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Could the guy be a shaved Jonathon Wilson in glasses? I like Lana's literal beneficence, after weeks of praying for a sign, she delivers a sign. Also kicking myself for not expecting it; isn't this the same MO as the Honeymoon era?

I like the songs previewed from his new album a lot too, but he seems into a "cosmic pessimism" rant, which broadly views the transience of humankind (and of course individual lives) as less significant (at least to the cosmos) than opined by religion. He's pissed off at the political climate sure, and rankled by the fact people kill each other over superficial differences, but the bottom line is his own transience to which all the crap in the world gives an unstable security. So at the end of the day all we have is each other and your luck is maxed out if you are experiencing your transience in love. I'm getting this not only from lyrics (admirably captioned in his videos) but also from *the film* Pure Comedy; I mean the part between 17 and 20 mins at the end of the film seems to me to say what I just said. So a title like Pure Comedy comes off as Pure Sarcasm (which is why people hate on him a bit, as these are uncomfortable thoughts). Pessimism is not all that uncommon for artists like FJM. Regina Spektor's most recent album Remember Us to Life has pessimistic themes, despite the fact she is a recent mother (and happy about that). She's someone I'd recommend as being lyrically and musically as good as FJM (although I know less of his work less than hers). LDR has been criticized for being morose, of course, but her take on pessimism is actually more imbued with collages of beautiful moments (though with a breakout album blatantly called BTD, you still get that idea).

He was first brought to my attention by LDR mentioning him in the context of desert island discs on some video interview. Then there was an early InRockuptibles article where she mentions him in the context of Elliott Smith: http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f62/lana-del-rey-september-2011-november-2012-a-148525-9.html <<<<< interviewer: The stage, is it never a pleasure? LDR: I’m too focused to let myself go, I’m afraid of mistakes, so I control everything. When I see images of Jeff Buckley, this extraordinary freedom, I tell myself that he really incarnates music. I don’t. I don’t let myself evade. Music was his life. I constantly think about him. Also about Elliott Smith. But I had to get rid of all of his albums, I felt a certain hostility [from them], an evil side… >>>>> What I understand her to be saying, after my finding and listening to Grace, is that she thinks music history would have been quite different had he (and Smith) lived longer. I mean it's really weird what she's saying otherwise, unless she's talking about the evil from a very great loss. Also, in addition to Jeff's unusually beautiful originals, most remember his Cohen cover, but I know I nearly cried after finding out he had covered Benjamin Britten on the same album. You don't see that kind of musical breadth everyday.

As s/he's coming back from a self-imposed ban, the user name is actually an accurate and clever marketing ploy. Welcome back! I don't think the negativity in the post should be criticized *just* because it is negative. It can be criticized because it is vague though. True quality artist? What the heck is that? The best the post can do is to compare LDR to herself at different stages of her career. And if you're going to say HM is boring or lacks a message? What about all the people that like it (including critics)? I mean it's kind of like saying the sky is green, isn't it? I'm not saying you don't have a right to that opinion; I'm saying your opinion is treated too much as a reality, despite the fact others do not perceive it that way. Oh and what about references like "non-delusional fans" and "0 commercial appeal"? I mean HM still sold respectably for an alt-indie album, and with virtually no promo. Who's delusional?

HM's cover art, as you say, is intended as a (literal) distancing from viewing LDR as a glamor object, while in fact she asserts the opposite from her Starline Tours context (an actual company). It seems intended to jar her fans, imo. So just in terms of doing something it intends (hypothetically speaking), it's very successful, though people may not like it. It will be interesting to see what LDR does next, cover wise. Does she revert to glamor, try something even more abstract than HM, maybe even dwindling to non-existence, or hopefully some whack combination we know she's capable of. But seriously, the cover of HM was pretty good. For comparison purposes, Pure Heroine's cover is the definition of not trying, imo, and at the end of the day isn't a big Adele head just a big Adele head? At least Magritte put that big green apple in a room. Taylor's 1989 cover is an interesting cover for comparison, because it's seeming to do something similar, which is to say Taylor is de-emphasizing her physical self in a rather peculiar, though mundane and familiar way.

