever Native metaphor may be embedded in there, and that is freedom. Which is what the whole video is about, right? Now, that’s obviously not a very common association to draw from Native Americans, but think about pre-Colonial America--is that not absolutely representative of freedom if there ever was such a thing? (i.e. a more fundamental freedom rather than a bogus, empty concept of freedom, i.e. McFreedom). Still, though, this feels fucking uncomfortable. Surprise, surprise, it's Lana Del Rey.
 
Oh, one last thing: i don’t understand why the audio quality in all her videos is so poor. This seriously sounds like it’s 240p. I really hate the internet, it is the great destroyer of everything. Can you imagine after all the time, effort, energy, money, talent, and skill that went into the engineering and production of the song, and the production of the video, that this compressed-to-death video on youtube is what comes out? Oy. Hopeless times for art.

I don't think a white person wearing a headdress is inherently insensitive. I think it's the context in which it is being done, and here, I thought it was appalling.
 
 
Really? You don't look at a person's actions? Someone tells you, "I didn't eat your cake" and they have icing all over their face and is seated in front of the empty plate your cake was once on, you're going to believe them? Okay.
 
Again, I don't think this was an intentional move on Lana's part, nor do I think she's bigoted. I'd like to stress this.
 
 
Interesting point, but frankly, this simply isn't plausible. A white woman wearing a headdress, brandishing a gun and acting drunk is symbolic of a much larger problem here. When you dismiss the image Lana portrayed in the music video as simply something to make fun of/trivial/meaningless, you're inadvertently dismissing the atrocities committed against the aboriginal people [read the quoted information below]. This is on-going. This is a vicious cycle that still plagues aboriginals today. This isn't as "simple" as "LOL, I stole ur land!"
 
 
But apparently Native Americans are supposed to laugh this off!!! "LOL, these are just silly ~differences~ that happened a long ago!!! This is meaningless!! LOL don't even think about cycle of alcoholism and poverty that was put into motion by us white people and still plagues Native Americans today!!! Oh, ur father is an alcoholic and ur mom committed suicide and you live in poverty? LOL, laugh it off!! We stole ur land a long time ago, we're not responsible for that!! Let's just can chalk it up to ~differences~ and laugh and say this is trivial and continue making fun of the culture we tried to wipe out. LOLLLLL."

Pass around my flyer to expose Lana Del Rey, gais.
 

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I think she has the perfect voice to sing White Christmas. I'd also like to hear her sing Blue Christmas similar to Elvis' version.

I'm leaving the competition.

NOTE: Please respect the privacy of people mentioned in this post who are not public figures.

Here's something "juicy"...

Some time ago I was reading this interview and wondered if the teacher she mentions was a teacher at her boarding school.
 
If you do a little digging, using archive.org you can find that there was a Mr. Campbell that was an English teacher at her boarding school when she attended there, though he doesn't teach there now, and that they follow/friend each other on various social media platforms.

I subsequently discovered "Prom Song (Gone Wrong)" which is a love song in a high school setting, which notably has the following lyrics: "You played me Biggie Smalls and then my first Nirvana song."

More recently, in preparing for the covers-themed LanaDelReydio show I'm working on, I was looking up interviews where she mentions Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, or "Heart-shaped Box" and noticed this in one of the interviews I found:
 
I nearly did a spit take. But then I found something really weird. In another interview published just a couple days later, she changes the story:
 
Suddenly, Mr. Campbell turns into a she. WTF is that about? Is she trying to hide something?
 
Now I'm not necessarily saying I think she fucked her teacher. But I think she at least fantasized about it. (Perhaps the fact that it's her teacher is what "Gone Wrong" refers to.) And I think "Lolita" is about him too. Consider that in Nabokov's novel, Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged literature professor.

All of which just makes this serendipitous:

Here are mine ^_^
 
 

I just get this feeling she could possibly be one if she just keeps doing what shes doing. She needs to put out a biography or a movie or something!
 
 
My dear Marilyn=/ I like her for different reasons, much more personal ones. Ive read multiple biographies, and im pretty sure none of them are accurate. She was very special though, very very special.

Delicious

Me.

Boy, it's late, walk me home, put your hand in mine
At the gates, stop and say, "Be my valentine."
You are by far the brightest star
I've ever seen and I never dreamed
I'd be so happy that I could die
 
You used to say that I was beautiful like Cleopatra
But you the king too, so I would say it back at ya
I'd flip my hair and make you stare and put my makeup on
And make up stories 'bout my life and put on very cherry balm
And even then I knew that we were something serious
That you would dominate my thoughts like radio to Sirius
 
It's you in the hall like hello, hello
Up against the wall like let's go, let's go
 
Let me take you out of this town
Let me do it right now, baby
Dancing 'til the dawn, staying forever young
Let's get out of this place
'Cause you're starting to waste within this teenage wasteland
You will never see my face
If you don't get me out of this place now, baby, I'm not crazy
I'm leaving, are you coming with me?
 
If you're lonely, baby, hold me
You're my only one
Watching television, kiss until we see the sun
So far we are safe in the dark
And I never dreamed that I'd be the queen
And I'd be so happy that I could die
 
You used to call yourself the don and call me queen Diana
You always make me blush and say "Shut up boy, you're bananas"
You pull my hair and push me down and chase [me make me run?]
You played me Biggie Smalls and then my first Nirvana song
So even though when no one's friends we're really serious
I knew you loved me by the way you looked in second period
 
It's you in the hall like hello, hello
Up against the wall like let's go, let's go
 
Let me take you out of this town
Let me do it right now, baby
Dancing 'til the dawn, staying forever young
Let's get out of this place
'Cause you're starting to waste within this teenage wasteland
You will never see my face
If you don't get me out of this place now, baby, I'm not crazy
I'm leaving, are you coming with me?
 
I know that they say that all I want is to have fun
And get away for rainy days
I know that they think I've come undone, but I'm in love
I wannna run, run, run away
I'm leaving, are you coming with me?
 
Let me take you out of this town
Let me do it right now, baby
Dancing 'til the dawn, staying forever young
Let's get out of this place
'Cause you're starting to waste within this teenage wasteland
You will never see my face
If you don't get me out of this place now, baby, I'm not crazy
I'm leaving, are you coming with me?

I seriously cannot wait to hear this song. I definitely think it will be one of her best.

perhaps i'm wrong, but i interpreted that fluorine meant that this type of appropriation that strips things of their true meaning is rampant in this tumblr day and age, not that it's OK for it to be so. it's fundamental that we question everything and not accept the status quo and and just give up and shrug and think "that's just how things are". no way! this is a great discussion because it helped a lot of people transcend their individual, possibly uninformed perspective on this and other matters. lana herself has appropriated images just because they're beautiful to her and by changing their context gives them a new "artistic" connotation. her glamorization of the mob is terrible, for example, when you think of the people who are subjected to the tiranny of the mafia in italy (and worldwide). i think it's worthwile to debate and give things real thought. that's what i love about this forum: through themes that stem from lana-related discussions, everyone reflects on important issues and shares their views and in that, we are mutually enriched by other's outlooks and personal experiences and sometimes reconsider previous stances. hopefully all of this can lead to broadening our horizons and transcending the limitations of our geographical and mental locations