kitschesque

that equals end of a career
 
That's how some music reviewing website described M3LL155X.
 
But I love that EP and if she ever went that route, I'd totally be on board.
 
C'mon Lana, toss your career and do this for us

i want a surprise-me album..but it would be great to have a EP consisting of FULL HARD ON TRAP BEATS 

that equals end of a career 

i'd love to see her do something more sexual and intimate, with minimalistic put progressive beats, something like bjork's vespertine

 
or something heavy, extreme and angry. i want noir(song) like lyrics and angry singing yass

get her outta pop. i want spooky orchestral grunge with trip hop beats and complex lyrics about how surreal life is

LOL I had a dream the other night that LDR5 was released, and I listened to a couple songs...it was worse than HM. I'm honestly not expecting anything better than HM, but I love HM now, so I don't mind. I feel like I remember ppl from LB having meltdowns too

in my head Cruel World is just going to be about Jim Jones.
lol

So I was listening to TLY today (like 5 times in a row) and I was thinking about what could she be singing about/what was this song written about?
 
So here's my theory....
 
TLY is for/about K?
 
Although he isn't dead (at least to my knowledge-know that he was on death row but idk if he was actually killed)
 
"I put the radio on, hold you tight in my mind
Isn't strange that you're not here with me
But I know the light's on in the television
Trying to transmit, can you hear me?"
 
These lyrics hit me as her wanting to reach someone who isn't here or who she can't contact anymore.
 
Just a bogus little theory I thought of and I don't know if it makes sense or anything. Just a lot of the lyrics allude to a guy who had a bad reputation and she didn't mind because she loved him, she lost him, she thinks of him a lot, and she's tried to communicate with him or something. Knowing homegirls interest in philosophy and the higher powers, maybe she has actually attempted to communicate with someone who isn't here anymore lol.   

Very cool discovery! Haven't seen the documentary, but this makes a lot of sense. (I need an updated thread about Lana's inspirations (books, movies, music, e.g.), because I keep discovering new things about her.)
 
I'm kind of glad Lanalysis has moved on from "literally every song is about K/Jimmy Gnecco/Mike and Lana was a drug-dealing/taking go-go dancer." The mystique is gone, but hopefully the image we have of her is slightly more accurate - or maybe it's better to say less inaccurate. I think the most accurate post in this whole thread was the one where that guy said "when Lana says her songs are 100% inspired by her life she means her watching Netflix." Of course, that doesn't mean none of her songs can be tied to known exes, but I think maybe we're a little less outrageous in our suggestions.
 
I really want to do a Lanalysis post but from the perspective of detailing the "characters" that show up in the Lanaverse. Some of these are real people, many (most?) are not. One of the compelling/annoying things about Lana is how she reuses a lot of tropes and imagery. I don't have a lot of time now to make this sort of mega-post I'm thinking of but I really want to do it some day. 

Although I've never watched that film, judging by your comments it seems you may have figured it out, so great analysis!
 
I've always seen Jump as a song about suicide. The music is relatively upbeat and there are clapping sounds yet the lyrics seem to reference suicide ("Do you wanna jump? jump? jump?") For me the song has always resembled the idea that depression and suicidal thoughts are very difficult to recognize in another person. The music sounds happy but if you look at the lyrics it's much darker than that. I feel like the song is supposed to show how people can be struggling and contemplating suicide, and it can be right in front of your face, yet it's still so difficult to really notice. To me that's what Jump has always been about, but I think your analysis also makes a lot of sense. The best thing about Lana songs is that everyone picks it up and derives a different interpretation which is fantasic!

^ Ray Luzier worked a lot with David Lee Roth (aka Diamond Dave), so my guess would be that she's just seeing them on tv during "heavy metal hour". She's mentioned being a fan of Roth before, so I guess it makes sense that she might be a fan of Luzier as well.

Ok so bear with me, I've looked for it and I don't think this has been discussed yet, but I've been listening to A$AP Rocky a bit more these days and then relistening to Velvet Crowbar the other day I had a stretched thought: what if Velvet Crowbar has been written with Rocky in mind and not just a generic guy? I don't mean that he's the subject or anything or that it's real, I just can imagine Lana listening to him and thinking wow he's dope and being inspired to write a song about a figure that reminds of him.
 
