slang

Hejira was like one of the best jazz/pop records of the decade. And having collaborated with Charles Mingus afterward (who asked to collaborate with her, I think) has gotta be a highlight in an artistic career (in terms of ego-stroking), even though she often spoke of that album as derailing her career (see also Dog Eat Dog). Lana can beat Joni on prolificness, if she keeps going the way she is, but not diversity; it remains to be seen if Lana can match her on anti-pop musical ambition (Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Hissing of Summer Lawns). Hope she tries. BTW, I suspect this is Joni on Lana's instagram (i.e., we know Joni's had a lot of illnesses and aged hard), but I was never sure and as nobody else I know of has mentioned it, I'm really unsure. But it still looks like it might be her, so nows the time to ask, anybody know? If so, anybody know the older guy? https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt9mDkXjlY7/

"Flat out lying" to characterize an entire diverse corpus of songs is a tad harsh. For one thing, the only time I remember her *specifically* saying something like "yeah I lived this" was in regard to the Ride video (not the song). Her response seemed to be needed (imo), because people were just amazed (aka appalled) at the situations she portrayed: being picked up by random strangers after midnight; being a biker chick in a biker gang. Youtube comments were critical about the latter especially, in the sense that being a biker chick almost never turns out well for the chick. It seems to be an empirical fact (if she's not lying about the video), that she was very very lucky finding the specific bikers she found. The other issue is the distinction between lying and acting. She can at least act very well, even if she didn't directly experience the things she sings about, that is she may be able to empathize well and get the experience from others (including literature). Also she doesn't have to act in any particular way now to prove anything about what she experienced back then. Finally, a fair amount of her songs do seem autobiographical and self-aware (National Anthem, This is what makes us girls), and she even parodies her "fakeness" at times: FMWUTTT, MPG, maybe even Gods and Monsters and Cola, but part of the appeal of those last 2 songs, imo, is you don't know how real they are.

It wouldn't make sense, imo, to call it HTD unless the guy she's singing about actually did disappear and the person she's whispering to at the end is his kid (is it John's or is it Jim's?). Is that how everybody's interpreting it? So not quite a "happy" ending but a reassuring one. The song is a good example of her singing about fictional (or at least non-autobiographical) situations just because she's interested in them (e.g., Fine China). Nothing wrong with that, but as they say in commercials, "results will vary for individuals" .

The lyrics seem pretty Lana-esque to me (I know she didn't write them, but they seem akin to her). Also the production seems *very* Lana-esque (i.e. vocal harmonizing/layering, use of harp, operatic backing vocals), so I'm hoping she gets a co-producer credit out of this. Wouldn't mind it being on NFR as a closer (i.e., like an encore as she did with DLMBM on HM), but this makes the most sense if the album is pretty long with original material (like HM), which I hope it is.

If the music is really great and it "flops", it's really pop music that's taking the hit, not Lana Del Rey. Haven't you ever liked a band just because you thought they were great and wished they had sold more, because pop music might then follow the trend (i.e., become more creative and risk-taking)?

Sorry (in advance) for the rant, but I always need to vent on this topic. Hope it's entertaining. The twitter quote is actually hypocritical to some degree, given she doesn't unsuppress AKA, and release May Jailer and all of those weird and wildly divergent (yet high quality) unreleased. I mean I really don't want there to be a "Lana Del Rey aesthetic" if it means her plurality can never be officially released and recognized. The quote should enable her to do those things, but sadly she doesn't. I'd also like her to disconnect her self image from her art. She should not feel that a song has to represent her *at all* or that she has to abide by an aesthetic, and I wish she'd just say this to interviewers. Anyway, maybe binge listening to Eminem's Marshall Mathers LP (which I recently discovered) could help her understand how to do the disconnect of artist from art. I mean it's clear (and I think he even says this) that the songs on that album do not represent him, but merely show how he wishes to express himself in his art at the current time. My point is that nothing in her past lyrics or past songs should make her uncomfortable, given Eminem's success with what is on that album. Also, my what a bizarre universe this is that we live in (i.e., his album won a grammy, sold more than all of LDR's records combined, and made a bunch of people's all-time-best album lists, and ngl, I also like the album).

Yes, but it's the "multitudes" part of the quote (from Whitman) that explains that it is not, in fact, a contradiction, but a plurality. One outstanding question is how responses to questions like, "which song represents you", is stable with time, or reflects mood factors, or is playing into expectations (jerking the interviewer's chain, which I think historically she likes to do).

