BluVelvUnderground

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

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

Yeah it's both because of the mic she uses in those songs, they must be similar to the ones she used in Ultraviolence. Pretty sure the static means the noise gate on the monitor is very low and so other low frequencies in the studio such as vents, fans, breathing, just general noise / static gets picked up. On her more polished, poppy songs she sings with a noise gate (or a filter) which drowns out all the alternate sounds around her and eliminates static so the sound is more polished and clean. But I feel like on grittier songs like Heroin and Get Free, she wanted the sound to be more intimate and live so she kept the static because it makes it sound more vintage and down to earth.

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. 

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.

Comparing OTTR to a slow af tempo Beatles vibe song is like comparing McDonald’s to Cheesecake Factory. They’re each in their own category. 

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.

I originally posted this in the Pre-Release thread, but thought it'd get more attention here. Wanna explain something I happened to notice while checking out the snippets.

I honestly think "Love" was meant to set the mood for the album overall. It has the guitar, but it has the "wall of sound" hip-hop to it, as well. And then, from "Lust for Life" to "Coachella", it really is like a stretch of sexy, summer-driven hip-hop tracks and ends on a positive track that is political - and then, we get all the guitars, and the veteran folk singers (or related to them) rather than the contemporary artists that feature in the first half. I think it's very intentional that the last half is going to have a Woodstock-vibe, only through some of the familiar hip-hop additions that modernize classic sounds. "Tomorrow Never Came" sounds very 1967-71 rock. Definitely see where she's connecting the "two generations", and why she probably feels kids looking into vintage music may find it denser if they understand that history is sort of repeating itself through the anxiety of the current political American heat. It's exactly what she said she wanted to do with the album, and her chronology of the tracks seems to really suit that concept. Even at around the half-point of the album, if you count "Love" as just the intro/combination of the two sounds, and "Coachella" the track that moves the hip-hop into its poltical, folk-driven side.
 
Lana still doing concept, for sure. 
 
A SORT OF CHART (lol):
 
INTRODUCTION (folk guitar strings open the album, but blends into spacey, "wall-to-wall" hip-hop noises)
01. Love
 
SEXY, SUMMER-Y, HIP-HOP (7 "wall-to-wall" hip-hop noises)
02. Lust for Life
03. 13 Beaches
04. Cherry
05. White Mustang
06. Summer Bummer
07. Groupie Love
08. In My Feelings
 
THE BRIDGE (a more stripped back hip-hop beat, letting the album kind of cool off a bit before getting more poltically-minded)
09. Coachella..
 
POLITICAL "GANGSTA" FOLKY-Y (7 "wall-to-wall" hip-hop noises, but more laid back, with heavier guitar and folk featured artists)
10. God Bless America..
11. When the War Was at War...
12. Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems
13. Tomorrow Never Came
14. Heroin
15. Change
16. Get Free
 
It's like she takes us from "Coachella" to "Woodstock" by using that track as a bridge. As I predicted, the song works in concept of the album; but releasing it as a single is bizarre. From what we have in the snippets, this album seems to be very well-thought out. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

U do it well, I enjoyed the last paragraph the most. 
 
Doubt the critics will buy into the overall happiness of the record. Maybe it's just me as a fan but, it seems more looming than anything else if that even makes sense. Happiness seems more like a concept to find like a firefly in the night, rather than catching the sun's uv rays, when it comes to the record. Two cents.
 
Great work, it was a nice read

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?

Called it. 

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.

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.