pawn shop blues

inb4 Lana gets sick of our shit and decides her pre-LFL methods of making an album just for herself is really the way to go, and we get an Instagram post with a quick "sorry guys, decided to keep this one just for me" and cancels the entire album, but not before giving us all 1-minute, filter-heavy Instagram snippets of songs that will never be released, but which fans will cling to, downloading and repeating again and again, trying to decipher all the lyrics and decide just how brilliant the song may or may not have been, or if the chorus was going to be more than just Lana repeating the assumed title of the track, but never being able to know what the full version would sound like, or even the confirmed title of the song. and as we wait for the next 2 years for Lana's next project, there will still be people on LanaBoards posting "pre-order tomorrow. bookmark me."

You poor lost soul. Sending thoughts, guidance, and good taste your way.

The writing, the rhymes, the storyline, the flow, her vulnerable but playful but CONFIDENT and PASSIONATE vocals, the swelling strings that just burst at the end and flow magically with her voice. i just can't. this one song is better than most careers.

"when you go from selling out arenas to doing county fairs for $50 while people complain that your music is so loud that they can't hear the pig judging contest happening three tents over." damn this dude is harsh but i kinda like him too.lol

This messy release is turning into some weird concept art or something. I feel like I can see Lana sitting at her computer, drinking her coffee through a straw and laughing at us all having meltdowns like "told you bitches not to leak my shit."

She looks beautiful and there are some really nice shots in this. Liked the interview with Stevie--or at least, interesting to hear what they had to say, even though it felt a little stilted (Stevie: I think this about this thing...Lana: I agree, me too). Really can't say I agree, like at all, about the whole self-editing thing so that every single piece you put out is 100% positive vibes only. Especially if she wants to make a socially aware album, this idea of "everything's gonna be okay you guys" thing, in this current age, feels very risky. It's just very easy, when you are rich and white and have access to multiple homes and millions of dollars and a group of high-profile, rich friends and can spend your days having fun at clubs and lavish birthday parties, to write something that comes across as "things are gonna be okay...for ME--so good luck to the rest of y'all." Negativity isn't an inherently bad thing. It can help bring out problems, address issues, be a motivation for change. It can also be a really powerful way to unite people who are in pain and want to know they aren't alone in their struggles. Positively culture is just completely one-dimensional, as well as horribly alienating to anyone who doesn't have a natural "go get em!" type attitude, and/or to those with mental health struggles or just really large struggles in general that need to be processed. I'm not advocating for artists to make really dark, hopeless pieces of art (though they can if they wish), but if you are artificially altering your responses to your own experiences ("self-editing") you are gonna be hard pressed to find people who can genuinely connect with that.

Is this the one where Lana was with the dogs on that farm/country-side setting?

I'm not really sure. It seems like she's continued to evolve her sound since Sirens, and that's an exciting thing to witness. I guess the only thing I hope for, and it's admittedly a tall order for any artist, is for her to continue to make leaps the way she did from BTD/Paradise to Ultraviolence. Again, maybe she will never do that again, and that's understandable (though, on a minor scale, she does that every time), but I love when artists are able to stretch themselves and go in unpredictable ways while also making something that still feels very much like them.

Lana to reporters: It's funny, but I really feel like I've grown up the last few years and want the record to reflect that. You know, I've really transitioned out of my old relationship patterns. I'm looking for someone good and healthy for me nowadays. This record is for my younger fans. Lana on the album: omg yaaaas hung mustang daddy fuck me up in the summertime give me heroin I am ODing on this crazy and toxic love I'm so crazy i might die lolz!!!

damn, that looks nice

Summer Bummer sounds like it is about anal in the summertime. Possibly on a beach. It would transition from 13 Beaches, and now that Lana has found a good beach, her and G-Eazy can get it.

