I know I posted my own iTunes library pretty recently, but I rearranged all of my unreleased albums so they play as albums much more smoothly and cohesively (look out, I'm a wannabe @@SitarHero ):
Methamphetamines (2006/7):
Pin Up Galore (2006/7):
Lizzy Grant: Live (2006-2009):
Motel 6 (2009):
Dum Dum (2010):
Noir (2010):
Us Against the World (2010):
Velvet Crowbar (2010):
Back to tha Basics (2011):
Queen of Disaster (2011):
Starry Eyed (2012-2014):
Life is Beautiful (2015/16):
I hope everyone enjoys these! Any suggestions on sequencing, covers, or anything else (including comments on my ratings for the songs-- drag me pls) are welcome and I'd love to hear them!
Wow this thread is sooo cool. I've been interested (you could say) in Lana's love life recently, i mean how can you not? She sings about her ex-boyfriends in almost all her songs. The one that interests/haunts me the most is K... now this is my theory
K is a guy she met during or before her Sirens era, long story short... He ran an illegal company or some stuff (maybe drugs) and also killed someone (as sung in Drive By/For K). He basically got sent to jail and assumably on death row (also sung in Drive By/For K). He's also the guy of the whole Born To Die trilogy. She sings in Blue Jeans that he was chasing paper, making money which makes sense for the guy she sings about to be K. Now i always get this confused, is K the young guy, with lots of tattoos or is it the old guy? We can see both of those in the West Coast video. In an interview she said that the parts with the young guy are reality and the parts with the old guy are fantasy. Here's what i think: K is the young dude with tattoos that likes alot of drugs, he gets in jail and assumably also gets killed. The old guy is basically her fantasy of how it could've been, if he was still alive and with her. Also at the end of the West Coast video you can see K laying there, dead, and if i can see clearly with blood (4:14). But what about the whole SOC video? It looks like Lana's the one that's dead... I think it's just Lana reversing the roles and saying how she feel dead even tho she's not, and how she haunts K and how he thinks about her all the time when in reality it's actually Lana that constantly thinks about K and sees him etc. (K's also the guy with the blue hair, she sing about him in Birds Of A Feather.)
Diagnosis on transforming Lanalysis post-Jimmy news is not great.
It's sort of looking like her timeline goes...
PRE-SIRENS
- Crush or more on Mr. Campbell, telling her she'd never make it out alive
- K as a teenager and early adulthood until his arrest
- Z-list celebrity who wasn't responsible with his addiction, Lana trying to her best to make him a good man (what do you need to get high for?) but him rejecting her ("Pretty Baby", "Junky Pride")
- Crush on Jimmy Gnecco, seemingly unrelated to the Z-list celeb because they probably were never together
- A married man (I'm Indebted to You) [Meeting in motels, Bill?]
POST-SIRENS
- Arthur Lynn--an easy stand-in for Jimmy Gnecco, a similar "violent love" as evidenced in Diet Mtn Dew, and they actually dated. However, songs about addiction, leaving him because he couldn't be responsible ("Pawn Shop Blues") can't be about him because Lizzy Grant and the Phenomena was active throughout 2007, well after PSB was written. Although he probably had some underground Brooklyn fame, he's not our Z-lister.
- Reeve Carney--featured in videos and photo shoots but he's just vanilla enough to be indistinguishable in any of her songs.
- Nick Fowler--no concrete evidence but he has posted early photos of her and was in the same Arthur Lynn/Jimmy Gnecco/Reeve Carney scene as her. ALSO consider "A Star for Nick".
- Mike Mizrahi is a definite. She leaves him for trying to navigate her career and then wants him back once he has another woman. He played video games lots.
POST-BTD
- A fling with Bradley Soileau
- Someone from the above list returning "Radio" style
- Cheating on and then living happily in poetic bliss with Barrie
Anyone see any overlap? Consider our "irresponsible addict" songs such as Us Against the World, Velvet Crowbar, You & Me, and Pawn Shop Blues.
Don't know if this "unpopular," but it is a series of opinions.
I remember reading a piece that spearheaded Lana’s importance: holding up the lonely torch of the female depressive in pop culture as a voice that deserves to be heard.
I agree with this. It's so easy to see her disaffected nature as a defect, but it's at the core of who she is and why she makes art to begin with. It's what gives her introspection, but also brings forth isolation.
Lana's perspective, from a 'marketability' and thematic angle, is one that would have made more sense in the mid 1990s. She would have kindred spirits in Garbage, Tori, Fiona, even Alanis. But in some ways, her perspective is even more needed now, because there is SUCH a lack of diversity in the females we hear from in pop culture, and the kinds of stories they tell. Shirley Manson of Garbage has pointed this out, fittingly enough. We need to hear from the miserable girl, the loser, the ones who don’t want to play nice, and maybe don’t even get out of bed some days. There’s always been a place for that girl in other media: literature, film, art. Music, especially pop music, doesn’t know what to do with this personality type. If it’s Kurt Cobain or Leonard Cohen (or any number of current male indie mini-gods), it’s tortured genius. If it’s a woman doing it, it’s pathetic, INDULGENT solipsism. How dare you be so lazy, inwardly focused and torpid when there are SOCIAL ISSUES to examine and crusade. That's the attitude Lana faces.
