Valentino

It's such a great album and definitely her most iconic period. The GP's image of Lana is still from the BTD era - the flower crowns, the "daddy," the glamour and wealth combined with hip-hop imagery. Ultraviolence was great, don't get me wrong (although like BTD it suffers from a weak second half), but it failed to make that sort of pop culture impact. Honeymoon almost went by unnoticed. I don't think it's Lana's best work (I still stan super hard for AKA), but I do love that album and the idea behind it, even if the execution wasn't perfect. I hope one day she'll feel as compelled to perform and make videos for another album like she did for BTD.

@@godknowsitried: It's not perfect, I know I'm missing some chord flourishes and such, but I think it's definitely good enough to play along with it. I hope you have fun with it!

I can try to take requests if anyone else needs some song done.

Can someone please post chords for Hollywood's Dead?

Thanks

I can try to get you some later.

@@godknowsitried

VERSE:

Cm

Our kind of love

               F7

It was once in a lifetime

Cm

It couldn't last

             F7

It was doomed from the first time

       Cm                  F7

And you were 50s cool

                        Cm

In blue suede shoes

                                   F7

But it was a cover for all of the trouble

You got into

AbM7

I always fall for the wrong guy

Gm7

Things that are bad always taste nice

Gdim                         AbM7

That's what girls like me do

Abm

Lose you

CHORUS:

Eb           Eb+     Ab            Bb

Don't tell me it's over

Eb           Eb+     Ab            Bb

Don't tell me it's over

Eb                           Eb+                 Ab                            Bb

Hollywood's dead, Elvis is crying, Vicious in flames, Roland is dying

Eb             Eb+                 Ab              Absus2 Bb 

And in the light you're sickeningly beautiful

Eb           Eb+            Ab                  Absus2           Bb

Say goodbye, you're sickeningly beautiful

BRIDGE:

E+                 Ab      Cm

If you should go before me then know

Abm

That I always loved you, there's no one above you, baby

I hope they collaborate again, maybe on a Lana-centric track. Their personas just complement each other so well, as do their music and voices. I do wish more Lana was audible on Prisoner, though.

Other than the October 22nd interview with Billboard where she compared Francesco to a table, has Lana ever mentioned Francesco in an interview before?

No

 whoops

There's a channel that has uploaded almost all original instrumentals from Trilogy and Kissland.

 

I'm so excited, finally being able to appreciate those godlike productions on their own 

Like don't get me wrong, I love Abel's voice and the lyrical universe but still...this is amazing.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5XhKwTMAeA-xhoWsxRausA/videos

So perfect 

It's too bad they're on YouTube, I don't know how to get good quality from YT.

Are you Russian? 

AKA is the most natural to me, unique sounds and lyrics, and great melodies. Not a bad or boring song on there, unlike BTD (Carmen, DMD), P (Belair, most of the album is forgettable imo), UV (PWYC, Old Money, FMWUTTT), or Honeymoon (I literally forget Religion exists, Art Deco is boring sorry). It's not a perfect album, but it's definitely my favorite by her.

Paradise is def last place, but the rest sort of fight each other in my ranking. Like I love BTD but after hearing the demos, I feel like a lot of the spark was lost (DMD, NA, DP, TIWMUG) and I start understanding why people think it's soulless and overproduced. Honeymoon is beautiful but not outstanding. Ultraviolence has great songs but I'm not into the whole lo-fi rock sound. WC is the only song on the standard album that sounds "clean" to me; I really dislike the production otherwise.

But I still love all of them in a way, even Paradise. Unlike some artists, none of Lana"s albums are truly unlistenable.

I wish they would have added online capabilities for the VC RBY. How awesome would that have been? But something is better than nothing.

Also that Pokken thing looks sick.

Love her music, but the video game is severely lacking

I don't know, I thought "Lana Del Rey: High By The Beach simulator" was fantastic. The controls are so fluid; it feels natural to shoot the machine gun at the paparazzi helicopters, and the levels are pretty challenging without getting stupid hard. The plot is still nonsensical, though.

Reading through this thread is genuinely embarrassing, people were actually getting up in arms and calling Adele rude because she might have been inspired by Lana's like y'all better hate on every single basic girl who gets a semicolon, "I will not sink" anchor, or an infinity sign if you're going to fight the good fight for tattoo originality.

Adele likes Lana anyway, so who cares?

I like P and T, but I think I like T a bit more. P feels slicker and a better pop product, but I always quit before the second half. T is rougher but it's a bit more personal and has slightly more tracks that I like.

So I'm curious as to how you guys break down each album.

Perfection:

I finally ordered Night Time My Time. So excited.

could a kind soul send me Rollercoaster? It doesn't seem available to buy on Google Play, and the link here isn't working.

It's so cute when she says "vroom vroom" and "bee-beep!" 

Not sure how I feel about it, it's just a bit too slow, but I like the return of rapping Charli. I think I'll end up liking it.