I've actually started to wonder (and maybe this is a huge stretch) if Lana purposely made this film and expected/intended for it to get leaked. Possibly not, because wasn't it just in December or so that the video came out, way after the Honeymoon era? Yet the fact that it was this private thing (supposedly) that got leaked seems to fit with the atmosphere of the video even more. Like you said, the whole thing is kind of set up like this homemade video. It's hard to tell if we are supposed to be watching it or not. Like in the beginning, with Lana posing/filming on the hills before the tourist car/van spots her and she looks visibly upset and then cuts the video to fuzz. I used to see why Lana wanted this video scrapped, but now I wonder if it's a commentary on the voyeurism/anti-voyeurism theme she was exploring in Honeymoon? Like the whole thing with her doing her make-up for most of the video. And us, the audience, get to watch her. She seems both aware of us/the camera's presence (she does look into it from time to time, like she knows she's being watched) and yet at other times she seems lost in her own daydreams, becoming just simply someone who is getting ready for the day. Added to the fact that she's also singing along/lip-syncing to her own song and making a video for that song adds another layer of performance. Added to all of this is also the camera angles/positions. They are so close to Lana. Much of the frame is taken up with her face, sometimes just her lips or eyes. It adds this level of...intimacy, I guess? Like, not only are we watching something that is usually private (someone singing and getting ready) but we are getting so close to her. Yet, because the camera is so tightly zoomed for most of it, there's also so much we aren't able to see--like where she is exactly, the surroundings, or who she is talking to off-screen. There are very few, if any, wide cuts that reveal that, so we're kind of kept in the dark about what is going on, as if we're watching through a hole in the wall or something and can only get access to so much information. The fact that she is putting on make-up/changing feels significant too--she is altering her appearance in front of us, like a star becoming her part before her show. Especially because the outfit/hair choice seems more performative than, say, if Lana was just putting on jeans and a t-shirt. Like more character-based, but also not a character (the same way people like James Franco have described Lana as both real and unreal, a hard-to-define blend between fantasy and reality). And in all of this is an interesting duality--the artist who is both showing us so much/revealing things to us and yet keeping so much hidden. We see exactly what she wants us to see and nothing else. As the scene in the beginning shows, she's ultimately in control and has the power to shut down the whole thing if people peer in too closely. But again, because the whole thing has such a secretive and homemade quality, it kind of questions if we should even be watching this, especially since she was not the one who released the entire footage. She only showed us a glimpse of it, the rest got leaked later. I wonder if she was trying to create something around these themes, but maybe didn't feel she did it justice enough? Or maybe I'm just a pretentious asshole who really needs to get another hobby besides obsessing over leaked Lana videos?

Hopefully Lana is celebrating today with good people around her.

Which, in the world of celebrity, probably means that they met once and exchanged customary "I like your music" remarks and never spoke to one another again.

I believe the bit about too many recorded songs to choose from, but Lana has not been competitive in a chart way since BTD. Even she has stated that she lost her ambition after all she went through from VG to BTD release and now just wants to make music she likes and/or that her fans like.

Neon Daddy featuring #1 smash-hit "Let's Ride (Your Dad's Disco Stick)" ft. Lady Gaga. The gays will be shook.

I mean, I guess while we're on the topic of album covers, I would be okay with Lana just using the album cover we already have, but the one thing that does kind of bug me about it is that it's pretty blunt in its approach of the title mirroring the artwork/photograph. One of the things I've always loved about her previous album covers, going back to Sirens, is that there's an element of mystery to all of them. BTD and Ultraviolence probably do this the best of contrasting a heavier title (death, violence) with a photo of Lana that looks a little more innocent (BTD) or glamorous (Ultra) than the album title would suggest, which adds a really intriguing element. I can understand the sentiment of wanting a cover to be a representation of the album's overall mood, but I guess I just like when album covers kind of tease you in that way and make you want to learn more about the contents.

Green Light - 13 Sober - 15 Homemade Dynamite - 17 The Louvre - 18 Liability - 14 Hard Feelings - 18 Loveless - 3 Sober II (Melodrama) - 20 Writer In the Dark - 21 Supercut - 15 Liability (Reprise) - 11 Perfect Places - 15

But respect is like the very last thing the music industry is about. It's still a business.

a beautiful dark complex album. i remember when this first came out and I took like four months to listen to the whole thing because I had a feeling it was going to be one of those really special albums, even for Lana standards, and I wanted to savor it.

Each Time You Fall In Love is beautiful. It reminds me a bit of the atmosphere of The Virgin Suicides (the film, not book). I can't stop listening.

I can agree about the mumbling singing. I think part of that disconnected singing style worked on a lot of songs in Honeymoon because the album itself seemed to be--to a certain extent--about disconnection, watching from the sidelines, and at times the style helped to add more depth/complexity to the lyrics ("Religion", for example, doesn't seem to be a "happy" song at all despite the instrumentation and lyrics, and lines like "I need your love" end up having much darker connotations based on the way she interprets the lines). With the new songs/snippets she's released, it's really hard to engage as a listener because it sounds like she is rarely engaging with the material at all. And that sucks because in the past she's been so expressive, even if it's more subtle compared to singers who scream their lyrics, each line and the way she sang felt purposeful and like she was carefully using tone to be part of the story of the song. I think that's why White Mustang caught my attention so much, because it sounds like she was using her voice again as part of the story, rather than just passively reciting her lyrics. That, and the lyrics we have set up a great introduction for a potential story in song.

I love Sun. It's pop music that still feels very Cat Power-ish, but also completely different from anything else she's released. Ruin, Cherokee, Silent Machine are great.

White Mustang better not be an outtake because it is the best thing she has officially* released this era. *not including BAR.

I don't know how I feel about this livestream for the weekend thing. I'm feeling equal parts fascinated and creeped out that I can go to her channel and see what she/her team is doing right now.