Quentin

"He helped transform her from a painfully shy teenager to a world superstar – and as Lady Gaga prepares to launch new album Artpop, he should be basking in glory.
But instead, music manager Bob Leone, who also set Lana Del Rey on her path to fame, is broke and homeless, forced to move back in with his frail 88-year-old mother.
He claims that Gaga, 27, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, left him ruined – failing to reward him after he helped land her first major record deal.
And he says his grievances against the flamboyant New York-born singer has been taken up by Del Rey, who has blasted Gaga in a string of sharp-tongued lyrics.
The jibes, which appear in the  lyrics of her new song So Legit, include: ‘Stefani, you suck, I know you’re selling 20 million. Wish they could have seen you when we booed you off in Williamsburg.’
Leone says the lyrics reflect Lana’s fury at the way Gaga and her father Joe failed to reward him. 
‘She was very upset at the way I had been treated,’ he said. ‘We’ve spoken about it. She feels it wasn’t right.’
Leone, 64, discovered Gaga at the Triad Theatre, Manhattan, in 2000, when he was National Project Director at the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The young Stefani, then just 14, attended several of his songwriting workshops.
He said: ‘She was painfully shy back then. When she came to one of my open mic sessions with her mother, she’d just look at the floor and her feet.
‘I went over to her and said, “Stefani, I know why you feel intimidated, as everyone is older in here, but promise me when you come back next week, I want you to get up on stage and hear what you got.”
‘And she did. That’s when I knew that she was going to be a superstar. Although I never knew she would be this popular and more recognisable than Obama and Oprah.
   
‘I asked when she was only 17, “What do you want as a creative  person, to be known for great songwriting?” She looked me in the eye and without hesitation said, “I want world domination.’”
At the time, Leone held showcases at a Manhattan venue, inviting acts from across the US to perform in front of top record company bosses. He put his young starlet Stefani on the bill in front of record executive Wendy Starland.
Impressed, Starland was keen to pair Stefani with Rob Fusari, who went on to co-produce Gaga’s debut album The Fame. The pair recorded a demo and Stefani signed a record deal just months later in September 2006. It was at this point that Leone stopped playing an active role in  her career.
But he claims promises made just before this major breakthrough, in the six months when he was officially working as Gaga’s manager, were never kept, mainly due to the involvement of her father, Joe.
Leone said: ‘She [Gaga] said to  her dad he could be her business manager, but she wanted me as her manager as she wanted to sign with a major label.
‘I was happy to then stand aside, glad I could help, but Joe never forgave me for being her manager.
‘He despised me for accepting the offer to manage her. When I asked for a contract, he constantly came up with excuses why not, which went on for a couple of months, but he said, “I give you my word, you’ve been into my house, when you get her the major record deal, you will be fairly compensated.”
‘That never happened... I was just tossed aside. 
‘I love Stefani, I miss Stefani. I grieved for her when she became Lady Gaga. She literally transformed into a different human being. I grieved for years.’
  Leone’s row with Gaga’s father reignited in 2010 when, struggling for cash, he decided to auction off a collection of unreleased CDs and recordings that the pair had made when she was a teenager. Within hours her legal team had quashed the release and threatened Leone. ‘Some of this music dated back to when she was 15. I thought it was maybe worth a lot. But as soon as it was made public, their lawyer called me.
‘He called me four times with ridiculous threats about copyright infringement and violating propriety rights of her name.
‘It was David versus Goliath and I accepted a settlement of $10,000 dollars. $1,000 of that went to my lawyer, $3,000 to the auction house, so I was left with $6,000.’
Now broke, Leone reveals he may one day be forced to sell the only letter he has from Gaga in a bid to raise more cash after leaving his Manhattan home.
  ‘I lived there for 31 years, but it got to point where I couldn’t afford it, my savings had disappeared  and I had no choice but to move back to be with my mother. I live on a  disability cheque and that’s it. I found Gaga but I haven’t got a penny from her.’ Despite his predicament and his grievances with Lady Gaga, Leone holds no grudges against Lana Del Rey, despite not receiving any financial reward for her success.
He says this is because he was only Del Rey’s mentor and never acted as her manager,
Leone believes her father’s personality had a marked impact on Lady Gaga.
He said: ‘She says she did it [seek fame] for world domination and to be more famous than anyone else, but I think the reason she wanted that was to get her father’s approval.’
A spokesman for Lady Gaga declined to comment."
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2401543/Bob-Leone-ex-manager-Lady-Gaga-penniless-living-elderly-mother.html

Unless Daft Punk perform tonight. :hairflip2:

I want Blurred Lines to win Video of the Year because I like to watch the world burn.

@@Quentin omg you're right, Flower looks beautiful~
i love that sort of attention to detail and also this blurred line between interactive art and video games, that's gr8 tbh.

Yup, last week. And yeah I completely agree with you, this game is so beautiful. But it's also a bit short, I'll probably do it again really soon.
 
You might like their other game, 'Flower' released a few years ago (also gorgeous af):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJam5Auwj1E
 

@@SitarHero Oh shit, there goes my rep implying I have one
 
Um, yes. What can I say, I sometimes get sucked deep into the Julian YouTube wormhole.
Like, 2 days ago I noticed he mentions a whole bunch of music during interviews & started writing it all down. Then slsk was my friend, and that was it.
 
PS - Oh cool, tell me what you think of it after you listen to it!

@@Quentin
 
 
 

OMG...

Bless the lovely & passionated person who made this compilation for his anniversary, y'all should check it out!

