slang

42 minutes ago, xxmissdaytonaxx said:

i guess it's about time i throw a little album concept together. i'm no professional, but it was fun! 

front cover:

  Reveal hidden contents

back cover:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Nice pun. It generated (in me) a multi-generational shipping daydream in which Brian Eno was producing this album (he's famous for Discrete Music, which I don't actually know, but I really like his rock album debuts and Roxy Music origins). This makes some sense given David Bowie and U2 have worked with him in that capacity, and if he's good enough for those guys ....

^

Interesting website (and use of the "semantic web") for tackling issues like how much you like a specific album relative to its temporal cohorts. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:1991_albums

Wouldn't change anything about Honeymoon, but as not everyone likes its closer, Heavy Hitter might have fit well after DLMBM. It would be like that super moody guy from the first song got a sense of humor (and upgraded his car).

On 10/7/2022 at 11:25 AM, Enchanted Mansion said:

Don't kill me but fuck I don't like Taylor, and I don't understand this collaboration . It doesn't make sense unless Lana wants more success. Taylor is bland and uninspiring. I'm not thrilled, I hope it won't drag her down musically. 

 

I miss the time when Lana worked with interesting musicians, and I put The Weeknd in the pile. The 2 were commercially interesting with close universes. Taylor is nothingness, nothing happens. She can do better . I would still listen to the title because after all they may surprise me but I don't expect anything.

 

This is my opinion, don't take it as an offense because I respect your choices. You guys are lucky, your time is finally coming, you must be so happy.

 

I would have liked a duet between her and Marina. But business and business. 

I mean it's a challenge, but hopefully Taylor isn't going to "Cat Power" her, and with Antonoff having a good working relationship with both, I think that's unlikely. It's an interesting vindication piece for LDR to be in the limelight with pop's chief it-girl.  It will be interesting to see whether LDR's egalitarian-esque feature-production-preferences on her own turf transfers over when on Taylor's home turf. The Grande/Cyrus/Rey thing, while not a capstone of modern music, at least worked out ok. It also occurs to me that a May Jailer vs. Taylor Swift sonic "fight" would be a really interesting thing to try to pull off (and witness), but I'd give that about a probability of zero.

6 hours ago, Alison by Slowdive said:

i love text book mostly bc there is so much going on conceptually but i am still trying to understand what she means when she fits too many words into a lyric to an ummmm unmelodious effect somewhat. i feel like it's a conscious decision maybe to marry poetry spoken word and song? it doesnt make for the easiest listening and i guess she might not want some of her recent v personal songs to be but im here 4 her gatekeeping <3

Yeah, I mean you could say the same about White Dress, for which Sputnik famously said: "... a stinker of a chorus, crammed with an indecent amount of syllables and dead-on-arrival melodies memorable in the same way as, say, footage of a gull in an oilslick." Obviously, you (and I) don't hold much value or interest in purely subjective Sputnik reaction. However, one thing another critic on another magazine might have said is that Miles Davis, who can also make his trumpet sound whispery and/or straining, would be completely unfazed by jarring tempo shifts and/or sudden increases in the density of notes for the melodic line. Such a critic might have supposed Miles would have liked White Dress. Given that parallel-universe speculation, I prefer to think of her tempo-changes, and word-density increases, as jazz inflections (and she does mention Sun Ra, there). The Sputnik critic probably doesn't even know what jazz is.

Interesting to see what the performers who wrote the songs actually do while performing them live:

Peter Hammill:
Modern 

Talking Heads:

Life during wartime 

POE: 
Angry Johnny 

Not exactly sure this is a "moment", but it is a weird intersection between popular music and popular literature, as well as an intersection between talented siblings' art. Anne Decatur Danielewski aka POE created an album, "Haunted", her second, which is based on her brother's (Mark Z. Danielewski) first novel, "House of Leaves", an experimental haunted-house novel, which I had to read after digesting her album (the novel's good too, although it's kind of hit or miss on the experimental parts). Rolling Stone gave her album 2 out of 5 stars, maybe because of all the things that went "bump" in the songs (most WTF line from their review: "Poe deserves some props for her blond ambition", the link is at the wikipedia page for her album, which is a waybackmachine link, so maybe RS is ashamed of it?).  Her first album, Hello, is also pretty good (e.g., Trigger Happy Jack and Angry Johnny are "nice" examples of fucked-up-relationship songs). 

title track:

This is circa 2000, and she hasn't produced albums that I know of since then, which I feel sad about.
 

Lana Del Rey and Nikki Lane might sound like this on their upcoming collabo album:

Then again maybe not, but this slayssssssssssss anyway.

