slang

Now that we're (kind of) sure she'll meet a Sept release, I'll elaborate a post I made in the HM pre-release thread, suggesting it was an interesting date from the point of view of HM being in the same Grammy cohort as Taylor's 1989. Of course, a Sept release may not mean anything at all to LDR, but that wouldn't be an interesting thing to post. A Sept release date could mean that LDR is feeling exceptionally competitive (with Taylor?), or just the opposite (i.e., wants to slip under the radar by allowing relatively short time before labels submit for Grammy consideration). Of course, if LDR wants to avoid competition, the choice of Sept could really backfire for her. The media seems to like pitting female artists against each other, whenever they can, and I think the particular diverseness of the artists could matter (e.g., would a Jepsen/Swift Grammy "fight" be interesting?). So, for what it's worth, I'm hoping LDR chose Sept, because she wants the Grammy competition with this particular cohort.

here's where I heard it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceY4Cwgicdg

The number for starlines tours on album cover is the same number as hotline? Burnt Norton is an interesting track to precede Religion I guess. The metaphysics she recites kind of makes me think the universe is a dvd and God is a dvd player. Here's one of her hotline menu items:

For me, the rankings so far would be HM>HBTB>TLY. She's mourning a dead jazz musician perhaps? All in all, not horrible, but I'm comparing this to songs like Hollywood's Dead and On Our Way (yeah I know they were leaked, but Born to Die material has been "leaked" for some time now, and it's still on the charts). While I understand why people like the Bowie reference, I'm wondering about the meaning of the reference. Previously I thought there was a Bowie reference in HM (the "dreaming away your life" part is similar to how Bowie ends the song If I'm Dreaming My Life), but I attributed this to a coincidence, as "life is a dream" thought is kind of common. Another ("post-modern"?) reference for me is to the Bond song from You Only Live Twice (sung by Jane Fonda). The initial part of the vocal melody in this song seems to overlap a couple of notes with part of the string-backing theme of that one, but then goes off into its own direction (of course). She does that kind of melodic (and lyrical) quoting a lot imo (e.g., the UV album has it in like 5 songs). Of course, this could just be the way my brain processes new music in terms of its music-consumption history (combined with the fact tonality is a limited resource). As for the Jazz vs. not jazz issue. The only thing holding this song back from sounding like a jazz-era song, imo, is the absense of an instrumental interlude in the middle (e.g., piano and saxaphone duet, or she could have done some scatting with the instruments).

So now that the "endless summer" tour has ended, we know that LDR chose only 3 unreleased songs to sing during it, which is a small number and therefore invites speculation about their personal meanings to her. Some would say that they just fit the vibe of the rest of the songs she chose and that's it. I would say (trying to be unpopular) that they were intentionally aimed at feminists. Two of the songs (You Can Be the Boss, and Us Against the World) seem geared to upset feminists because of the overly submissive role the female protagonists play in those songs. The third song, Serial Killer, which I take to have a female protagonist, seem to be about "bitch-slapping" feminists into understanding the breadth of her perspective on both feminism and personal relationships. SK, when taken as a depiction of LDR (and why not? people routinely assume the other songs are), suggests LDR as a wolf in sheep's clothing vis a vis her relationships.

It's a straightforward video for a straightforward pop song. The video serves its function, which is to put LDR front and center, and have some interesting parts/ideas, as does the song. LDR can check off another box in a (hopefully) endless column of possible things she can do without repeating herself. So overall I'm pleased, though not totally blown away. I'm still looking forward to a stop-action 2-d paper cartoon video with her old beau Steven Mertens. She hasn't done something like that yet. I like the fact that song and video can be about different things (i.e., song: a past lover; video: an idealized form of paparazzi--her paparazzi can't afford renting a helicopter, lol). Although people seem to like the idea that the video "explains" the song, I don't. I like detachable meanings, because sometimes I won't like a particular interpretation. I'm reminded of Goldfrapp's MV for Stranger (which also happens at a beach). I can take the song to be about meeting exotic people similar in theme to LDR's Strange Love. However, the a video is about a cold-blooded serial killer and basically warns people away from polygamous thrill seeking. Goldfrapp's video is unfavorably comparable to HBTB in terms of either uninteresting or disturbing events, and more importantly because of a lack of focus on Goldfrapp (she appears at the end and briefly). Conversely, other videos are really good at focusing on the performer, but just don't tell a story other than the lyrics, such as Marina, whom I like a lot, dancing on a rocky windy mountainous location or in an amusement park. Or what about Selena Gomez, Good For You video (there's a poster girl for feminism, lol). If I'm not mistaken all she does lounge around a couch and steal Sky Ferreira poses and settings. Maybe HBTB compares less well to Kimbra or St. Vincent, who have some thoughtful videos, but don't get near the viewcounts LDR gets. I guess my point is, if you think something is bad or good, you really need to compare it with something that has a similar "artist's intent" to see how bad or how good it really is, at least relatively speaking. So comparing this with Bad Blood, Dark Horse, or even Born to Die is just going to disappoint you as I don't know if the artists' intent match much here and there (but I do hope the same people who pine for something like a Born to Die video also liked Tropico). This video is probably intended to get LDR back in the GP's sight in a socially favorable way (e.g. pro-feminist or at least not contra-feminist), and I think it succeeds.

