slang

I like the fact diverse people think about her as opposed to people just not thinking about her at all, and hopefully, LDR won't respond (either positively or negatively) to the article, as an artist should not have to explain her art too much (and responding never did her much good, anyway). It's a better article than the Ann Powers' drug-induced one; however, characterizing LDR's current or past artistic agenda as being largely anchored in the longing for stable norms (even given some of that in COCC) does seem to over-agendize her for conservatives, disclaimers at the end of the article notwithstanding. Does she yearn for normalcy more in her life now, circa COCC? Sure, I can see that. Is it a major part of her art or her art's attraction to fans? Maybe not. Artistically he didn't take the video for COCC (title track) into account, where turning into vampire-esq werewolves does not suggest longing for normalcy to me. Also no talk of TJF, WAH, DTWD, so maybe the argument is cherry-picked? I agree White Dress is a very interesting song to talk about. I'm still waiting for critics (or think-pieces) to pick up on the Sun Ra reference. I don't know his music, but I looked him up on wikipedia, and in some respects he is exactly the type of role model one could hope for an impressionable young Lizzy (prolificness, technical skills, avante-gardness, epic response to being drafted for WWII, beliefs in alien abductions, and tenacity/longevity with respect to music and performing).

It's hard to keep up with so many new releases happening, but Ours (not to be confused with the French group "Bear") is back with their *self-titled* album (released last May 14th). While maybe not surpassing earlier Ours (except in length, and perhaps production, which is good enough to get most of their weird and simple -- in a good way -- lyrics), there is more of the same-old uniform excellence in writing and audacious singing you expect from Mr. Gnecco. OURS certainly "checks the boxes" for me, so not getting reviewed by the gatekeepers of popular music (this album and their last) is definitely a cosmic conspiracy. I can't really pick a track such that if you don't like (or like) that track you'll not like (or like) the album. So I'll pick two [so if you like neither ... ] ). I'd say the album is banger heavy with percussion very prominent. For instance, several songs remind me of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk-song percussion, but permuted and grungified over songs. Here's an example of that:

Well yeah, you can identify it as a genre by attaching it to key exemplars that may (or may not) go out of date. I just think it's futile, because the definition of pop will change. And while I think Kendrick Lamar has a genre attached to him, that doesn't mean he can't be popular (or even classical). I mean I'm trying to be provocative because of the thread topic, but to classify things as pop when they are a certain way seems way less interesting (and frequently infuriatingly hard) than just saying it's a competition for popularity. Frank Zappa, the iconic non-conformist, said that the reason the music industry was worse during his end times (and possibly our times) was because people had strong expectations for what popular should be (without any talent to back it up). I suspect he thought genre stereotyping was kind of harmful, although it's impossible not to use genres to organize musical discussion. However, "popular" may have been the most damaging one with respect to ham-stringing artist creativity. first half only is relevant:

I'll guess I'll weigh in on the "what is pop" discussion. Hope it meets unpopular standards. To me the only way to stay sane is to just think of pop as short for "popular", i.e., the music that a lot of people like. So Billy Eilish is (maybe) more popular than LDR (at least right now or a year ago), but Joanna Newsom is not. There's also a thing called "classical", which is music that a significant amount of people like over a long period of time (e.g., greater than a lifetime). Nothing precludes pop from becoming classical (or classical for having been very popular in its time); you just need a time machine or a good historological perspective to find out. As for LDR, she's more attuned to popular music of former eras. For instance, I consider her closer to Frank Sinatra (who was quintessential popular once), than say Adele or Katy Perry currently is. Although Adele or Katy Perry might be more similar Ella Fitzgerald, because they're better technical singers than LDR and Ella was brilliant at that; however, on similarity-- the kind of songs Ella and LDR might sing also make them a more similar pairing, so it's really hard to say (and the "technicality" of LDR's singing is hard to assess, because she's innovative). It's getting harder to tell what's what these days. Kendrick Lamar and Ornette Coleman both won Pulitzer prizes for music (getting them in the same drinking club as Samuel Barber and Elliot Carter), and Bob Dylan won a Nobel for Literature (getting him in the same drinking club as Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and John Steinbeck). As for who, or what, or when LDR is: a wise music pundit (I'm blanking on the name) once said something like: "I just listen to the masters of every genre". So just do this for each time period of human history, and cross that with each ethnicity/continent zone, and perhaps then, you will have the necessary data to place LDR.