5 hours ago, BlueINK said:

I agree about the artistic growth but I seem to prefer listening to other people's stories instead of society's.The same is true for Marina. In a 2020 live stream she said that TFJ and EH (and also Froot) were more egotistical because she was young and now she writes about the "collective psyche" and whatnot. But what are her best albums to date...? Exactly those three. And just the same, Lana's best work (to me!) was released up to 2015. Then she went societal... LFL does it especially and it's subjectively her worst album to date.

 

I just feel like when artists try to speak for others they are never as good (and also water themselves down) as when they just write about their own thoughts and experiences. If I wanna know what's going on in the world, I turn on the news.

I personally want artists to be weird - unique lyrics, unique sound, unique thoughts. 

I tend to agree that her earlier albums are more impactful (i.e., to me personally), but I don't think they're necessarily better or more personal. I mean Blue Banisters is a very personal album, just not exactly in the genre she got famous for. Also, her struggles are really different now (as in she is an accomplished artist), and just watching the news is a trumatic experience, so she sings about that too. She is of the news and in the news, as when she sang "Kanye is blonde and gone" (having sang at his wedding at Kim's request and having had social media "wars" with him), and the stuff about wildfires, I'm guessing she had to take a bunch of detours in Malibu because of them. Her weirdness may be a little blunted these days, but that could be due to the world stepping up its game in weirdness, so she doesn't want to come off as rubbing salt in the wounds, even while she's deeply affected by it. I guess the "unpopular" opinion would be: when she does sing about the news, she does so personally. 

11 hours ago, paradisetropico said:

i’m from Memphis, and that water is VERY dangerous. people have died trying to swim in the mississippi river. it is not a calm river by any means. 

 

also Jeff Buckley who she LOVES died in memphis in the River… maybe she’s trying to feel jeff’s spirit or just inspired and dangerous. much to question. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Buckley#Death

There are important differences between her swimming and his (other than he died from his). She approaches the river in a swimsuit (Jeff swam with his clothes on). So, there is a kind of premeditation, or personal symbolism, behind her swimming.  Also, "Mississippi 0 --- Lana 1" could indirectly reference JB quite a bit, as in blaming Mississippi (River) for JB's death. The river is, if not dangerous to her, at least adversarial. So, there's kind of a defiance vibe to her swimming, too. Hopefully, the celebrity-fixated media ignores the dark overtones in her references and just fixates on the fact that she's wearing a bathing suit (and what type it is), as they usually do.

Fun Fact: I learned from the Wikipedia article that "Gods and Monsters" was the name of an NYC band Jeff was with briefly (and then left suddenly, somewhat capriciously?).

It's miraculous that the Supreme Court is alterable by the House and the Senate, but what discourages me is that democrats don't often talk about such bills in the context of why people should vote democrat in 2022/24 (maybe they think it will hurt them, idk). I only found an example/extant bill, because I was google-asking about what the House and Senate could conceivably do to the Supreme Court.  I would have written the bill differently (e.g., I wouldn't have exempted justices appointed before the enactment, which makes the bill effective like 20 yrs out, lol and crying too), but democrats can and should write bills more effective than this, provided they get clear majorities in the House and Senate.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8424
 

Sad about the overturning plans; happy about the leak. I mean if the supreme court had planned to do it from the get go (which they did), they shouldn't have started drafting shit so early and waited till after the midterms, when the republicans might have gained more ground. Now that it's leaked, it has the oppurtunity of swaying people the other way for the midterms. 

I think Biden promised to (try to) enact law to repair anything the supreme court undoes. Implied in that promise is the idea that the voting population gives the democrats both the house and the senate in clear majority (i.e., 60+ seats in the latter). If that can happen they can enact a repairing law. They can also change the structure of the court (enact term limits, add justices). I think it would be interesting to have 100 justices on the supreme court, with term limits like senators. One could decide who serves on what cases by a random draw from the justices. It wouldn't be any worse than what it is now, so why not? And at minimum, a much larger number of cases could be run per unit time.

53 minutes ago, hotshot2am said:

 

Her team is simply too lazy to search and flag illegal uploads on streaming services.

 

 

This one is up for over 2 years with 9 million views.

It's a release of some kind as:

℗ 2184951 Records DK

is some kind of tag for it (from the youtube description). Hits of that tag in google suggests it's on apple music, at least. Half-heartedly hoping it's LDR just fooling around with her unreleased song, and not a disgruntled producer or some profiteering guy. It's hard to track its existence, because LDR isn't referenced (other than the image) in any description.

abstract, non-song-specific haiku:

diverse prolific
converging in look and sound
she emotes herself
 

On 4/26/2022 at 2:39 PM, Diamantes said:

Not a paragraph, try to avoid commas and all that. 

One sentence that'll convince someone to look her discography up. 

Ok, go! 

There was a "Lana songs as Haiku" thread once, which could do what you suggest with more constraints, if the song were representative enough of her, but I can't find the thread for some reason. At any rate you're supposed to pose a song as a Haiku and then people have to guess what it is. Can't remember if I posted this or not (am thinking not).