I haven't heard any of the SOPHIE tracks, derp. Listening to the live version of Vroom Vroom I like that tempo better, but the pitch shifting is annoying as all hell. I don't know if I imagine listening to this on the radio but I need a non-Boom Clap Charli track on the radio 

EDIT: never mind that stuff this song has single-handedly slayed my existence my body is ready

I'm so ready for new Charli stuff. I never imagined I'd end up liking her more than Marina. the disappointment that was froot

I need Honeymoon to win album of the year so we can get another close-up of Taylor Swift, smugly expecting to win a second AOTY, seething like a baby because she didn't win.

If Beck can beat Beyonce, I need the Grammy committee to do us a second favor. 

Plus Lana basically wrote the chorus to Wildest Dreams anyway so it's a win for Taylor Swift, too 

Lana is one of my favorite artists. I'd be very sad if she just faded out of music. I know "nothing gold can stay," but that doesn't mean I wouldn't be sad if she eventually became a non-entity. Marina has completely left my radar, and I used to love her more than Lana. I don't want that to happen, you know?

I like that most people here have been able to express themselves without resorting to KIIII SHADE. It feels more polite than the pre-release thread for sure.

Btw, now listening to Honimoonz

I want to compare Butterflies Part 2 with Money Power Glory. I think MPG is an evolution of the theme in Butterflies Part 2. An inversion, if you will.

Gimme them, gimme them dope and diamonds. Arthur Lynn is the guy in MPG confirmed. Just a Lana-ism about that money, power, glory.

So, in summary, what?
Butterflies Part 2 is about a powerful, religious man who, against his own religious code, uses his influence to get sexual favors from girls. Lana doesn't care about this because she's in love with him.

Money Power Glory is about a powerful, religious man who, against his own religious code, lives a sinful life with Lana. Lana doesn't care about this because she also fails his moral standards, and because she's using his influence to get money, power, and glory.

We went from a hypocritical, powerful religious figure using girls to a hypocritical, powerful religious figure being used by a girl. ~*eVoLuTiOn~*

Maybe the Butterflies Pt.2. guy dumped her or something. 

Her lyricism really didn't improve that much on Ultraviolence. She wrote about new themes, I'll give you that, but whereas before her fault was just stringing pretty quotes together, now it sometimes seems nonsensical. "He used to call me DN  - that stood for deadly nightshade." Is DN some double entendre? A pop culture reference? It might sound less stupid if DN sounded like an actual nickname as opposed to the most hamfisted acronym she could come up with. "He used to call me poison like I was poison ivy." Lana did the poison ivy thing better in DICWB - "call me poison ivy cuz I'm far from good, but pretty from afar, like a dark star." The UV line feels very obvious. And there's no way she can sing "bright tears of gold like lemonade" without bringing the imagery of her crying urine, I am simply sorry (same with Ghetto Baby "you got a face like the Madonna crying tears of gold"). I think the "nothing gold can stay, like love or lemonade" is a better lemonade reference, if only because there's alliteration and it's an interesting juxtaposition, something abstract like love and something so banal and concrete as lemonade. "I'm a dragon, you're a whore." Girl, you're the one saying you slept your way to the top, don't be throwing stones from your glass house. And if this song really is about Lorde, that's even worse, because she'd be calling a freaking seventeen-year-old a whore. Come on, Lana, you're better than that.

I cannot stand her vocals on PWYC. By which I mean, I skip the song every single time because of her bleating on the verses. "But I don't really mind," "shine for you," are particular problem spots. And I actually like the song, when I can bring myself to ignore the forced drug references and obviously improvised lyrics. But the pitchiness... only once in a blue moon can I bring myself to listen to PWYC.

Old Money was better as Methamphetamines. Her vocal delivery on Meth. is very her, got that Doris Day wobbly thing going on at "Methampheta~mines." It's so beautiful. And I prefer it being sung acappella to the boring string arrangement Old Money got. But what really kills Old Money for me is the chorus. If this thing really ever was in the running to be the Gatsby song, I'm glad Y&B won out instead, because I don't like the chorus at all. Melodically, it's just uninteresting, as opposed to the verses. Whereas the two-note motif from Y&B was invoked throughout the film for different moods. Old Money's chorus is just a disappointment, really.

I like The Other Woman. When she sings "her life alone," it gives me chills. It sounds so beautiful, what a lovely tone! And I like the arrangement they came up for the song, too, so that there's still harmonic progression after "her life alone" (it simply returns to the tonic in the Nina Simone version). I just don't like the filter they put on her voice, it's unnecessary. I also like DLMBM, but it would have been better off as a bonus track. It feels unnecessary after Swan Song. Blue Velvet is alright. I hope she won't continue putting covers on future albums, though; I simply don't like covers on albums. I didn't like it when the Beatles had half their albums composed of covers, and I continue to prefer albums of all-original material. Especially since covers usually contrast with the rest of the album (case in point: DLMBM).

The "beatboxing and rapping in the summer rain, like a boss he sang jazz and blues" line is awful out of context, but it sounds perfectly sensical in the context of the song. The way she sings it, even though it's ridiculous, it feels like it totally belongs in the song. Unlike, say, "now it's time to eat soft ice cream," or even "cacciatore" (no more food, please) which is still silly but I can ignore because the chorus's melody is so compelling. I love Salvatore (and I'm glad he's her baby boo  ).