Things that could relate to Rocky:
_ "your golden grill", obvs, he is very well known for often wearing some
_ "your purple dreams" apparently Rocky and his friends fancy purple drank very much, and Purple Swag is on Lana's Spotify playlist along with Peso
_ "you're bleeding syrup", the drug again
_ "you were a dick with your crew", possibly referring the mischievous A$AP mob
 
BUT:
_ it apparently was recorded in 2010 and Rocky only got Live. Love. ASAP in 2011?
 
So the conclusion is that this probably means nothing at all but now everytime I listen to Velvet Crowbar (which is often) I immediately picture Rocky as the guy and I love it

So what do y'all have to add to this thread since the release of Honeymoon?
All I can think of is that Salvatore is sort of inspired by Francesco, but certainly isn't biographical. I think Francesco may have influenced Lana to write another Italian mafia-inspired song. Like, the song combines Lana's reality with Fran with a fantasy element, placing her lover in the mafia and writing a song based around that.

There is a Terrence Wilcutt who was an astronaut. Could have a connection to the "major Tom" & space reference.
 
There is also a Terrence McNally who is a playwright. Lana might have followed his work.
 
And there are two movie actors, Terrence Howard and Terrence J/Jenkins.
 
Maybe there are connections there.
I also couldn't find any Terrence connections to cities, states, or places (other than a Terrenceville in eastern Canada); nor could I find any connection between "Terrence" and Los Angeles.
 
EDIT:
I found a professor at Fordham that is named Terrence Tilley, teaching in the department of Theology.

So here's another Mr. Campbell dilemma. The following post mentions real but non-famous people. I don't know if I should name them or not. The problem is they've willingly put out all the information themselves, and it's not hard to find. I want to see what the ethics committee (i.e. you guys) has to say about this situation.
 
Okay, so this song, Joshy and I.
 
It leaked August 2015.
This was posted in June 2015:

So this guy says his cousin dated Lana, and that his cousin posted an instagram video backstage from a Lana concert. If you look at the instagram video, you'll see it's made by somebody called Josh. The caption: "Sometimes this happens when you ignore your gf to play World of Warcraft." Now this is a bit odd. This guy claims to be the reason Lana wrote Video Games. However, we had received "insider info"~ from the ldr.fm days (alas, I wasn't there) that the song was written about Mike Mizrahi. If you take into account that Lana said BTD, BJ, and VG are all about one guy, it gets even murkier. Here are some interviews where Lana mentions why she wrote the song (emphasis mine).[/size]
 
 
The date the song "Joshy and I" leaked with was 2011, the same year Video Games started blowing up.
 
Moreover, she said she picked the model for the BTD video based on his resemblance to a former boyfriend. Once again, hesitant to give links, but Josh's instagram shows that he is heavily tattooed.
 
So here's a crazy theory - could Josh be a guy Lana dated after Mizrahi?
 
We have a date for when Mizrahi first met Lana (January 2009 iirc) but we don't have any solid indicators of when they broke up that I know of.
 
Before Joshy and I leaked, there's a guy who says his cousin, Josh, dated Lana Del Rey (before she "became Lana"). We didn't have any clue that a Josh would be someone in the Lanaverse, so it's hard to say this is some guy BSing who happened to come up with the right name. Josh fits the description of the BTD model, who is said to be based on an ex. Could the Mizrahi relationship have ended before 2011, and could Lana have started dating Josh in 2011 (ultimately breaking up with him and then getting together with Barrie, can anyone find the earliest known reference to Lana and Barrie dating?).
 
I can't find the original tweet for the second image up there, so if anyone would like to help, that'd be swell.
EDIT: Found it. It was posted October 25, 2014. And it was directed at Josh's cousin. So this isn't every poser with a cousin named Josh coming out of the woodworks after the leak to claim he's the real Josh - this is way before Josh was even a twinkle in our eyes.
 
DOUBLE EDIT: It gets better. Mike Mizrahi got married to someone else November 2010. Obviously he must have broken up with Lana by then. She says in the September 2011 interview that Video Games became a thing because she abandoned all pretenses of being a singer ten months ago. That would be November 2010, after Mizrahi got married. What boy could there be in her life, then? Josh.
 