Here are the lyrics [again] (don't know how accurate): http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bigsean/nofavors.html I'm not going to defend him (too much), but I'll point out the logical possibility that he may be referring to LDR as more of a symptom than a cause, and she's not the actual target of a hostile thought as in his earlier "cypher". Also as in his earlier cypher, there are a lot of names being pushed around and LDR is not the focus. The Big Sean feature has a lot of references to the random violence reported in the news (usually propogated from fear of race) with diversity of targets and direction. Maybe there's an emphasis on police violence ("That’s for Sandra Bland, ho, and Philando", and a reference to Ann Coulter). BTW, no expert on current events. I am constantly typing "define <variable name here>" in google and usually referring to the urban dictionary definition of things to try to understand the verse. And if he's going to engage in automatic writing (a la Gertrude Stein?), some dark things are going to be dredged up, but these shouldn't be taken as advocations. So I would take his references to LDR as "complimentary" in the sense that she is stuck in his subconscious. That is it's sort of significant that she's appeared twice now. Are there other female personalities that he refers to multiple times across songs? I don't know his work too well, but from what I've heard of Eminem (i.e., I've listened to the "The Eminem Show"), he's definitely talented and isn't going away anytime soon.

Whenever I get perplexed at LDR's Instagrams I go to Taylor Swift's Instagram for possible clarification (I actually like Taylor, but as LDR is the antiSwift, I sometimes think their actions can be coordinated). So I'm wondering if #idontwannaliveforever has anything to do with LDR's recent stemcell organ-harvesting interest.

Well maybe not the album born to die, but the video for National Anthem most definitely is all that. I remember the white supremacists calling her a "traitor to the white race" soon after its premier (these were random internet hits I found on my daily search for "lana del rey news" on google at the time). I mean the scene with their mixed-race children was put intentionally in the video to strike a nerve in those who think race is significant. The problem with the article (in the sense that LDR might have reservations about it) is that escapism is not the answer (and the article hedges on this). On the other hand I don't think she has to write songs about voting democrat. I just hope (and I realize this probably isn't going to happen), her next album is called "solve et coagula" and has some weird songs in it. They don't have to be overly political or specific, just angry or angry/sad. If they are, then any injustice you want can be symbolically pinned to them.

I actually like that part and think it may have been one of her famous post-modern references: \/ o" NO PPPUHLEEEEEEZZZ! >>

Not many prefer old over new, to be sure. But if something is good, it ought to have been released, imo. There's also the interest of knowing where the artist comes from. In that regard, she could use (a dozen or so?) EPs in the spirit of Beck's "Stereopathic Soulmanure". I think people would be surprised at the quality of song combinations she could come up with. Covers are a different way an artist shows "where they come from". With the exception of Paradise (which has two covers ), I think she exploits them rather sparingly.

Because it's such an important part of her history, this should be here, I think: It's been up a year, so maybe LDR is over being annoyed at the critical response to these performances. I certainly hope so. SNL was also ground zero on my fandom, though discovering her AKA stuff later was what sealed the deal. While many comments to this video are predictably negative, this may reflect a bias in the type of people, who choose to comment on youtube (note also the likes, which are oppositely trended to comments). My own opinion about the critical response to Blue Jeans SNL is that they arise more from her defying expectations for how mainstream pop divas should sound (inarticulately expressed as she can't sing, etc). I also think to be objective, we should say SNL performances were "controversial" rather than "bad", because a lot of people (myself included) still like them.

I can remember, a long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) playing some Led Zeppelin for my mom on prehistoric headphones. Her response was "wow, they really sound black". Maybe she meant Ellington or Armstrong, but I suspect the African-American influence on pop music is much wider, although it is not clear to what extent "popular music" is being used as a limited bandwidth style of music (which is what the tight genealogies provided suggest to me). I tend to view "popular music" as anything within a time period achieving some popularity (therefore, Bach cantatas and Haydn symphonies also qualify). While you could make the argument that had an asteroid not axed the dinosaurs, LDR would have been a singing reptile, I don't think you can convincingly argue Sinatra could not exist without a Bing. He just had too much talent not to have done something interesting in a *music-encouraging* society, although he might have been different without this or that influence. The Beatles, very early on, were recognized as an intersection between insanely popular and impressively talented. They were/are definitely influential, but not exclusively through their music but through the amount of popularity they achieved, which inspired others to try to do the same. BTW- what is Brian Eno saying these days? Great musician/producer/trailblazer who hung around and collaborated with insanely talented people, but not so immensly popular himself. One interesting thing about him is that he wrote great *miniatures* of avant-pop music, as well as very hard to get maxiatures. The album Another Green World and some of his rock-oriented solo albums (Taking Tiger Mountain ...) are, if not classic, really, really interesting. He's produced for the Talking Heads, U2, Bowie, and no doubt others, and was a founding member of Roxy Music, whose frontman Bryan Ferry is a good example of an LDR-type star (i.e., a glamorous star with "future-retro" aesthetic).