I've always been there for Pop Lana releasing more of her unreleased stuff, even though I (currently) think HM > HBTB. I also posted earlier that LDR was into extremes (where Tropico and UV music videos are an example of extremely different approaches to MVs). Releasing HBTB after the HM song seems another example of that. Her extremes are a kind of fan stretching (i.e., her taste broader than mine), and I think the practice is admirable.

To call a song by the name of a famous poem, where the name doesn't really make much sense to the average pop fan, is interesting. LDR didn't quite do this for Body Electric, which I don't think uses any part of the poem except (part of) the poem's title, and that title is pretty pop (or at least meaningful) to most pop fans. She might do the same kind of a thing for Burnt Norton, but what would the song content be if not part of the poem? @@evilentity 's chemical burn suggestion? The weirdest case scenario would be an oratorio or cantata setting the entire poem (all 5 parts, which would definitely keep her and Keefus Ciancia busy for a while). However, even if the song turns out to be based on just part of the poem, that would be really neat. Joni Mitchell did some songs based on Kipling poems, and Kate Bush did a (revised) song based on Joyce prose, so there is some precedent.

Like many others, I don't see a "bad boy" fixation as overly prevalent in LDR's work. So I think Honeymoon (the song) is just a quintessential bad-boy song in the lyrics which reminds us really well of all the other ones she has, but I don't think those bad-boy songs are really that numerous. We just remember them better than her other stuff. Her tendency to sing about bad boys is not that great compared to others' tendency to sing about one thing (for example, Alice Cooper's tendency to sing about just being bad, albeit with amazing variation, or with pop/rock's generally non-amazing and boring treatment of love relationships). I mean UV is actually a themed album in part about toxic relationships (and addictions to such), so there's going to be bad-boy songs there; however, despite that, there were also 3 songs about girls (two of them "bad", the other Brooklyn Baby), a song mourning lost youth (OM), and a classic cover (TOW). Even West Coast, which has relationship referents in it, is not strictly fixated on a "bad boy". Born to Die also had more lyrical variety than critics gave her credit for. For instance fragility of life and/or mourning seem a big theme, and social issues were plausibly represented in Carmen and National Anthem, though critics tended not to give her any benefit of the doubt. Paradise and AKA also seem pretty eclectic on topic to me.