Revised timeline:
 
Mertens: ???-2007
Lynn: 2007-08/09?
Mizrahi: 2009-10
Josh: ???-2011
Barrie: 2012?-14
 
Collecting hearsay from the thread:
from SitarHero: "I guess my only defense is that I'm only collecting the information others have written about publicly. For instance, everyone called "Afraid" a sister to "Video Games", and I trusted that. Do I have a statement that Mike controlled her? No."
"Just recently, some stalkers insiders made it vaguely apparent that they were positive "Video Games" is about Mike Mizrahi."
from evil: "I also suspect that the Knocks from the Underground review he wrote may have been a friendly or planted interview. (It wouldn't be the first. The Index magazine interview was done by Brea Tremblay, another musician who played at the same Songwriter's Hall of Fame New Writer's Showcase and was also mentored by Bob Leone.) I suspect this based on the fact that they were supposedly together two years (according to a source extremely close to the situation  ) in conjunction with the fact that a video of his marriage to another woman was uploaded to his YouTube account in November 2010 means they had to have been living together at least a couple months prior to the February 2009 Arlene's Grocery show he reviewed, unless their living together overlapped his marriage, which I doubt, or he married the other woman almost immediately after they broke up and the source is exaggerating the two years time frame somewhat. Although, this Facebook post, which predates that show by only a few weeks, sure doesn't sound like they were living together yet.


I don't know. It's all very strange. But if they were living together at the time of that interview, it means she might have had more control over its content. "
 
gameboy (Posted 12 December 2012 - 11:25 PM): "MM is Michael Mizrahi. She lived with him for 2 years in the Village. She got her record deal and left him in a bad way. She tried to come back to him and even tried to get between him and his new GF who he married. He told me "never date a musician!" He gave her those film credits to help her before she was Lana. I googled mike and found this page. I'll let him know, I'm sure he won't care." (this member only has 1 post, which is this. the 2 year timeline doesn't fit the fact that he met her in 2009 and was married in 2010)

Sounds like something Lana would do tbh, write a big "fuck you" song to someone who probably screwed her over & tried to control her in every way, then releasing it on their birthday just to make them feel even worse. This is why I love Lana. She has the best "don't give a fuck" attitude and I really admire it, she's such an independent woman 

The screenshots was simply serendipitous: someone bumped this thread, bringing it to the front page. Unfortunately some of the images beyond the 1st page are broken, so I couldn't use them.
I found out about Lynn's blog and his flickr through Lanalysis. I also got dates for Mizrahi from there, too. And anything else is just looking stuff up. evil's early shows section helped, as well as this list of interviews I had saved.
 
And it's good that I get to make this 2nd post because I want to add some stuff about Steven Mertens. Here's a bunch of interviews mentioning him, plus evilentity's world-class sleuthing:
 
Steve Mertens 1
In a Lizzy Grant-era piece for the Huffington Post, she told a reporter, “Strangest performance: Alone in a basement for a handsome record executive. Strangest [song] ever written: Back at his office while I was making out with him.” When I ask her if she regrets joking like that, given how often people perceived her as a puppet of some executive team, she says, no, the story was true: “I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.” (JUNE 4 2014, FADER)
(the referenced interiew is form May 25, 2011)
2
You could work with outside songwriters. Are you open to that kind of thing a bit more now?
Lana: Yeah, I’m more open to it now, ‘cause personally I’m not really feeling it. (Laughs) Like this guy I worked with eight years ago, Steven Mertens, who made my first record [editor’s note: David Kahne is credited as the producer of her debut, 2010’s Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant; Mertens is a member of the Brooklyn band Spacecamp]. He knew me really well.
3
Now, I know you don’t love to talk about this because journalists have sort of mythologized your past but let’s talk about the trailer park you lived in for a few years- I shot you there when you were 22 [my note: 2007] and continued to shoot you there for a couple years while you were writing and entertaining and wrapping up your album with David Kahne. You were so sweet and happy that you had your very own place to write and reside in, and extra money from that $10,000 indie contract. It was also a sad time for you because you separated from Steven Mertens who had originally produced that record and who was your boyfriend at the time. I don’t really have to ask you this because as your sister, I think I already know, but would you say this was your most enriching time as an artist and happiest time in New York (despite the split from Steven.) (GALORE INTERVIEW 2014)
4 (the saddest one, imo)
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. (Complex august 2013)
5
EVILENTITY ANALYSIS
                TrailerParkDarling, 16 Aug 2013: Steven Mertens used to play back up w/ her, I guess at various gigs.    
                He used to w/ Regina Spektor, too
 
http://web.archive.o...ace.com/4026640

SitarHero, Aug 16 2013: But no seriously Sirens was 8 years ago and AKA wasn't...like I think she may have just actually referenced it. Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng
 
