BluVelvUnderground

Anybody else notice how "White Mustang" and "Heroin" have the same melody in the production?

01. Get Free 02. Tomorrow Never Came 03. Heroin 04. Beautiful People Beautiful Problems 05. When We Were at War We Kept Dancing 06. Change 07. Love 08. Cherry 09. 13 Beaches 10. Coachella 11. Groupie Love 12. God Bless America 13. In My Feelings 14. Summer Bummer 15. White Mustang 16. Lust for Life No shitting on the ranking, though, I love every song.

I wouldn't surprised if Lana and Chuck have an idea of documenting everything about Lana since the SNL thrashing. Maybe decades from now, when there's a re-evaluation on how she was one of our generation's best.

By the way, Belladonna of Sadness is one of my favorite films. OMG. <3

If you have an interpretation of the lyrics, I'd love to hear it. It's the only line (with the rainbow pre-chorus from the same song) that has me scratching my head a bit. Beautiful writing, just really wanna know ideas on what it implies in context to the rest of that song, and therefore - as a closer - the rest of the album.

Oh, I see the bittersweetness of the "happy" in the album, like most of us here on LB will. From an outsider's perspective, I'm worried they'll get hooked onto her not being outright antiromantic this time around. Thankfully, though, the reviews have been strong so far, with heavy emphasis on how she handles the somber aspects so well.

On "Get Free", she says: "Finally, gone is the burden of the Crowley way of being that comes from energies combined."

Just my review I shared on most of the sites I follow (music/film,etc.) Lana Del Rey’s Lust for Life is an entirely self-aware piece – just as all of her past albums have been. Haters gonna hate, but Lana is arguably the most influential female “pop star” of the past five or so years. Everybody from Miley Cyrus to Katy Perry to Lorde to Adele to Selena Gomez to Tove Lo have all admitted to having been, in some capacity, influenced by her. What’s ironic? All of those artists have, in some capacity, brought the sadcore lyricism (and melancholic nihilism) that Del Rey perfected into their work – and now, it seems like even those who were on the scene before 2012’s Born to Die are also picking up on those influences. It may be a bit foggy at the moment, but time is going to be good to Lana. There’ll be a day when her initial scorn is forgotten, and she’s entirely considered one of the greats of our current pop landscape. Lana’s music has never been “one-track minded” – instead, she’s been a storyteller. Her narratives are always loose, but almost humorously tight. On her 2012 EP called Paradise, the song “American” is followed up by “Cola”, which has the unfortunate first lyric of “my pussy tastes like Pepsi-Cola” – a song that seems stupid until you realize the performance of the Del Rey persona is remaining consistent, and has all these years. On Lust for Life, she ups the euphemisms and compares sex to more nature-driven symbols: cherries, peaches, rosemary, thyme – but the song still remains about fucking; while Del Rey’s Shangri-Las-like “wall of sound” production has her playfully adlibbing in the background “bitch” and “fuck”, almost as if she’s taunting us (or daring is) to see her in a serious light. It works, because – in the end – with her cheeky humor, Del Rey’s albums are almost always entirely serious. It’s the Americana-coated imagery that makes it seem less pop ballad, and more folk ballad with a little touch of ammonia. Lust for Life starts off with a guitar-driven “wall of sound” space opera, and then follows that up with seven trap beats filtered through some kind of Phil Spector production you’d find the Ronettes placed in – with Lana, herself, showing off her range of octaves, and the many accent stylings she uses when approaching her visual-driven lyrics. These songs are hot (in a sense, that they are really driven by an atmosphere of a smoggy, polluted Los Angeles heat), and see Lana at her most cheeky. The middle track of the album is “Coachella – Woodstock in My Mind” – a track that, on its own, feels barebones and kind of silly – but in context of the album feels like a breather before the real momentum of the album starts. By using this one track, Lana bridges the “summer trap” of the first half of the album (which could accurately be akin to the things you’d hear Lana doing at Coachella) with the second’s “folk-driven trap”. Instead of focusing on the overwhelming heat of the songs, these seven songs (two of which feature Stevie Nicks and Sean Lennon), are politically-minded, and almost seem to scream in the face of the listener. It would be so laughable if it weren’t so damn sincere, and it would be difficult to not take seriously if it weren’t for Lana remaining self-deprecating and sarcastic through a lot of it by supplying more of her unenthused nihilism. The chorus to the song “When We Were at War We Kept Dancing” is, quite literally, “Is it the end of an era? Is it the end of America?” followed by a nod to M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”. And Del Rey really allows herself to be BIZARRE here. As with Lana’s past work, there are nods to poetry, with the album’s title track quoting – verbatim – the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley. She also samples Radiohead's "Creep", samples audio from the '62 horror film Carnival of Souls, has the balls to name a song "Heroin", makes a sequel to a song from The Beatles' Revolver, and has recurring lyrics throughout the songs on the album, as well as literal melodies played on both ends ("White Mustang" and "Heroin" are pretty much one song, explaining the former's short length on the album's "Coachella" side.) But there’s also a track that compares the Charles Manson cult to contemporary L.A. hedonism – with Del Rey belting out to her fans that she’s “tired of it” when they’re “rubbing blood on my walls and shit.” There’s a lyric on the final track that name-drops Aliester Crowley as if he’s a household name, with the same song being self-proclaimed as her “modern manifesto” on “taking the darkness out of the arts” and going “from the black, into the blue”. Political to the point of oversentimentality, but in the same universe as pussy tasting like Pepsi, it comes from a place of pretty moving density – even though it’s wrapped up in such hyperactive imagery. It says something that she can scream “it’s fucking hot, hot” on the same album as “hip-hop in the summer, don’t be a bummer” – and still come out on top saying, in one song, “there’s something coming in on the wings of a bomb”. I’m worried many critics are going to miss the album’s horror elements and focus simply on the “happiness” that Del Rey has found. I’m also worried that, perhaps, not enough people have caught up to Lana in how she’s been approaching her work from the beginning. Some still see her as manufactured. An album this messy and weird – yet entirely consistent to her and all her work before it – proves, without a shadow of a doubt, she’s in complete control. And holy shit, how she’s an enigmatic, dense, melodramatic, sadcore storyteller.