We live in the age of the Totally Transparent, Fervently Disciplined, and Manicured Go-Getter. Taylor. Katy. Demi. Even Rihanna. They are corporate workhorses, THIRSTY for the fame, and more than ready to play and stay in the game. The personality type this workload requires is not for the delicate, sensitive, ambivalent type. They don’t look inward. They are fixated on the crowd. You see these same types in offices all over the world. Type A middle managers. They get shit done, might seem like “team players” (dictators in disguise), but they aren’t interesting and don’t offer a lot of innovation or insight into life, creativity, or much else. I’m sure the economic collapse of the past 10 years and the wreckage of the music industry has a lot to do with why this middle manager pop star archetype has prevailed. It’s sheer survivalism.
The truth is the Lana of Born To Die, and that album itself, is an anomaly. It’s a character study in what it would be like to be a famous pop star. In philosophy, there’s an idea that to create a character, you have to lack what that character has for it to work (Homer vs Achilles is a classic example.) Lana was never a natural star by any means, but she’s clearly seen it as a way to transcend herself or try to another skin on. (“Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” - Oscar Wilde.) To parallel her to Britney, Lana never has had a pre-Blackout glory era. This is where I think some LDR fans get it wrong. BTD was not her Baby One More Time or Oops! or whatever. Even on BTD, she was a propped-up simulacrum of what a pop icon might be like. She represented the IDEA. It was NEVER natural. She was the weirdo philosophy major playing dress up as the cool girl, singing into her mirror. The fact that she found an audience is a small miracle, but her intuitive habitat is still dancing around, alone, with her headphones on, wondering what it would be like to be onstage. The actual stage is foreign to her, and almost besides the point. I bet when she’s up there, she imagines being alone.
Look at ALL her work before, and after, BTD. The work of an outsider dreaming her life away, imagining that fame could transform her, fulfill her, then finding nothing there. Even before she became famous, the lyrics suggest she already was aware of its empty promise (probably due to her study of doomed cult icons). If anything, what she’s doing now is getting back to her roots: turning her LACK of fulfillment into art, trying to make something tangible of a void within. It’s hard work, and clearly she’s not always up to making it a complete vision. To create and share art is an attempt to tell your story in the hopes of CONNECTING with people. But that’s where it stops for Lana. In solitude, she records her vision then hits “send.” Then she disengages, unable to sustain the ideal in real-time. Unable to fulfill the pop duties. Unable to deliver the big pay off, for herself, or for her fans. It’s like a surrealist film that cuts off in the ‘wrong’ moment, just to leave you on edge. How many times can you get away with it? We’ll be finding out.
And that’s another thing. I think Lana’s “failure” to rise the occasion affects certain fans personally. Not just because they want her to get a Top 10 and compete with the ‘normal’ pop stars. But because maybe they, too, are depressed and know too well what it means to not deliver, to not function optimally, to disappoint people. When you’re depressed, being able to complete ANYTHING can feel like an insurmountable challenge. If you’re blessed with the strange mix of being both ambitious AND prone to depression, you are constantly at war with yourself, which Lana seems to be. Sometimes she has the energy to fight through it and deliver us true magic. These are her little victories. Other times, she drowns in her own ennui and forgets everyone but herself. Some fed up fans say she doesn’t care, but I don’t believe this is true. I’m sure she’s in a state of frequent frustration, with the “world,” but more often, with herself.
Part of what drew me — and many others, I’m sure — to Lana’s work and persona was that she seemed malcontented, if not quite tormented. Life is too much, and not enough, for her. I remember that little-known Gwen Stefani lyric (“I sip on dreams and choke on real things.”) To me, that’s Lana constant M.O. She wants desperately to escape, to isolate, and to never work another day again (the ultimate sin of today’s life-hack-driven, entrepreneurial, “optimize yourself!” digital nomad climate). She never makes it clear what it IS, exactly, that would make her happy, because what she’s asking for is impossible. A LOT of people empathize with this ambivalence, despite the fact that this passive, me vs. the world view of reality is literally censored out of modern day music. You’re not supposed to complain! Things will get better if you live, laugh, and love! LDR will never live, laugh and love first-hand, but she’ll always wonder what that might feel like. And pine for it like its her to mourn.
Female depressives can sustain a career. It doesn’t have to end in a Sylvia Plath/Amy Winehouse tragedy. Shirley Manson and Fiona Apple are still going strong 20 years down the line, and in some ways, seem more connected and ‘healthy’ than ever, while still finding a way to channel their grievances through their art. They’ve evolved their artistry to a level that is undeniably iconic. They will never top the charts again, but that was never the point. They have huge cult followings that will always follow their next move. It’s a family. I’d love for Lana to have this in her 40s, too, but I believe at some point she’ll have to start making art as part of a conversation, not just a soliloquy, for this to happen.
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