I totally overlooked the "eight years ago" part at first (    at a possible reference to Sirens or her other early recordings) but I'd been meaning to contact Steven Mertens for months since @Trash Magic and I put some things together about him (which perhaps belong in Lanalysis). When I saw she mentioned him by name in this article, I got on that immediately and sent him an e-mail. I'll report back any response, but please don't bother him in case it interferes with my attempts to correspond with him.
 
In addition to sharing the bill with her at a Cross-Pollination show, and playing in her backing band as TPD noted (he's the guy that looks sort of like McNulty from The Wire in the Canal Room videos), Mertens has actually been referred to in at least two other interviews with Lana. Remember that Megan and Menace in the Mornings interview?

When I was young, my boyfriend in the city made my first record. His best friend Jack was Regina [spektor]'s longtime boyfriend. They're married now.
 
(You can listen here at around 5:20.) Regina Spektor (who TPD notes Mertens also played for) is married to Jack Dishel who was in a band called The Moldy Peaches. Guess who else was in The Moldy Peaches? Steven Mertens. I wasn't completely convinced at first that that's who she was talking about (I thought it was more likely another Moldy Peaches member, Adam Green, since his initials are AG, likely a red herring) until @Trash Magic pointed out something I'd missed-- in that Mizrahi interview she said:
 
One of the first producers I worked with, Steven Saint, learned a lot from Dick Dale (father of surf music, pre-Beach Boys) so the beginning of the sound was influenced by some sounds from Hawaii and surf guitars, so that’s where the surf comes from.
A little digging shows that Steven Saint = Steven Mertens (see here and here).
 
6 (surf music + Steven Mertens is from LA)
I had a very handsome ex boyfriend from here [interview takes place in California] once. Surf punk rock bands. It was loud all the time in the house, in the car.
(KPRI interview)
(also notice she calls him handsome here and refers to the record executive as "handsome," too. Makes me think of For K Part 2: "how you get so handsome, my boy?")
 
For reference, a pic of Steven Mertens in 2008.
 
That thing where she mentioned feeling like a change of routine... wow. That got me, honestly.
 
And now for some more discrepancies...
 
Who are these people?
 
RADIO GUY
I mean you know people always said you know people will come out of the woodwork and change their mind about you. They’ll start to like you ‘cause you’re on the radio. And it is true but I don’t mind ‘cause I’d rather people be nice to me.
I don’t really care why people are nice to me I just lie it when it’s easier. I just wrote it when this guy that I used to know came back into my life. So now my life is sweet like cinnamon. Cause he came back. (ITALIAN INTERVIEW on FACEBOOK, MAR 12 2012)
 
RICH GUY
"It's a song about a man who thought I was one of the most exotic things he had ever seen and me indulging in his appreciation and love. On the outside he was handsome and wholesome, but under wraps he was running an illegal electronic business which ended up taking him and his friends under." (Unknown interview, about MDM)
 
Like, you know, I used to live a really crazy life and, like, OTTR is one of those songs were you can tell by the energy of it that I’m right in the middle of, like, a relationship where times were happy but also chaotic. We were travelling between LA and Las Vegas, he- I can’t gamble ‘cause I’m not good, he was gambling, I was just swimming. (ITALIAN FB interview, MAR 12 2012)
 
ALABAMA (this could be Mertens since one of the May Jailer pages listed Alabama as a place and that would've been pre-Lynn)
I lived down in Alabama with my boyfriend, I lived here in Brooklyn and in Jersey. I’ve been a lot of different people, I guess.” (FADER JULY 2014)
 