The fact that she posted it at something like 3AM California time could also suggest she's worried about things (i.e., something keeping her up).

If something is "amazing and beautiful" in a different way than "her best work" why is that not enough for people to be satisfied with the effort (or for critics to rate her more highly)? Just asking. As to your question, critics reward oddity to some extent, except when they are truly confused by the original (as with BTD?). However, whether you like HM or not you have to concede that it was an odd and uncompromising attempt to create a retro pop record. On the other hand, uncompromising does not mean that she did not have an impressive number of good songs (and some masterpieces), but this depends on whether you like the genre she's referring to, of course. I still think her pop sensibility is quite strong on HM. I mean there are other, bigger stars than her (e.g., Bruce Springsteen), who have released heavy, uncompromising, introspective, dour, and/or downbeat albums (e.g., The Ghost of Tom Joad), so I think people should count their blessings a bit more with HM, which has quite a bit of flamboyance and fantasy in it, despite its pace.

What makes the "corporate construct theory" so improbable for me: 1) Labels and managers would actually have to be creative enough to come up with a retro image non-redundant with other such images. I mean she was not really like anyone else, not Amy Winehouse or Adele, whereas when labels do something, they usually just copy something that is successful. 2) Going from May Jailer to Lizzy Grant was a larger jump than going from Lizzy to Lana, imo. So why couldn't she easily do the latter, if she did the former? Plastic surgery: She just seems weirdly beautiful and expressive at every age, imo. https://www.instagram.com/p/-R9_3FFnmB/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lanadelrey/comments/4qe4q1/lizzy_grant/ It seems plausible minor surgery (e.g., a bump on her nose ridge removed) might have occurred, maybe for falling out of a tree and breaking her nose (or for cocaine abuse), and if it was just a cosmetic decision, so what? Not exactly uncommon for people considering entertainment as a career to do this on their own initiative. But the larger point is, her beauty was apparent from an early age, and unlike anti-fan comments or media fictions, her face was never massively rebuilt. On a related topic, can someone point to an artist where the labels obviously took an active role in shaping the persona/image/sound as has been suggested for LDR? And then say what the artist looked like as a consequence of this? I mean the larger issue for me is, how do you spot artificiality and label manipulation, and the start of that discussion might be to say whom you think has had it. I think this would be hard to do, which is ironic given how easily LDR was criticized for it. It might also be that the candidates one could point to were not criticized for it by the media.

here it is (follow the imgur link in the top comment). https://www.reddit.com/r/lanadelrey/comments/5jocbb/lana_was_just_a_jeopardy_answer/ It would be insane for her to do something by the end of the year when everybody's hunkering down with family (or just to be out of the crowds), but as I like my girls insane, hope never falters.

Not that it relates to anything but here's a analogy test item based on that: Lana Del Rey is to Donald Trump as: Female is to Male Young is to Old Artist is to Business Man Art is to Artifice remember you're supposed to pick the *best* one. I don't remember LDR responding to her negative BTD reviews or SNL criticisms other than generally (as regards her mood). She did respond to the "wish I were dead" interview title thing, but that probably didn't hurt her, and being pissed off at interviewers for asking stupid question (e.g. Rollingstone?) is not too diminishing, imo. Trump, on the other hand has made a (surprisingly successful) career out of responding to criticism.

Well the issue for me *is* success, but it has to be on her terms.

Admittedly Max Martin is a lot more impressive than say Cedric Gervais (who "gave" LDR a "hit"). He's won songwriter of the year (ASCAP) 9 times! But if you look for solo stuff or his unique contribution to music, what is it? I mean what's his signature album (did he have a group before he was a producer?)? No seriously, what are his best songs (meaning mostly written by him), so I could at least get an idea of how desirable a collaborator he might be? I think I know of him the most from Britney Spears early output, and lately with Taylor. Another argument can be made: if you compare Max Martin's best song contributions to the best of LDR's unreleased corpus, if the comparison is favorable, this simply means that LDR can do, whatever it is she does, with a range of producers (well known or not) and still kick ass; she doesn't need MM (as much as he needs her) to create a hit. Perhaps it is easy to write a song that a lot of people are going to buy-- if you have good material to start with and you spice it up to taste like other hit songs that people buy a lot of (well that's my theory). It's like people buying more fast food than healthy or interesting food. So MM song co-writes could be like fast art. I mean Cedric Gervais *is* responsible for LDR's highest charting song in the UK, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or buy it.