St. Vincent recently provided a link to an interesting Borges interview. Borges is one of those authors I have on my bucket list, though I haven't read much of him yet, but from what I know of him, he's into mysticism and symbolism. Two musings on his part seem interesting in that I think they apply to the discussion here and to LDR's case (i.e., may reflect the way she thinks of her art). https://twitter.com/parisreview/status/623010736567111680 the direct link http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4331/the-art-of-fiction-no-39-jorge-luis-borges <<< [on indeterminancy of meaning:] BORGES But in the case of James, yes. In the case of James, yes. I don't think he thought the world had any moral purpose. I think he disbelieved in God. In fact, I think there's a letter written to his brother, the psychologist William James, wherein he says that the world is a diamond museum, let's say a collection of oddities, no? I suppose he meant that. Now in the case of Kafka, I think Kafka was looking for something. INTERVIEWER For some meaning? BORGES For some meaning, yes; and not finding it, perhaps. But I think that they both lived in a kind of maze, no? INTERVIEWER I would agree to that. A book like The Sacred Fount, for example. BORGES Yes, The Sacred Fount and many short stories. For example, “The Abasement of the Northmores,” where the whole story is a beautiful revenge, but a revenge that the reader never knows will happen or not. The woman is very sure that her husband's work, which nobody seems to have read or cares about, is far better than the work of his famous friend. But maybe the whole thing is untrue. Maybe she was just led by her love for him. One doesn't know whether those letters, when they are published, will really come to anything. Of course James was trying to write two or three stories at one time. That's the reason why he never gave any explanation. The explanation would have made the story poorer. He said The Turn of the Screw was just a pot-boiler, don't worry about it. But I don't think that was the truth. For instance, he said, Well, if I give explanations, then the story will be poorer because the alternative explanations will be left out. I think he did that on purpose. INTERVIEWER I agree; people shouldn't know. BORGES People shouldn't know, and perhaps he didn't know himself! .... [On repetition in his work:] INTERVIEWER To get back to your own work for a moment: I have often wondered how you go about arranging works in those collections. Obviously the principle is not chronological. Is it similarity of theme? BORGES No, not chronology; but sometimes I find out that I've written the same parable or story twice over, or that two different stories carry the same meaning, and so I try to put them alongside each other. That's the only principle. Because, for example, once it happened to me to write a poem, a not too good poem, and then to rewrite it many years afterwards. After the poem was written, some of my friends told me, “Well, that's the same poem you published some five years ago.” And I said, “Well, so it is!” But I hadn't the faintest notion that it was. After all, I think that a poet has maybe five or six poems to write and not more than that. He's trying his hand at rewriting them from different angles and perhaps with different plots and in different ages and different characters, but the poems are essentially and innerly the same. >>> Perhaps the bottom line is that a large part of art creation is both obsessive and indeterminate, and I don't think LDR will ever say directly what she means by anything (or maybe she'll give a banal response?) for reasons (or feelings) similar to what Borges expresses. There is also a heretical view that Borges *might* be expressing, which is that the art consumer gets to choose the meaning (hopefully based on some kind of plausible reasoning). I probably should end here, but in the interest of applying Borges musings, what are the six prototypical song/poem spaces LDR uses? Just for the sake of concreteness here's what I'd put on a pop quiz asking this question: Bad/Interesting Boys, Bad/Interesting Girls, Relationships (Blissful and Toxic), Bad/Interesting Lifestyles (alcohol/cocaine/wealth/hedonism), Lost Youth/Fragility of Life On top of general topic areas there could also be hidden systems of meaning, at least hypothetically, and these can be either fortuitous or intentional (and maybe unconscious is a 3rd category?). So for Lost Youth/Fragility of Life I might think that a hidden symbol system could be set up about Christianity (e.g., we know she is Christian and we know she is fixated on death). These expand the number of things an artist *could* be writing about (especially, if the artist may not always know what they are writing about!). IMO, it doesn't matter whether the artist intended certain meanings or not. To me it's only interesting how well the symbol correspondences can be made to seem for an interpretation, which also includes considering disconfirming evidence as well. Can't help but mention modern illuminati "interpretations" of art. These seem invested in showing certain very common occurrences are present in the art (one eye visible, triangles, *any* sexual content) and taking that to mean illuminati agendas are present in the art (mind control?, satanism?). It assumes all art as seductive to either to good or evil. It hasn't given much thought to expressing its implied position that there is actually (organized) mind control and (organized) satanism out there, so it just seems like a funny aberration in thinking to me.

If there are real conversations then LDR is probably like an executive producer for this. The imaginary conversations would have to be about his particularly kind of fandom. Franco seems to be a polarizing writer (Amazon reviews both highly positive and negative). What excites me about your comment (relating LDR earlier work to Palo Alto stories) is that we might also get some solid info about her unreleased period (at least will know if he even cares to talk about that). If the book does that with any depth, it would be well worth it.

@ I don't find the bridge particularly jarring lyrics wise. Perhaps the most literal interpretation of the whole song is it's about a prostitute and a super(natural?) criminal who is super "elusive". The line "It's no wonder every man in town had neither fought nor found you", suggests white collar crime, not mafioso. Metaphorically, what is the song about, if anything? A reconciliation between masculinity and femininity? IDK Edit: The second part of this post belongs in Lana Thoughts somewhere (but there was nothing there to cause me to vent it). So I decided to delete it here. I can't apologize for having the thoughts but will apologize for posting them here and hope they didn't offend anybody. First part of the post is still ok, imo.

Another thing Barrie could do is re-record it with another singer (I'm shipping Sky Ferreira, but anybody decent would do), and then release it that way. The amount of symmetry in the universe would increase.

^ This makes no sense from either labels' point of view, and/or I wish the logic of these kind of decisions were elaborated on (surely neither artist is under contract not to discuss label decision logic). If both Lana and Barrie are still behind the track, hopefully they'll leak it.