LONG TIME LOVE MAN + EX BOYFRIEND COUCH MAN
What about love and loss, the other dark note in her oeuvre? “I felt the same way for a really long time, and then I met someone who I guess I fell in love with,” she says. “I just didn’t know I could feel differently. That time with him became sort of a place that I fell back to in my memory.” And the breakup? “Well, I mean, the breakup is a part of it in the way that in the midst of loss you try to still look towards the light and not fall to pieces or do self-destructive things.”
[…]
Before she goes, I ask her where she lives. She’s looking to buy a place, but for now is in Williamsburg. “Staying with my ex-boyfriend,” she says nonchalantly, then bursts into nervous laughter and admits, “I live on his couch.”
I give her a look like, You just told me all that about falling in love and breaking up and you’re on the dude’s couch? She pins it on the touring, letting out another embarrassed laugh. “Because no, I’m busy though!” (FEB9 2012)
 
REHAB ROCK STAR (Jimmy Gnecco?)
Which lyric are you most proud of?
There was an older song that you've never heard called "Pawn Shop Blues". [sings] "In the name of higher consciousness / I let the best man I met go / Because it's nice to love and be loved but it's better to know all you can know." Because I remember I'd met someone so special and famous but I knew he wasn't enlightened about how to be a good person. I knew it would get in the way of me becoming a nice person. That's a difficult choice to make.
How did you meet this famous person?
Um, it was in a self-help group. [laughs]. He wasn't that famous. I just thought he was famous…
TV famous or movie star famous?
Rock star famous.  Just middle of the road ish. To me he was famous because I didn't know anyone who was wildly recognisable. I remember thinking it was exciting at the time. (SEP 19 2011)
 
VIDEO GAMES MAN (MEN)
(supposedly VG is about Mike Mizrahi, and he supposedly tried to control her career)
Lana: Video Games was a song that came after I abandoned all ambition of becoming anyone noteworthy in music. It was only ten months ago. I just wrote it when I felt love again. It was about a time when it was nice to focus on a relationship and simple things; watching your boyfriend play videogames. It sounds sad, but it was sort of happy. I’d let go of the idea of being a singer because things had gone so terribly for so long.(SEP 23 2011)
 
 
LDR: A boy. I think we came together because we were both outsiders. It was perfect. But I think with that contentment also comes sadness. There was something heavenly about that life – we'd go to work and he'd play his video games - but also it was maybe too regular. At the time I was becoming disillusioned with being a singer and was very happy to settle with a boyfriend who I loved, but in the end we both lost sight of our dreams. Maybe there's something not-so-special about domestic life. (OCT 4 2011)
 
“The verse was about the way things were with one person, and the chorus was the way that I wished things had really been with another person, who I thought about for a long time,” she says, breaking into an acapella of the song. “‘Swinging in the backyard, pull up in your fast car, whistling my name’. That was what happened, you know? He’d come home and I’d see him. But then the chorus, ‘Heaven is a place on earth with you, tell me all the things you wanna do’ wasn’t like that. That was the way that I wished it was – the melody sounds so compelling and heavenly because I wanted it to be that way. The verse is more matter-of-fact because that’s how it was. It’s a mix of memories and the way I wished it could have been. Just because things happened a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the way that they are. (Dazed 2011)
(NOTE: She's said in a more recent interview that many of her songs are like this - the verses about one person and the chorus about another. I am pretty sure she said this about West Coast; I need to track that interview down)
 
BTD, VG, BJ - a trilogy about one guy?
 
 

(5:47)Q: I didn't realize until recently that Born To Die, and Video Games, and Blue Jeans, you said they were kind of a trilogy about this one dude and his effect on you and your relationship and what you thought. Is he, Adele-style, is he aware of that? Have you talked to him about that? Is he aware of the reaction it's getting?
L: What is Adele style?
Q: She's very vocal about this one person. It's about this person and we talk about it and now we can have a laugh about it, but the time there was so much emotion going on.
L: He doesn't know. His mother knows. We're in touch. But no. 
Q: He hasn't pieced it together and gone hey!
L: Not really.

Potential Arthur Lynn stuff.
 