Unpopular opinion (?): I'm not hearing a huge sample of HTD on WAH. I mean the name "Joe" and maybe a 3 chord sequence, ok, but if the sequence referred to is from the instrumental bridge of HTD, that's actually a reprise of the ending of MAC (inital part of the outro).

As the only snake-oil-salesman to ever win a presidential election might say, maybe listening to a Bleachers' album will do it. On topic: I have great respect for Jack the producer and co-writer, as do LDR, Taylor Swift, and St. Vincent. However, his self-fronted band the Bleachers has never hooked me, though admittedly I did not try very hard. The only time I investigated a Bleachers' original-song album on spotify, a snarky diss came unsolicited to my mind: sort of like a bad covers-band where you can't recognize the covers. Anybody else have that disconnect between Jack the producer and songwriter/front man? Anybody got any good Bleachers' songs to recommend? Maybe after LDR, his writing will become more likeable for me, idk (e.g., Violets was a real departure for him, right?).

View from the false woke (aka what I think she means): Even more basic than an aesthetic of glamorous, romantic love that LDR has been associated with, is the fact Phillip stuck by the queen 70 years, and (I gather from news reports) he was a perfect "consort". LDR admires that love, both from the security it must have personally given the queen and the feminist idea of a man equally willing and able to serve a more "powerful" female.

Gotta hate on music-industry pundits, who think they know something about creativity and the artistic worth of an artist's works just by displaying objective facts about their opinions (as if that were interesting, btw this is just one critic's rankings, so its posture as being "interesting" is kind of a mystery for me). It also seems downright mysogynistic to treat the AKA album (and by implication all the unreleased stuff before or after it) as not fully formed or worthy of her discography (or at least some discography). If you take Mozart's first symphony written when he was not yet a teen, there are 25+ recordings of that. My point is not that she's like Mozart, but just that if an artist turns out to be great, it is a very natural thing (for male artists, at least) to be intensely interested in their early works to see how they got there. In LDR's case, for me, there is also a specific irony of there being as many, or more, early works than later ones, and their subjectively perceived quality (for me again) -- as songs, not necessarily production -- being about the same as her released works. I mean, I would have been just as happy (well happier, actually) seeing Go Go Dancer being no. 1.

Rock groups rising from the dead is so life affirming. Barrie should know that anyone without an instagram account can't see his IG captions (at least in my dimension that's true, so I wish he didn't favor IG over facebook and twitter, where he doesn't seem to post as regularly). However, Kassidy Facebook has been up posting stuff since 2018 (I just woke up to that; the earlier posts are about Barrie's solo stuff, and the recent stuff about their "anniversary" concert and history). No mention yet that I can see of a new album, which I think will be the acid test as to whether they are actually back as a force to be reckoned with in popular music. https://www.facebook.com/kassidyuk I would describe the single (Don't Worry) as typical Kassidy; not bad and a grower for me. Also, the cover art for the single is giving me a Starfish (The Church) vibe, so maybe Kassidy gets more psychedelic in the future?

Their melodies and approach are sisterly, but it's the lyrics that seem hugely related to each other, maybe even opposed as well. She could have put Yosemite after Change on LFL, and it might have seemed a debate of sorts.