So there's a song on the Simon and Garfunkel album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme,"Flowers Never Bend with The Rainfall". I'm wondering if her poetry book title (if it's still titled: Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass) is possibly a flipside perspective to that song lyric. As such, her book title could be a death reference of sorts (not a helluva surprise, in hindsight). here's an excerpt of the S & G song: So I'll continue to continue to pretendMy life will never end And flowers never bend With the rainfall full lyrics: https://genius.com/Simon-and-garfunkel-flowers-never-bend-with-the-rainfall-lyrics I also noticed that I noticed the "continue to continue" lyric reminding me of that "thinking that I thought" lyric in HIADT (great minds lyric alike). I'll opine (as everybody's a poem critic these days) "continue to pretend to pretend" might have been better. It makes my brain hurt a little more, and you really can't have too many "end" syllables in that stanza of Simon's.

I prefer to think of this as a range thing. She has great range in whatever it is she does, including instagram photos and or social-media selfies. I mean the time (recently?) she convincingly facially-imitated a Picasso (?) caricature of a dismayed Christ (?) on instagram. If I were to say something like "your fave could neva", I probably wouldn't get any arguments about that. Her totally devastating retained-happiest-picture-of-a-recent-suicide-victim for Hope is a dangerous thing, or her Jodorowsky-El-Topo-inspired cute-face-but-missing-hand-freak-crawling-toward-you pic for instagram, are other instances of this. To inject more NFR-release-related flavor to this post, let me opine that I'm also fine with her using the bitchy-pouty twitter pic (or some variant) for an NFR album cover. That fits the era's fuck-you attitude and is an excellent contrast to the L4L cover (which was a great contrast to her previous eras covers, as were her earlier covers to their earlier eras). Most importantly the twitter pic has grown on me (and I don't mean fungus-wise).

The animosity toward her posse is a kind of mass jealousy. I mean it's understandable and all, but we really don't know how much time she spends with them. For what it's worth, I see her posse as a kind of camouflage in social settings (a bevy of beauties makes LDR less noticeable), with their photo-recording each other in public like hanging a do-not-disturb sign on their social presences. Of course, Lana Del Rey (Miss Multitudes) would have to deflect this interpretation somewhat by posting her socio-biological motivations on Instagram, but from what you have said, the strategy may work.

I think questions about NFR -- by her fans to her -- have to be geared to getting at if she is still confident about it. If she is, she should definitely respond so, and no release date need be given (so no pressure in responding). If she's not she *might* say so and why, but more likely she'll say nothing. I think fans should also want their comments to increase her confidence. I'm not following social media responses to her silence closely, so are people trying to increase her confidence effectively? It's not the same thing as (simply) kissing up to her, but you need to impart the idea that her confidence is the one thing her fans (e.g., me), would not want her to lose, and this is about her music, not the promo. So maybe she has an album like the Ghost of Tom Joad in store, so what? I'll bet she'll do it (a lot) better than Springsteen did (who incidentally has an album coming this summer, along with Madonna, and the Black Keys). I also think her recent releases sound competitive with the big and/or notable releases that have occurred so far (Eilish, Marina, Sara Bareilles, Jenny Lewis, Weyes Blood). Hopefully she thinks that too.

Maybe it's shades of (as opposed to shading) Norman Rockwell, as in the Easter egg baby photo and the recent lap dog photo (lucky dog). I'm hoping there's also going to be a "Fucking" part to the scenario coming up (similar to what Marina's doing with Love and Fear).

The idea that an older song should be on an upcoming album should be largely replaced by (or not be as prominent as) the idea of her collecting leaks in separate releases (and unsuppressing AKA). Maybe you wouldn't buy them, but what about other people unfamiliar with her work? I wish the issue were more promoting her diversity as an artist (thereby encouraging pop diversity), rather than the "tragedy" of this or that specific song being unreleased. That said, I think BAR could work for NFR, aesthetically, and as anything after 40 mins of new material from an artist is a gift, if BAR were added to that, I shouldn't mind it at all.

I'm getting a manic-depressive vibe from some of her recent posts, which may just mean snippet tactics shouldn't be applied to poems, as it just exacerbates the ambiguity she usually puts in her work. If she wants us to react to what she does, here's what I got: "You can have a life beyond your wildest dreams all you have to do is change everything" On the upside this does seem to say something opposite to Hillsong (TV is my reference), where you might expect to hear (ad naseum) just surrender yourself to Christ and everything will change (for the better). Here (I will optimistically assume) she puts the onus of change's effect on the change itself. On the downside, her statement also implies that everything is wrong. Her writing things with different colors doesn't help me impute any seriousness to her thoughts, which may have been intentional on her part (even if it's, in fact, unintentional). On the third hand, she could just be posing a tautology; if you change everything it's incomprehensible. "I measure time by the days I've spent away from you that thought occurred to me as I watched the sky go dark from blue" OK, so Neil Young has it "out of the blue and into the black", Get free has it "out of the black and into the blue", now we're back to Neil's more pessimistic view, and she also says "It comes in waves". That would be the manic-depressive vibe. The philosophical pessimist in me also resonated with the idea that people do, in fact, measure time by the days (well years) they've spent away from their birth. Need the rest of the poem (if there is some) to know precisely what she's getting at here (mother?, philosophical pessimism?, absent lover?). While I like the "Borg-collective" imagery she's been using of late, I can't map it into a good thing (part of the change that changes everything) or a bad thing. The upside is that she may be a trekkie in some sense (which is a potentially religion-neutral, homophillic, and pro-technology position); the downside is she's being assimilated by something and the imagery expresses some kind of fear. Happy Easter!