The reason putting LDR on a worst-dressed list was "preposterous" was that the dress was a vintage antique from a designer who gained fame from Marilyn Monroe wearing his dresses (or maybe he was famous before that, don't know). There is a dress very similar to what LDR wore at the golden globes that is gold in color that you can find images of Marilyn wearing. They are very famous photographs. So basically what Kathy (or whoever it was) was saying by placing LDR on a worst-dress list was either that the dress was trash (suggesting a historical ignorance of fashion and glamour), or that LDR was unqualified to wear something that Marilyn wore in some sense. To the latter, in particular, I would say: preposterous indeed! If the excerpt in the OP is what's actually in Kathy's book, then it's pretty embarrassing for her, imo.

If the context of "I'm in love with a dying man" is I'm in love with a drug-addict boyfriend (one of her recurring themes), then your interpretation is very reasonable; I'm just pursuing a different literary approach to it, and there are lots of things that have to be tied together ("blonde hair is white" ?). This is one of those songs where I wish an interviewer had asked her to explain what the song meant and she actually did. I also hope she re-does it like Yayo, not just because of the merits of the song, but to see if she changes the perplexing stanza.

The view from over-thinking it (and being a depressive?): While it is well known she could not call it "the ocean", whatever the song meaning actually is, my particular fan-fiction for it goes that she considered calling it "die die" (after "the ocean" was nixed), because it's about 2 lovers that are dying in a gradual fashion (with each having differing degrees of knowledge or concern about that); however, she eventually called it "kill kill" because it sounded better. Moreover, the new lyric from the demo is at least interesting wrt this interpretation. That is <<Fresh from the shore, blonde hair is white, the ocean makes me cry>> suggests negative affect wrt the ocean, which is an astounding thing for LDR to say, given how much I think she likes the beach and the ocean. So here the ocean means something else? A clock metaphor? A death metaphor? Also the comparison of blonde hair to white hair is interesting (if that is the lyric). The distinction between blonde and white hair is age? Unfortunately, the stanza about Ray and his girl is a mess pronoun-wise (across both versions). My preferred reading is as in the original post for Kill Kill lyrics; however, I actually hear her singing "Do I know..." instead of "Do you know..." for the 2nd line. LDR dialogs in songs are tricky, because she may be "talking" to herself or another person, or both at different times. Tell me about Ray and his girl Do you [ I? ] know Ray is going to meet you? <<Did I know Ray is going to meet you>> Love you, I do Stay here, I won't The stars fade from your eyes If she's just fixated on her issues with mortality, what makes the most sense to me is to consider the first line a direct query to her lover Ray, and the second line is her wondering -- *to herself*-- that if Ray commits to her (as in marriage?), whether they're going to meet up after death (what other context could they "meet" up in, if they are already lovers while alive). I would have preferred "Do I know Ray is going to meet me", but consistently "you", as in asking yourself something, can be done in the second person, imo. Of course, if she's singing about another girl, there goes the interpretation. Maybe she is just leaving him for banal reasons ("don't trust anyone"), idk. The last half of the stanza affirms a negative perspective for the song, namely, she wouldn't ever bet on "endless love"; in fact it's brief ("1, 2"), so she is making the best of it ("make it fun").

Whether any old stuff should be on LDR5 is a very different issue than whether any old stuff should ever be on distinct future releases (e.g., an LDR0 thru LDR-6). To assess the latter I think you need to compare what she's done unreleased-wise with what's out there commercially to appreciate. I also think that box sets would be a crappy way to do the latter as it removes the flexibility to buy just what you like, though I do like the idea of LDR grouping songs into individual albums just to see how she would do it (not counting AKA, Sirens, and possibly a Princess Superstar produced EP, of course). I think LDR would survive a series of "Greatest Misses" CDs and I think there is enough material for some classics. But hey, that's just my opinion.

I interpret it (i.e., Fordham Road) literally as making the exact opposite decision that Janis Joplin made.

Well, I don't know about Fordham Road. I've always taken it to be, quite literally, the opposite of Chelsea Hotel No. 2 as well as the opposite of the song Jump from AKA. Regardless of how FR sounds to you, think about the lyrics some more. Oh, and perhaps you're missing Jump.