I was looking for an Arthur Lynn blog post and ended up looking through his posts. I noticed he referred to Van Halen as "kings" and the "band that changed my life and kicked me in the balls." He specifically tags them as "david lee roth, diamond, edward van halen." And that reminded me of Mermaid Motel:
 
'maybe we could go to Suede Tokyo
See Van Halen at their reunion show
Heavy Metal hour on TV
Diamond Dave and Ray Lee'
 
I mean, there's nothing saying none of her other long-haired boyfriends/paramours/whatever couldn't have liked Van Halen, but:
Arthur Lynn is confirmed as a boyfriend we have songs referencing his origins (Greenwich) we have songs referencing his favorite drink (Diet Mountain Dew) It doesn't seem odd that this could be a reference to him.

Lana Del Rey lived in New York City from like 2006 to 2009-ish. Van Halen's reunion tour with David Lee Roth 2007-2008 had a stop in NYC November 13, 2007 and May 23, 2008. Neither of these dates would conflict with her known shows. I don't know when she wrote Mermaid Motel, but she performed it at Arlene's Grocery February 3, 2009, so it's possible for it to refer to the reunion show as a past event (as opposed to a future event).


 
Ray Lee is currently a drummer for Korn but "served as the drummer of the Van Halen frontman’s solo band from 1997 to 2005, performing on 1998′s ‘DLR Band’ and 2003′s ‘Diamond Dave’ albums."
I'm still not sure about Suede Tokyo. There is a band by the name of Suede and they have indeed performed in Tokyo, but I don't know why Lana would refer to that. More educated people, help?
 
So I'm speculating Mermaid Motel is about Arthur Lynn. Which brings me to something else...
 
One site listed Lynn's interests as such (trying to find the site since, like an idiot, I just saved the interests). Pay attention to the bolded ones.
music, girls, guitars, america, diet mountain dew, van halen, ice cream, photography, jersey, angiescreams, indian summer, woods, food, freckles, the sun, the moon, seasons, amplifiers, family, friends, karma, october, yo mama, yo mama's apple pie, and those little people we call doggies
 
JERSEY
Note his blog is subtitled "thoughts from a jersey boy." His flickr lists his hometown as Jersey but "currently" (not sure when screenshot was taken) Greenwich, CT. I was already pretty sure that Motel 6 was about Lynn due to DMD references, but "to Jersey with love" makes more sense now.
 
MORE VAN HALEN STUFF + CONEY ISLAND + YOUR MOM:
This is the most recent screenshot I’m showing – we’re going in reverse chronological order, from ‘last login date.’
In this screenshot from her Lizzy Grant MySpace, url therichwhores, she lists Diamond Dave as an influence (along with Britney Spears and motorcycles, two other lasting influences). Notice she lists her location as New Jersey. Also notice that she describes her music as metal - not a musical genre I would put any Lana Del Rey song in, ever. I wonder if Arthur Lynn, who could conceivably be the one into "heavy metal hour," influenced her calling her music "metal."

 
She's still therichwhores here, but her location is now Alabama. Her genre is glam, blues, experimental. No metal – not yet, anyway. David Lee Roth is one of 3 influences, along with Britney Spears and motorcycles.
 

 
The earliest Rich Whores screenshot I’m showing. In this one, she lists David Lee Roth and Coney Island as influences... along with "your mom." Yeah, just like Mr. Lynn listed "yo mama." Britney and motorcycles remain, but the other influences have shifted. Arthur Lynn is explicitly listed as a member here. She's living in New York now. (aside: pretty things is an influence here. we'll see that again later)

 
 
 
AMERICA
Lana said this about one of her ex-boyfriends:
 
Lynn loves rock and roll, that's perfectly clear. But what distinguishes him from Gnecco or Carney or other musical liaisons? Well, the 4th 'like' listed by Lynn was America. It's a weak connection, but I don't think we've ever tied that comment to any other boyfriend. Lana didn't always talk or sing about America. Her May Jailer era stuff, for example, seems more focused on the details of personal relationships than concepts like America or archetypes like the gangster boyfriend. I don't know when Lana started playing with Lynn, but it'd be curious to see if that date coincides with an increasing number of references to Americana. If we assume Mermaid Motel is about Lynn, then we also have a connection to Coney Island, another interest of hers that you don't see mentioned in the early days.
 
To see how big the change from her May Jailer stuff to her Lizzy/Lana stuff was, let's look at more MySpace pages...
 