Haha. I erased it because I feared nobody would have known who Crowley was. Whats your interpretation of the pre-chorus involving the rainbow symbolism?

...

Can we just discuss how amazing the last few bits of her "THANK YOU" is in the booklet. OMG.

Is it true that "White Mustang" is a "prelude" to "Heroin". Somebody mentioned how they have the same melody and similar vibes. Just prepping myself up for the conceptual aspects of the album.

Called it.

It's just awful. If anything, what we know about "Love" and the concept narrative of Lust for Life, in general, she really did put a year's worth of heart into constructing this tracklist. She's not only putting out love (the hearts flowing from her eyes was a powerful touch in her tweet) for the fans, she actually made it for us, as she promised. And it shows on the album. What, with all the political commentary she's constructed. She's obviously coming from her heart with this album, but so many of her fans just wanna bop their ass up and down (which is fine) and chew the shit out of her (which isn't fine) for beeing appropriately upset that her creative work never gets showcased the way she wants it to. The fact that so many of these "fans" are on Twitter and cheekily throwing shade her way over a rational reason to be upset is disgusting. She makes this album and you're gonna spew that shit back at her? At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if she took a decade hiatus. I'd support her. I can't imagine how she feels right now.

The Twitter responses are depressing the shit out of me.

I can't believe how many of her "fans" just don't care about how she feels about her work. It's saddening af, but hello internet culture, I guess.

I don't know about anybody else, but her "um" is so sad in its implications.

Does anybody else get the feeling that LFL is gonna be Lana's best-reviewed album? I know the folks at Rate Your Music have been weirdly hard on the singles, but with Pitchfork's praise for even "Coachella" (!!), there seems to be a respect from the pros for what's come out so far. Add on the fact the album is concept, and I think we have something that's gonna get a better-than-usual reception.

But... I thought our goal was to not support leaks either way? Or... God, I can't wrap my head around this forum's collective conscience. lol

We only have five days to wait - after more than a year - and y'all so impatient.

I never caught that about "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"! But it kind of makes sense. Whether intentional or not, yes, it's kind of a cheeky little thing I'm willing to accept. But then again, I've grown to realize - while not my favorite Lana album - Honeymoon is a pretty damn great one, objectively.

Some us are so needy. Forgive us. We can't help it. We are not worthy.

I think some knowledge of the concept beforehand helps in picking up on the story during a first listen. It's mainly how I've managed to get some die-hard progressive rock friends to listen to Ultraviolence - and almost all of them became fans afterward.

"Tomorrow Never Came" sounds rightfully Beatles-esque - which is what she obviously wanted (no subtley there). I just think its an important attribute to Lana's "pre/post-Woodstock" era of the 60s and 70s that covers that side of the album. She - like those figures in the past - is harkening back to a political-minded, unconventional anthem to which we are used to in her genre-bending attempts. So for that, I think it feels absolutely right for it to be included - and those 30 seconds make it clear that this is what she's doing. Excited to see how the rest of the track subverts it a little more.

What's cooler is that, if you wanted to, you could really see it as Lana's "for the fans" promise. Both sides of the album seem to reflect on the styles of both Born to Die and Ultraviolence.