I suppose LDR could have wanted to make it difficult for the label to try to modify the HM song in the final release, so she promo-ed it *now* for self-preservation of the original artistic concept. Of course this is just a paranoid speculation. I'm pretty sure the label is really excited about this song as they tweeted about it more or less as it happened. https://twitter.com/Interscope/status/621026929278386176

Four full listens and I'm warming to it. Man she just keeps getting slower! I like the fact that she's still a maverick, and her competition (whoever we think they are) are probably scratching their heads right now wondering if they need to worry (assuming they cared enough to listen). I think there is enough technically interesting stuff in this song (not to mention the vocals and emotionality) that this is not a case of the "emperor's new clothes" or more appropriately the "wool of the king". It's nowhere near a single in character, which makes it courageous. A whole album like this would make an interesting niche album (anybody remember Elvis Costello's North?), but would it commercially succeed (and in which genre)? However, this gives me hope there will be substantial variety on the album: from her HM IG comment: "... there are so many other tracks on the record, 13 others to be exact- Some with a muddy trap energy and some inspired by late-night Miles Davis drives… But I love this song because it encapsulates all of the things that come naturally to me. "

Radio is LDR's feminist anthem. All you have to do is interpret the "I" and "you" in "I've finally found you" as Lizzy Grant finally finding Lana Del Rey. I've seen that interpretation proposed in youtube comments, and think the lyrics support it.

thanks. Ok, so I'm researching "instagram active user" on youtube and seeing lots of videos on how to get lots of followers just by doing a few standard tricks of liking pictures and following other people's instagrams. So what you are suggesting is that a lot of people follow Lana's main instagram as part of this strategem to get followers, so "not active" means not into Lana in a meaningful way (but into getting followers)? So the honeymoon account is followed by more legit Lana fans, or is a truer estimate of Lana's legit fans? It is interesting that LDR said she was moving to honeymoon from facebook (where she's approaching 12 million likes) and not from her main instagram account (4 mil follows). TBH, I like my conspiracy theory better, because it implies she has more legit fans at her main instagram, but what I'm trying to do is understand your response to my confusion. Am I about right?

I'm confused as to why honeymoon instagram didn't just jump to 4 million after honeymoon was found to be legit. I'm guessing instagram slows up the follow rate (or at least the reporting of it) so a celebrity's social media credit (whatever good that is) can't suddenly double on instagram. I mean it can't be possible that people are just too lazy to go to a link and click a follow button, can it?

Criticism of anybody is fairplay, if it's thoughtful and constructive. But it's also fairplay to criticize the criticism. Some of the BTD era strikes me as important just because there was this huge disconnect between what the fans liked and what the critics liked. And the reasons the critics (like the NYTimes and LATimes) gave for not liking BTD seemed an axe-grinding exercise of pushing their tastes onto others. LDR can take some pride in causing a huge discrediting of music reviewing in general. The era caused me to think very carefully about what it means to provide a useful/informative music review. Also the phenomenon of Cedric Gervais seems relevant to criticizing LDR criticism. He received a Grammy for making an original song *less* original (or more pop-radio worthy), whereas Lana Del Rey redoing her public image and (allegedly) her physical appearance (i.e., remixing herself to accomplish popularity, though not less originality) received a critic's feeding frenzy. WTF.

Ours is apparently going to have a live stream performance tommorrow. I got the youtube link from Jimmy Gnecco's Facebook (where it was announced June 8th). I've grown a lot fonder of this group since my post in this thread above. Also I wonder if JG remembers (or knows) that it's Lana's birthday tomorrow.

Posting the snippet to her honeymoon instagram first convinces me. So I guess the only doubt (for me) is the actual age of the interview.

Was the Honeymoon snippet posted to the honeymoon instagram account first (before LDR's instagram)?

So if the article is very recent, RN did stonewall HM info, because if LDR's "honeymoon" instagram is legit, then RN's the lead producer on HM (it/she posted an RN picture used in this interview!). So if the article is recent, RN did weigh HM into his "future legend" assessment of LDR, which is good news.

https://www.youtube.com/user/udondoll/videos might be her legit youtube channel, and it's worth restating that you can listen to all her songs (with lyrics) at her bandcamp: http://nicoledollanganger.bandcamp.com/ So Greta Gibson Forever is finished? And it's no longer a sequel to "embarassing love songs"? I liked the earlier illustration of GG (by ND?), so I'm kind of curious about the change in cover art.