Folk, acoustic, experimental! Only one of these genre descriptors survived into the post-May Jailer MySpace descriptors. Her influences are Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead... only Nirvana is repeated as an influence in the later MySpace page, although Daniel Johnston seems to be in the vein of singer-songwritery stuff.

A year later (according to last-login date) and "Cony Island" (sic) and "pretty things" have been added as influences. She's now experimental, blues, folk - the acoustic part is gone. Another mid-2000s screenshot shows "Bread and Oranges" appearing alongside Money Hunny, Fordham Road, and A Star for Nick. It now has its final name, Pawn Shop Blues, and For K Part 2 has shown up - the LDR album appears to be forming (Jump, Kill Kill, and Put Me In A Movie show up in the Lizzy screenshots above).
 
The last login date for this one is 5/17/2007, whereas the last login date for the earliest Rich Whores page is 12/12/2007. It appears to be a transitional state, not just with regards to her layout, but also her name and influences. The music is less acoustic. Coney Island starts showing up, as well as motorcycles and Van Halen. Metal inexplicably becomes a descriptor.
Would fit in pretty well with Arthur Lynn showing up… just sayin’. 
 
(one last thing... under band members, she lists "TAGS & TIM." Who are these people?)

 
CONCLUSION?
From 2007-ish to maybe 2009-ish, Lana dated Arthur Lynn. Arthur Lynn may be the boyfriend who loved rock-n-roll and America. Before his introduction into her band (and we don't know when they met, so they could have met before Lynn was part of the Rich Whores), Americana references were rare in her music, she made singer-songwritery stuff about people's lives, and she basically had a very different persona. Lynn becomes part of the Rich Whores, she now likes Van Halen, specifically David Lee Roth and the album Diamond Dave, Coney Island (all mentioned in Mermaid Motel), her music is described very differently (metal, really?; and glam), she somehow picks up on his jokes (yo mama)... I think he was an influential boyfriend.
 
Oh, and to tie this back to other boyfriends...
 
According to the Galore interview by Chuck, Lana broke up with Steve Mertens when she was 22. So 2007?
Lana mentioned a seven-year relationship with a record producer in the 2014 Fader interview and I think Mertens is the only one who could potentially fit that.
 
 
Which would make the timeline of that relationship 2000-2007. Which means she would have been 15 when she started dating Mertens... If Mertens is the 7 year relationship (and I don't think any of the other ones could be that relationship), then that means she would have had 4 major ex-boyfriends.
Mertens 2000-2007.
Lynn 2007 to 2008 or 2009
Mizrahi 2009 to 2011
Barrie 2012 (?) to 2014
 
Thoughts? It's like early in the morning and I've spent a couple hours doing this, so I'd like fresh eyes.

I was recently listening to TV in Black & White, wondering who it's about. I've always associated it with K, since she mentions prison, much like every other K song, but then I realised the "Greenwich avenue" line and I now wonder whether the song actually has any association to Arthur Lynn, or whether I'm reading into this too much?
 
Also, who do we think Young & Beautiful is about? I've always thought it to be about K too, since there's the "Dear Lord, when I get to heaven, please let me bring my man. When he comes, tell me that you'll let him in" and the "channeling angels" lines. I've always associated these lines with K's possible death, but now I'm also wondering if this song is not really about K at all either, considering the rock and roll lines that seem to be associated with Jimmy and the other "local rockstars" she sings about.
 
My other theory is that Lana combines imagery from multiple lovers to produce interesting songs. I think sometimes she simply creates a line or an idea inspired by a lover then continues writing the song including other ideas inspired by other lovers. It's almost as if she's just created an aesthetic for herself that she sticks to in almost every song - like she isn't always singing about a specific guy in each song, perhaps an amalgamation of multiple exes. Idk, just a thought… 

I'm thinking "For K" is not about a real person, but about Badlands, it involves a character named "Kit" who goes on the run with a girl 10 years younger than him and he kills people and gets sent to death row, where he's put in the electric chair. Sorry if this has already been posted, but I think it is highly likely with the amount of books and films and references in her songs.