So on the basis of listening to a bunch of youtube tracks (mostly once), I have a first impression (contaminated by months of speculation). I think the album is indeed a conscious attempt to do a country (or folk) album -- i.e., she's invading the country club, and she suspects it will be taken negatively by country/folk people (i.e., the chemtrails assignation). The song COTCC doesn't support this idea much, but I think of LDR as an artist with hidden meanings, and regardless, "white hot forever" ... while fine as a lyric in one song, just doesn't work, for me, as an album title. I think the original cover art work is also not a non-sequitur but expresses her introversion (one of a herd), but I know she's gonna interpret that differently when asked. I'm too unfamiliar with the album to rank it relative to her past ones, but it seems pretty competitive against some reasonable peers. The good news for me is that I'm not feeling a retread from NFR or any released album. Maybe it's a parallel-universe May Jailer, where LDR had continued that "personna". I like her vocal experiments (e.g. whisper/screamo style which progresses to folk-crooning, female-elvis-belting). I like the female features bunching up at the end (well, Lizzy is a kind of feature on DTWD, and there's all those females she name bombs too). This aspect of the album recapitulates the album cover, imo. For me, For free works great and has a great ending. An urban legend (which if it doesn't exist, I'll start) has it that Joni's original song used (and paid) the street musician of the song to do that ending clarinet solo. I still believe this is true, but none of my internet research found any evidence, so it's gotta be a historic hallucination on my part. LDR's version (to my ear) briefly alludes to that original ending solo (also near its end), but it fades so fast and is so fleeting, it suggests a musical ghost.

Rufus Wainwright nominated at the Grammys: Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new traditional pop recordings. I've got to say, that while I hope Rufus wins this category, he is kind of snubbed by the fact that Unfollow the Rules is a very strong set of *original* songs, which is competing against 3 covers albums and an EP of original songs (Bacharach and Tashian). I would have liked to see Unfollow the Rules in the AOTY noms. However, he did sing in a traditional way (i.e. appropriate to the category, I guess). At times he seemed influenced by his having written an opera or two (Prima Donna is worth checking out, if you like/tolerate opera). Also his voice, though still showing character with its imperfections, seems to get better with age, imo.

As a progression from somewhere to somewhere else, the cover art work for COCC is underrated and possibly interesting. She's on the cover solo through LFL, like most pop-diva covers of her generation. Suddenly on Norman there's a prominent male (who disappears by the back cover). Now on COCC she's surrounded by females, and the females stay prominent on the back cover. This seems consistent with the LMLYLAW video, where males are there but not emphasized (minimized?). The bulk of that video is herself alone or in a montage of primarily-female social situations, which I wouldn't have predicted given the song's title.

I agree with you; I'm just saying the artist could have used the situation to her advantage, and not that information just has to be free. Also I wish one or the other would have explained the appeal of the quote. BTW: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/568592 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Balfour

I'm a little distressed that artist thinks there's damage when you can find the same photograph on the Internet as an ad for her work. The other interesting thing is about Instagram. If you don't have an account and are not logged in (to something it wants you to be logged into), you can't read captions anyway. I'm in that category of people that don't have an account, so I depend on Lanaboards to display all LDR's insta-info (thanks!).

It's unfortunate Sophie just didn't say, 'I'm honored you like my work; google-image "Never Forgive Always Forget", to find the work.' When I did this, the first hit I got was: https://kingsophiesworld.co.uk/products/never-forgive-always-forget-print Note to self: never attribute an instagram photo to be original to LDR (or her team), unless she says it is.

So if it's bad advice, it might be more of a description about what goes wrong in the abusive relationships she's been thought to sing about. Forgiving someone means at least remembering what they did to you (and possibly being motivated to stay away). Forgetting, might lead to the same behavior as forgiving; however, it becomes almost certain you get back with them (which I'm taking to be, and hoping she takes to be, bad). But I'm probably just doing mental contortions on what was originally a "typo", that she nevertheless thought interesting enough not to correct (just to make people do the contortions -- and alas, I'm going to have to forget about that).

It's a "horror" novel, which is why I liked your post (horror's about a 1/3 of my book diet); however, this book hits harder than mere zombie apocalypses that make you forget about your daily problems. It is a human-on-human victimization horror novel, where the victims are children. There's also some (understandable) societal taboos thrown in, so it's a "grown-up" novel in the sense that if these things bother you (as they do many grown ups, lol), I wouldn't read it, but it is beautifully written and spawned a multi-author series, which I haven't read (or plan to read). Also not gonna lie, I read this book, because I perceived it to be important to Nicole Dollanganger (the singer/songwriter), so as to better understand her. I don't think I do better understand her, but it was an interesting read.