Your mind is enthralled
My bad singings and hijinks
Send you to heaven

(hints: unreleased song, sung in the 1st person).

Imagine a semi-colon after "enthralled", and it kind of (technically) works, even if it's cheating a bit.

I saw there were no Peter Hammill references at LB (?), so I just couldn't help but post this (as I'm going through a big Peter Hammill thing right now). 

2 hours ago, littlestarfever said:

it's the gunshot sounds for me. i can imagine her throwing air guns to the wind.

About WTWWAW:
You're thinking of God Bless America (and all the beautiful ...), where gunshots in the chorus make a perfect sardonic sense. However, the gun-cocking sounds in Love on the other hand, very sinister. I'm thinking there's a sniper in every love song.

4 hours ago, Venice Peach said:

I can't fucking stand the spoken part in Carmen. It makes a perfect song a 9/10 instead of a 10 

Also why french when it's a Spanish name 

Google: In what language is Bizet's Carmen sung in?

The album, by itself, works fine for me, with quite a lot of LDR-classics on it; however, you sort of have to rate stuff for what it is genre-wise, and not what you especially like, genre-wise. I see BB as part of a trilogy, with NFR being psychedelic folk, COCC being future-retro Americana (dare I say, country), and finally BB as her future-retro but old-school Broadway-type songs. I mean if BB songs had been part of a Broadway musical, I think it would have been a huge hit, and yet BB doesn't have much Rick Nowells (except for CB), who, if I remember rightly, once made a suggestion for a foray into Broadway. However, the older songs on the album might have been the cause of his suggestion rather than an effect.
 

11 hours ago, Honeyyoung said:

i think the track writing on NFR is so weird but at the same time i like it. there are songs with everything capital letters first (Mariners Apartment Complex, The Next Best American Record), songs where just one word doesn't start with a capital letter (Norman fucking Rockwell), then songs that start with capitals but then every other word doesn't (The greatest, Love song). then there's Fuck it I love you which is another whole thing and then one that's all lower case (hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it). what are your musings on that?

Not that I expect anyone to have memorized the NFR post-release thread, but I was actually able to find (using -- NFR capitalization -- as search cues with the site's search) a post of mine that addressed this. The general idea was that all the capitalization choices could make sense, if one were inclined to think of a reason for them. 

http://lanaboards.com/topic/10955-norman-fucking-rockwell-post-release-discussion-thread-poll/?do=findComment&comment=906400

9 hours ago, Super Movie said:

I actually don't mind the "iPhone 11 / Fuck you Kevin" line in Sweet Carolina. It's obviously just a cute little joke between her and Chuck and I find the delivery of it to be really sweet (you can tell that she's smiling as she sings it)

I really like the iPhone reference, too, in Sweet Carolina (as well as the swearing, but that's maybe for a different reason). The song's vocals, production, and style (e.g., melody) could have been a hit in the 1920s-50s, so the lyrics date stamp the actual date of the release pretty specifically to the 21st century. Hence, future historians of ancient earth (who will hopefully be human) will not be confused about the song's release era, if they only have the song's style to work with. Also, date stamping the song by referencing a device that understands timestamps seems auto-recursively clever to me.

4 hours ago, Party Favor said:

The issue here is that people do not know how to form connections/their own ideas about lyrics. That’s it. Social media has rotted the brains of most people under the age of 30 to the point of no return. Everything must be agreeable and everyone MUST have the same opinion on a niche unreleased Lana del rey song bc some tik toker who has 50k followers said so. It’s honestly jarring seeing people take lyrics so literally and not even attempt to use an ounce of brain power to think beyond what’s written. 
 

I say this as a 24 year old, not some bitter boomer lol. Everything centered around Lana when it comes to SM is bc of stereotypes put in place by locals / Stans with too much time on their hands. 

I agree with everything you say, but need to add:

LDR shouldn't take responsibility (or feel guilt) for the new normal. I mean people mis-portraying stuff on social media (aka the "misinformation" age) is just a fact (e.g., politics, elections, vaccines), and appropriating art to inappropriately promote ones fucked up ideas is probably very common (though I don't know such well enough to give examples, because I tend to just ignore them, and LDR should too).  

In terms of an "unpopular opinion" (maybe?), I think it's more critical than ever that LDR release large compilations of her unreleased work, as well as unsuppress AKA. What that would do is show a fuller range of artistry and make it harder to pigeonhole her. I don't think her earlier materials are even problematic relative to pop music (both currently and historically), and no amount of screeching on the part of critics (both musical and societal) is going to make me believe otherwise.

3 hours ago, Nectar said:

Can you name a few female artists that blended orchestral music with hip-hop before Lana? I’m sure there are some. Genuinely interested in checking them out. 