It's OK not to like every song she puts out, but the "One person's garbage is another person's masterpiece" phenomenon is something not discussed nearly enough here, imo (e.g., I was tempted to run to the defense of Moi Je Joue last week). However, I don't think either of us think VB is garbage. I get "vulnerable" for VB in the sense of she's super happy in that song and maybe she shouldn't be? So HIADTFAWLMTH-BIHI is presented next? I don't have personal vibes to VB, or the other songs you mention. Instead I'm just attracted to her range in singing about love situations. I like VB, because she's taking risks (and hopefully some of the instrumental part is her fooling around too). I like the VB chorus, because it's something I'd never expect to hear in a song from the usual suspects (e.g., Taylor, Lorde, or Adele), and maybe predictably so, as that chorus is a tad socially incorrect, but another way of guaging its patheticness is in relationship to love-lorn songs by males. In particular, "I'm your man" (Leonard Cohen), which seems to be a central reference in MAC. I really don't know why she has it in MAC, but it does seem important (and strangely natural) that she does. https://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-im-your-man-lyrics

Thanks for saying what you actually cringe about, which makes your post much more interesting, than the average cringe post. She also sings "you're beautiful and I'm insane", which makes it complicated to understand just how, in fact, she is portraying herself. That might have been a reverse-descriptor reference to Barrie, who likes Venice Beach (he filmed some videos there). I can speculate that song writers often intentionally re-map, what might be taken to be semi-probable facts, just to disguise what they are singing about. Her position on love may also be more complicated than people generally give her credit for. To say something like "when you love someone their happiness is your happiness" (not sure what her exact words were, I think this was from a tweet), this could be a really bad deal if it's asymmetric (i.e., one does not love as the other), but if it's symmetric then it's probably a good deal (provided heads don't explode from biofeedback). Because the symmetric case might be fabulously rare, I often think she sings more about unobtainable ideals, and not real people, in her love-idolization songs.

like this bit of trollery? https://www.trend-news.com/5cb570fea1556/lana-del-rey-retires-from-making-new-music.html I don't have anything comforting to say, but the poetry releases, if not conventional promo, are at least very interesting. The worst thing for her to do is to not release NFR, but if releasing poetry helps her do this I'm all for it. If she's comfortable releasing poetry, how can she not get more comfortable releasing more diverse stuff, but I can't see her poetry making a big impact unless it's a low-cost digital release (or perhaps just fully released on her instagram).

^ While it is good to compare LDR's poems to others (e.g., Amanda Lovelace), the abstract characteristic of cringiness doesn't do either poet much justice. In reviewing AL (a little), she obviously is more agenda-oriented than LDR (even if I think LDR supports the agenda): https://www.theodysseyonline.com/24-poems-princess-saves-struggling It's also interesting is to compare LDR to someone from her field (i.e., artsy pop/rock) that we know she likes and that also wrote poems (although I'm not sure he tried to publish them): https://culturacolectiva.com/books/10-poems-by-jim-morrison-you-must-read-to-turn-your-world-upside-down ---------------------- Her latest poem is a good example of how non-prevailing prototypical Christian beliefs can be in her art (as opposed to whatever her non-prototypical beliefs may be). I mean it's kind of an existential anthem, isn't it?

Poor Lana. Can't even culturally appropriate her own culture. I wouldn't mind her changing the name to Norman Rocking Fuckwell (as somebody may have suggested way back), but I think that would make the estate feel worse actually. She could put BAR on it (if NFR, the song, is not BAR), and then call the album BAR. I'd go for that and possibly a slight rewording of NFR, if that's a distinct song (i.e., no song should be left behind).

​The poem "Never to Heaven" is something you would *never* see as an inspirational "commercial" break on Hillsong TV. It is a not-so-quietly existential poem (aka, the big sadness?). I wonder if Joe is both a particular person she likes and/or a generic significant other (e.g., Joe Everyman aka Average Joe).