The effect of skipping a generation can be interpreted as erasure; however, it can also be interpreted as whatever -- the parents (of the first children) did to fuck everything up -- lasting a really long time. ----------------------------- Now I have to say something to make the above part of this post unlikeable: Unpopular opinion (on why CWIMM is actually a good song): It's a song that is a one-off in the sense that you can't really point to a lot of songs in her repertoire or other mainstream singers' repertoire that sound like it, so I would consider it an impressive song for that reason (along with her other admirably weird unreleased ones). However, if you think of Coachella as a collabo between Lana, Rick, and John Phillips Sousa, it does become a pretty cool song, imo (#witchyNecromancyForArt).

Well, 'Lana Del Rey' is not not Hispanic, so I'm not abandoning hope for a release of something till after Feb 2nd (Candlemas). However, hopefully, she'll say something about ASC before 3 Kings' Day (Jan. 6).

The Best of Lester Del Rey (no relation). Just finished a story of the collection called "For I am a jealous people", which reminds me of how I lost my religion (an ancient memory so not necessarily accurate, but I think this happened*). I was reading a dumbed down "Old Testament for kids" book and had just finished a part about how the Israelites used the covenant to blast the hell out of the Canaanites and inhabit their territory, at which point I thought WTF. Lester takes this premise and substitutes all humans on earth for Canaan and the snake-like (!) alien Mikhtchah for Israelites. Lester's use of free-will in the revised God/human relationship of the story is a brilliant example of glib (but highly entertaining) science-fictional extrapolation (of the golden age of SF and otherwise). *Well there is some evidence of problematic material in the Old Testament, lol: https://bibleproject.com/blog/why-did-god-command-the-invasion-of-canaan-in-the-book-of-joshua/#! The apologia is partly effective; however, once you start referring to rhetoric, exaggeration, idiom, not to mention contradiction, as being an excuse for sacred texts, let's just say "slippery slope" says hello.

Her having done some work is not *automatically* comforting (or else where is that EP she did with Princess Superstar?). But I do want her to be ambitious with this. Recently, Bob Dylan had 5 CDs worth of standards before (nonchalantly) winning the Nobel Prize for Literature for his own work (way back when). Lady Gaga (and K. D. Lang) have both done cover albums with Tony Bennett. Carly Simon, Linda Rondstadt, and Chaka Khan have had "classics" and/or standards cover albums. Probably a bunch I've left out. Not to put any pressure on her, but I really would like her to deliver something like Frank Sinatra did with Past, Present, Future (not exactly successful for him, but nominated for a helluva lot of grammys--and lol what it actually won for!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilogy:_Past_Present_Future Only she would substitute her unreleased-album selectees for the "Future", e.g. past, present, and songs from the rose garden (think Burnt Norton "lyrics").

I think this would be a project that is both ambitious and risky, so I hope it's not scrapped, because I like artists to be ambitious and risky. At any rate, early in ones vocal career is when to do this kind of thing, given showing off your voice at its best is one objective. In line with the famed LDR ambiguity, in the title American Standards and Classics, "classics" can still be detached from American Standards (or else the Federal Anti-Redundancy Taskforce may have to cite her). This would mean a few standards but with some things she considers "classics", along for the ride, maybe even by still living people.

For what is largely a "classical" cover, 1.4 mil in under a month doesn't seem all that bad. And if we do get the standards album (wouldn't bet the farm on this, but hope etc.), it will be interesting if she addresses her Question for the Culture peeves more. I mean there could be a lot of interesting problematic songs she could cover (e.g., Love for Sale, Why was I Born).

I think she was aware that her voice was a strange match for the Gershwin opera and indicated this by that diva-esque palm pointing to the backup singer to signal a proper belt out of "standing by" was needed. But she sang it in her own voice, which was still interesting/satisfying, imo. Doubt it compares technically to an opera singer, but Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Norah Jones, and countless other non-opera types have covered it, and I think LDR's a bit more faithful to the song. BTW, Fantano, possibly mislead by "the Gershwin version" in the title, gave an abysmal track reaction to it. It honestly sounds like he thought it was a re-do of the Sublime cover, though I'm not sure (however, I'll choose to believe that's what he meant, i.e. Fantano, "the ignoramus version").