Hip hop is problematic as I don't know how recent that field is, or how exactly to define it. I associate it with the likes of Kanye, Kendrick, Tyler, and (yikes!@) Eminem. Emile Haynie might need to get some credit for blending Hip Hop with Orchestral on BTD, as LDR's later albums aren't as hip hoppy (and AKA didn't seem inclined that way). As to who might precurse LDR with regard to clashing those particular genres, Portishead and Massive Attack (also the Roots?), in the sense of combining "noir/cinematic" and hip hop. Maybe even some later Blondie (i.e., Autoamerican, released when LDR was -5 years old; famous for the "trick" question: who introduced Rap to MTV?, I think it was Debby Harry). Janelle Monae, Corinne Bailey Rae (no relation to Ray), and Esperanza Spalding may also do work fitting the category you're describing. If not, they are at least worth checking out (in that order). And there are plenty I just don't know about. For me -- in terms of important style setters and/or exemplifiers of known styles -- Steely Dan (and Fagen and Becker separately) and Depeche Mode are at least groups that I would recommend in terms of "if you like them, you might like LDR, and vice versa".  This is because the AMSR and future-retro run strong in them, imo, but not anything specifically tied to orchestras or hip hop per se (although Steely Dan was influenced by Reggae and Stevie Wonder, and Keith Jarrett sued them).

9 hours ago, May said:

just admit the outfit is bad mama

Is this the "Michael Jackson" sense of Bad momma (I mean, I thought "bad" was good)?

1 hour ago, shady said:

 

I consider it unpopular because I feel like it's controversial to call our her fashion sense on this forum or any fan page. Your analysis is cute and all but I don't see anything deep in her outfit except the NFR reference. Let's be brutally honest, Lana's looks have been flawless only when someone else styles her. With so much overanalyzing you could even find a deep message behind Ashley Tisdale's old school red carpet looks. Lana's literally wearing a 20$ Fashionnova summer two piece, 2000s boots that are in style at the moment and covered herself with the jacket probably because she's a lil chubby. She could've made so many better references since she had so many different eras. The outfit is too casual for a red carpet. 

Yeah, overanalyzing is kind of my thing. 

Not saying you can't call out her fashion sense, if you don't like it. But there is fashion and there is anti-fashion (in a similar way to there are lyrics and there are anti-lyrics). She does both. "Too casual" in her outfit could be a statement also; was it intentional? I would say yes, because I think she has a devious mind, but she didn't do it in such a way that it could be easily called out, because I still think she looked really good. I mean her outfit shows *some* ingenuity, as in minimalism done right. The word "chubby" also reminds me of something I intentionally left out of my initial post (because I thought people would misinterpret it), namely that I thought she had intentionally selected a dress size too small to accentuate things (hence, my Jessica Rabbit comment). Maybe that was an experiment of hers that failed, but still an interesting experiment to have tried (if it was intentional). This is also me ascribing devious thoughts to her, for sure, but with LDR, you never know. That's part of her mystical persona (non grata?) that she refuses to acknowledge (which is also maybe a part of it).

also put 
Ellie Goulding Hitmakers 2019 red carpet
into google images

Ellie looks fine for the same award, but I wouldn't say she did it better than LDR (just because she's wearing a $500 dollar dress). You should also be able to find Billie Eilish's "costume" for a different award at the same venue. Billie's dressed like a couch with a floral pattern and Finneas's hairdo is, as they say, a choice, so LDR's choice might have been much worse. just saying...

On 12/4/2021 at 3:50 PM, shady said:

For all of you who thinks this is cute just because Lana is wearing it 

Stop lying to yourselves 

So the popular opinion is that she looks really cute here.

I don't know what the unpopular opinion here is going to be, but maybe it will be the philosophical interpretation of LDR's "decade award" outfit (in answer to the question posed by the great philosopher, Cardi B.). 

I'm no fashionista, but I'm impressed by the modularity and simplicity of the outfit. It's kind of thrown together like the award is.*  As for the thought that went into it, you could say that it is an ensemble designed to make one think little thought went into it (i.e., possibly a target aesthetic for a "modular fashion queen" to have). However, I like that she chose fleshy pink boots (to go with her legs and skin rather than the jacket). I also like the possible flashbacks to AKA cover art and/or Jessica Rabbit that might occur for (disturbed?) personalities such as mine. 

* With some casual internet googling I found the "hitmakers" award venue focuses on the producing/promoting aspects of the music biz, and as such, considers the quality of the art rather begrudgingly. The venue has only been around since 2017, and there was only one other "decade winner" that I could find, Ellie Goulding. I'm at least familiar with EG, and think she is a fine peer for LDR (although with fewer albums to her credit). When I've listened to EG, I've found her to have a great pop sensibilty, but also really earning her "electronica" cred at times.