Chateau Marmont (?) she goes to a lot, but has it been established that she goes to Hotel Bev Hills? Here's an article with a list of hotels, very worthy boycott cause, imo. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/asia/celebrities-boycott-brunei-hotels-scli-intl/index.html

I'm back from the Weyes Blood thread in entertainment/music, where I thought I saw a selfie of her and LDR together, so they do have some kind of history together that I've been asleep on. And this thread also says LDR's stanned her earlier. So maybe LDR is trying to get WB to tour with her a bit (that fits LDR's MO for such?). She does have a much tighter style than LDR (judging that one record and one listen only), but I can't tell if over repeated listens it'll get tiring. I mean I like Regina Spektor and Enya, so I suspect I'll like WB as well.

These sorts of "artists stanning other artists" events are pretty rare, imo, and shouldn't be considered completely random at first blush for that reason, even though I know LDR stans other artists occasionally (including Marina), but seldom so overwhelmingly. So of course I had to stream Titanic Rising (released today) to see if it was worth the hype; I hadn't heard of the group before. Worth the hype? Possibly. There certainly is an artist worth exploring there. She's a great technical singer (and arranger) but with a lot less emotional range (and risk taking) than LDR in her singing (i.e., the kind of risk taking that sometimes makes people think you can't sing controllably). She's also Sub Pop records and I noticed (in Wikipedia) that she had done work with Father John Misty on his last album (on the title track). The second half of her Titanic album also reminds of FJM a bit. I wonder if FJM recommended her to LDR. Finally, the interesting thing to observe now is if and how Weyes Blood responds. I'm hoping for a request for NFR's release date in some artist-to-artist banter (and maybe that's what LDR is hoping to, but who knows). Also LDR might be rattling her label a bit, by insinuating a possible move to Sub Pop, perhaps a better tribute to Kurt's passing today (in 1994)?

Weird Lana is back, and I love that. Her poems don't have to be great; they just have to be enjoyable and non-redundant with other poets' tactics. I think she succeeds on that level (for me). There are also bits buffoonery in her work. It's hard to explain, but here's an example. So "ying" is an intentional misspelling because she doesn't want to be a "yin", which makes her mispelling actually somewhat more original than had she said yin. Yet in the very next line where she has the (golden) opportunity to do a *meaningful* cliche ("hardness" instead of her chosen "toughness", thus emphasizing a sexual inuendo, which is certainly not unknown for her), she sort of says: "hah hah, you think I'm going there, but I'll just do the 'dick pic' poetically after my missed opportunity"-- i.e. "the striking example ... firm in your verticality". Another form of buffoonery is displaying manuscript pages that look typed (and probably are), and using the obvious anachronism of liquid white out, which I would have guessed is non-existent by now owing to computers. Anyway, if she doesn't do a kindle (or digital) release of her book, I'm going to be disappointed. The latest poem seems consistent with her BTD style songs, namely, some kind of weird-male worship and/or longing. The sort of "I'm nothing without you" theme. Also "a mirror to my past life retribution; a reflection of my sadness", seems contrary to the whole MAC song context, but with all the parallel universes she inhabits, you can't see it as contradictory, just parallelory. Anyway I'm thinking feminists are going to have a problem with it. However, for me, it's a just a poem (from one of the most attractive people on the planet) pining after a madman ('s dick? ), so hopefully the artistic sandbox protects her (i.e., literature doesn't have to be about her literally or be an advocation as such). I also like the idea of LDR doing a spoken-word type album (as suggested above), with LDR doing background music, as that would challenge her in ways that would make her grow. Or if she didn't feel up to the music, collabo with Laurie Anderson, who does spoken-word-type songs/albums (but it would probably be the same guy that did Burndt Norton, if it were anybody).

It will always seem real ambiguous to me if she seems to be talking about an effect rather than a cause. For instance, several have mentioned that she might have to change the title of the album, because of the expletive in relation to a famous artist, who may still have living relatives. I mean I hope that particular issue was addressed at the get go, but who knows. Or she might want a certain artistic closure that involves more production. Or the label baddies. All I'm really getting from "I'm" is that she takes responsibility for whatever it is causing the slowdown, because it's her album. Although I know it's a really far-fetched possibility, why wouldn't releasing NFR at the same time as Billie's album not trigger a fan war leading to more album sales for both artists in the long run? True, only one number 1, but who in the grand scheme of things really cares about number 1? For instance, it will not decide the historical importance of the work, imo. Also it's not even going to decide the total amount it sells. I mean BTD was number 2, also Sam Smith's debut was eclipsed by UV, but probably sold (a lot) more than UV.