I'm pretty sure that it's about him as well, she did say something about them having to break up because he had stuff he needed to deal with, which could easily have been drugs. Pretty much the whole of UV seems to be like a loveletter to him and their past relationship.

a) i dont think hes real
b) even if he is, i dont want to know anything about him, it's more fun making our own theories. i want her to reveal his identity & her story on her deathbed though

From interviews, we know that whoever K. was, he lived with her in a trailer park, lived a double life, was most likely arrested, most likely died, was handsome and magnetic, and told her she was the "most exotic thing he'd ever seen." There are also many references to a "golden grill" - be it symbolic or true.
SOooo, with that in mind!
 
We know for sure there is
For K. 
For K. pt. 2
 
From interviews, we know we can add
Born to Die
Video Games
Blue Jeans
as she stated those were all for the same person - most likely "the same God-damned person" she says she writes for.  
 
What else?!  
My theories, based on the lyrics and repetitive words, would include (with keywords):
Dark Paradise (he's dead, and it seems K is dead or on death row, so this fits)
Queen of Disaster ("golden grill")
I Still Love Him (from the description, something tells me this is about K. and not JFK)
Backfire (the reference to Sid and Nancy seems to be a theme in K. songs; "in our trailer park for two")
Without You (like Dark Paradise, the death theme fits here - and she cries EVERY time she sings it live)
Million Dollar Man ("you said I was the most exotic flower" ... everything else makes sense, too)
Off To The Races (maybe a stretch ... the mention of gold coins makes me think of gambling, and Video Games has hints of gambling, as well)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
From the lyrics of all these songs, my theory is that K. was white (I've seen theories he was black, which FITS, but then how is he like "James Dean for sure"?); that he was either a gambler, drug dealer, or in a gang; was arrested for robbery then again for "double homicide"; is either on death row, committed suicide in prison ("heading off for death row; didn't stick around, no")
 
Some other possibilities:
Young And Beautiful
The Man I Love
 
 

Responding to the discussion about Gene Campbell a few pages back, I don’t know how many of you have read this since then, but she said that he was 22 when she met him, and even though she was 15, it’s not at all Lolita-esque. Most of my friends in high school had boyfriends in their twenties when they were 15/16/17 and it wasn’t a big deal. "When I was 15, I had this teacher called Gene Campbell, who is still my good friend,” begins Lana. “In boarding school, to become a teacher you don’t have to have a Masters. I was 15 and he was 22, out of Georgetown. He was young, and at school you were allowed to take trips out at the weekends. On our driving trips around the Connecticut counties, he introduced me to Nabokov, (Allen) Ginsberg, (Walt) Whitman, and even Tupac and Biggie. He was my gateway to inspirational culture. Those inspirations I got when I was 15 are still my only inspirations. I draw from that same well. It’s one world I dip into to create other worlds. Like this philosopher Josiah Royce once said: ‘Without the roots, you can’t have any fruits.’” http://www.clashmusic.com/features/american-dreamer-lana-del-rey-interviewed It’s likely they were just friends, in my opinion. I had a friend who was in his twenties when I was in my early teens.

@@CherryGalore The ex-boyfriend she lived with was Steven Mertens. “Throughout school, she moved around between the apartments of friends and boyfriends. "My mom called me 'the couch queen'," she says. She remembers spending long nights at a Chinese deli on 42nd street. "They'd let me buy a banana and a coffee and stay there until midnight," she says. "I would go over different rhymes in my head, like rhyming 'disco' with 'go-go', writing about girls with blue mascara and black eyeliner, and about all of the men I had met who I just loved. It was a very liberating, penniless, hilarious, fun, fun time." One of the apartments she stayed in was that of her then-boyfriend, Steven Mertens, a fixture in New York's alt-rock and antifolk scenes.” http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/3683-lana-del-rey-covers-nylon-magazines-november-issue/

The theory that the “cult leader” is Jim Boch and the cult was Atlantic Group (or The Pacific Group) makes sense, but she thanked AG in the liner notes for Born to Die. If it was a cult she was uncomfortable in and got out of, why would she thank them? She also made several posts on Facebook in recent years about AG meetings, so I don’t think that’s it. On the other hand, “filled with poison” would just make so much sense in an AA context.

If a guy is cheating on his wife/girlfriend with Lana I really doubt they'd take many pictures. It's really unlikely and would work against him.