Ikr, dude looks old af. Yesterday someone (@@Beemo, I think) asked about his age in a status and I found out some random site that said he was 34 - which I totally believed. Later @@Quentin & @ told me that no, he was actually younger than her and 25-ish. The funny part is that I'd also found some news article from 2012 that said his age was 23, but totally disregarded it while saying 'pffffft yeah riiiiiiiigh' out loud.
 
Either him and Lana are truly soulmates & both have a penchant for lying about their age, or this guy is one of the oldest 25 year olds I've ever seen...

I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to see that there's no Strokes topic here on the forum. I mean, there's basically a topic about every other band and artist BUT The Strokes. What gives?!
 

 
 
So, as LanaBoards (only?) resident Strokes stan I felt the obligation to open one.
 
Ta-da!
 

 
 
Any other fans here, casual or otherwise?
 
Favourite album / song(s)? Favourite solo project? And I feel like such a teenage fangirl asking this but hey, why the hell not favourite band member?
 
 
Anyway, here's one of my favourite songs - unreleased & absolutely beautiful:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2g0aQdsnXc
 
And here's what's *probably* my all-time favourite performance:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgbEWdObQAQ
 

I don't know if "literally nothing" can't, but I agree that when it comes to music most opinions aren't. I mean, even music critics - who are supposedly (and the key-word here is 'supposedly'...) the most impartial listeners - are influenced by all sorts of stuff, from individual taste to preconceived notions about the artists they're reviewing to wanting to sound 'cool' & stay relevant.
 
That's one of the aspects I was referring to when I mentioned her limitations as a songwriter; the lyrics can be unbelievably cheesy & cliché, she also repeats herself *a lot* & I'm not so sure how good she really is when it comes to the actual melodies. Personally, I don't think anything (or almost anything) she writes is ironic or 'meta'. I think Lana is in a way pretty naïve, and by that I mean she's the opposite of the calculating, business-savvy popstar who knows exactly what to say & do in order to turn most situations in her favour & manipulate public opinion. I think that's apparent in a lot of her attitudes, interviews, etc. but also in her lyrics. She's genuine & says exactly what she wants to say, and I think it had never crossed her mind that people could hate her for it (one of the reasons why I think she's never really gotten over the initial American rejection). Similarly, I don't think she realises when she's being cheesy. All that makes her very vulnerable to criticism, but it's also a HUGE part of her appeal imo & one of the reasons why we let so many of her cringeworthy lyrics slide.
t's pretty ironic that's she was basically persecuted for being inauthentic when I legit believe she's one of the most authentic popstars out there, which is basically the reason why we even have a Lanalysis thread - and imo her authenticity has nothing to do with whether K existed or not, or whether she dated Gnecco or was just an obsessive fangirl, but the fact that she treats her music like her personal diary & talks about her darkest desires, dreams, fantasies without giving a single fuck if what she's writing about is cringey, ridiculous, disturbing, or whatever. And to me that trumps a technically better but emotionally sterile song anyday.

I ask myself these same questions sometimes and could probably write a huge-ass text about it but I'm lazy so fuck that.
 
I think it's possible to be objective while evaluating musical quality, at least to some extent; then again, stuff like 'meaningful lyricism' is so damn subjective & dependent on personal taste...
 
Anyway, about Lana & in all honesty, I would never go as far as calling her a  genius tbh. She has an interesting vision &  imo her main talent is her ability to create a very vivid imagery / mood with her lyrics in most of her songs; I think the music videos are an extension of that, and even if she's not responsible for every single artistic decision, I do think the concept / general idea behind each video is all hers. That being said, I think she has a few limitations in terms of her songwriting abilities & is probably more of a writer than a musician (In a way).
 
So I guess that's my attempt at unbiased & 'objective' criticism, but I don't think that's worth more than any other personal opinion tbh. Ultimately you like what you like, and that's it.

That's an interesting question & I'd love to read more replies tbh.
 
I've only been to a concert alone once and it was hands down, by a loooong mile the best concert I've ever been to. Not only was it a show by my fave band, it was also completely WILD in a way that most definitely wouldn't have happened hadn't I been alone.
 
So I strongly recommend doing it *at least* once preferably while you're single

Made me think of an episode from The Soup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptmCVu3Ef34
 

Made me think of an episode from The Soup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptmCVu3Ef34
 

Hello fag

I totally overlooked the "eight years ago" part at first ( at a possible reference to Sirens or her other early recordings) but I'd been meaning to contact Steven Mertens for months since @@Trash Magic and I put some things together about him (which perhaps belong in Lanalysis). When I saw she mentioned him by name in this article, I got on that immediately and sent him an e-mail. I'll report back any response, but please don't bother him in case it interferes with my attempts to correspond with him.
 
In addition to sharing the bill with her at a Cross-Pollination show, and playing in her backing band as TPD noted (he's the guy that looks sort of like McNulty from The Wire in the Canal Room videos), Mertens has actually been referred to in at least two other interviews with Lana. Remember that Megan and Menace in the Mornings interview?
(You can listen here at around 5:20.) Regina Spektor (who TPD notes Mertens also played for) is married to Jack Dishel who was in a band called The Moldy Peaches. Guess who else was in The Moldy Peaches? Steven Mertens. I wasn't completely convinced at first that that's who she was talking about (I thought it was more likely another Moldy Peaches member, Adam Green, since his initials are AG, likely a red herring) until @@Trash Magic pointed out something I'd missed-- in that Mizrahi interview she said:
A little digging shows that Steven Saint = Steven Mertens (see here and here).
 

Guilty.
 
Usually when it's ~~too much to deal with for some reason. I swear it's not on purpose, I'm sorry.

and a special shout out to the homie who made rick's website

and a special shout out to the homie who made rick's website

and a special shout out to the homie who made rick's website