First post here (and possibly the last, who knows?). Registrered here with the sole purpose of articulating some of my thoughts on this amazing album.
I was late to the Lana Del Rey party. Part of that is explained by my age (I'm 41) - while I still love music, it takes more to vow me than when I was a teenager. But part of it is also that I am not intuitively drawn to music in this vain, generally preferring electronic pop, club music and hip-hop.
I first heard Video Games back in late 2011 - probably earlier than most I guess, as it was a couple of months before it became a hit - and I liked it quite a lot. I liked the moody feel, her deep vocals and of course the beautiful melody. However, I figured that she was probably a one-trick pony, so I didn't really feel a great inclination to check out her album when it was released in early 2012. I remember reading a few reviews of the album, and they were decidedly lukewarm on it. Infact, I have later gone back to read a bunch of the reviews of the album and they really are mostly lukewarm - quite incredible really, given the awesomeness of the album and the fact that many of those very same magazines now list the album as one of the best, not just of 2012 but of the entire decade.
I remember hearing songs like Born To Die and Blue Jean and thinking that they were quite good but not as good as Video Games, which reinforced my view that she was probably a one trick pony. Fast forward more than a year to the spring of 2013 and I heard a Lana Del Rey song that I loved. It was "Young And Beautiful" - such an stunningly beautiful piece of work. Still, it wasn't enough for me to check out any of her albums (Paradise had come out at this time as well). However, a few months later I heard the song that to this day is still my favourite LDR track. It was "Gods And Monsters". THIS was my style. Big drums, huge stringpads and a menacing yet melancholy melody. I am a longtime amateur producer and it reminded me a bit of a style my band was trying to achieve in the mid-00's. I loved this song and yes, I FINALLY downloaded the album, which was now the Born To Die - Paradise edition. This is why I today have a hard time seperating those two albums. They seem like a whole project to me.
Anyway, I played the album a few times. Thought it was pretty good, but didn't think that much more about it. For me, this is one of those albums that didn't hit me hard out of the gate. Rather it has been the kind of album where on each subsequent listen, another song crept up on me, until the point where I starting loving pretty much the entire 24 song shebang (15 songs on BTD, 9 songs on Paradise). Still we're probably well into 2015 before the greatness of the album truly dawns on me. This is very rare for me. I usually assess fairly quickly how much I like an album or not. This album took years.
I think something similar happened with the many professional reviewers who had a dismissive attitude towards the album at first. I bet most of them have come to reassess the qualities of this stunning piece of work.
While I do regard my self as a Lana Del Rey fan today, it is mostly because of this "double" album (I actually like Paradise even better than Born To Die, but as I stated, I view it pretty much as ONE album). I think Ultraviolence is a good album, but lacks some of the pop qualities that I prefer. I like Honeymoon a bit better than Ultraviolence, but that doesn't touch BTD/Paradise either for me.
BTD/Paradise is one of the best albums of the 2010's for me - infact it is a great shame that it came out the same year as Kendrick Lamar's masterpiece "Good Kid m.A.A.d City" or it would very easily have been the best album of 2012.