Although I feel like by any standards of music, songwriting, literature, etc., Big Bad Wolf is an awful song... I still kinda like it? This is the most shameful thing I've ever written on this forum, and am ever likely to write again. 

I think I like Honeymoon better than UV but not as much as BTD?  But I like all her albums, even Paradise. I luh dis gurl.

i asked the same thing in the minor questions thread because i'm so curious about it as well. from the little she's explained of writing this album, it seems like rick nowels sat at a piano playing chord progressions while lana made up lyrics & melodies over it.

This is the same way she wrote Video Games with Justin Parker, for what it's worth.

"What's the meaning of this song?" This is a thread where we indulge our inner literature major while also answering the question - "Is Lana really that repetitive with her themes?"
 
This is not about real life people. This about looking at songs by themselves, without outside context to help you understand. What textual evidence do we have for each song's meaning? In an effort to keep this distinct from Lanalysis, the topic is limited to looking at a text instead of pointing to interviews. Obviously if we want to talk about Lana's intentions, we need to look at what she says, but here we're looking at what the song says, not what any authority (Lana, a video, a single cover, etc.) says about the song.
 
These aren't meant to be authoritative conclusions. There's a lot of people here who have different views on these songs and I wanna hear about them, which is why I made this thread. Moreover, these are very superficial descriptions. I'm pretty sure there's more to "Oh say can you see" and "West Coast" than I've written here. Write your opinions on what Lana's songs mean! There are some songs (especially Sirens-era stuff) that I have a very hard time making any sense out of, so if anyone has ideas on that, please spit them out.

Sirens

Lana Del Ray

Born to die

Paradise

Ultraviolence

Honeymoon

From a quick glance, BTD definitely looks like the album that most centers itself around a single theme, that theme being love, particularly eternal love and lost love. UV deals with depression, relationships that are illicit or don't work, and criticisms of Lana (BrBaby, FMWUTTT, MPG, even UV?). Honeymoon goes back to some old themes, while also talking about her relationship with fame (GKIT, SS, DLMBM) and some one-off themes, like "a foreign man is often ignored for frozen treats" and "an amorous murderer's life is chronicled while Lana is fascinated with the length of the Earth's rotation." God only knows what the hell Sirens is about - lots of talk about addiction, and other peoples' lives? AKA seems more consistent in terms of dealing with classic Lana themes like kitschy Americana (trailers, motels, gas stations).

What are your thoughts?

Summertime Sadness is about suicide?

The video is supposed to be about a friend committing suicide. At least, so I've heard. If someone can provide links to interviews proving this, I'd love to see it.

She once said in an interview that Summertime Sadness was "about nothing." Songs, after all, don't have to be about personal experience. Or anything at all. And the meaning of a song does not have to hinge on its video, either - the two can be independent.

I don't think I ever saw anyone talk about it, but her guitar playing style is actually interesting, espacially after the Sirens stuff. Songs from the pre-AKA/AKA era like Disco, Oh Say Can You See, Yayo, For K P2... Have an unusual yet simple and original style of chords, very Cat power-like (which makes sense since she's a fan), minimalistic but also dark and folky, which suited her music. Mostly fingerpicking 2 fingers chords, which she probably came up with naturally from the way she used to play major chords in the Sirens era. I wonder if she's still writing on the guitar tho, the Joshy & I leak was recorded around 2010-2011 and if she's the one playing in the recording, it's possible she's playing the bass ( ) or most likely a guitar in an alternate tuning, which would be a very interesting development in her guitar style. Can't wait for her to be 45 and do an accoustic tour, Graham4everything tea.

I agree it's interesting to see how her guitar playing changes. Disco, Axl Rose Husband, OSCYS, those have a very simple pattern, it sounds like she's just playing octaves to my ear (though I'd need to check). On Sirens, her guitar playing is more advanced, with a more complicated plucking pattern. She doesn't strum much, except on Move. I bet you she practiced long and hard for Sirens, because none of her laptop stuff is like that. You can even hear her stumbling during "Bad Disease" and slowing down her vocals momentarily to make up for it. I think she said in an interview that she just "sucked" at playing guitar, and that's why she stopped. I think it helped her come up with cool sounds, though. Like the chorus of Drive-By is I i I i I VII I (in the key of C, it'd be C Cm C Cm C Bb C). I've never heard that before. And there are probably other cool things like that scattered through Sirens that happened because of her limitations as a guitar player. She said she only learned 4 chords, but it can't literally be true (we can just look at every chord played in Sirens to make sure  ), although I'm certain it was a very limited number. I think she said F or B was hard? Anyway, she managed to take the few chords she could play and come up with interesting sounds. That's creativity!

Also her acappella stuff shows her experimenting a lot with harmonies, like Bentley. Carmen is actually pretty interesting as a demo because you've got parallel fourths or fifths above the melody line during the chorus, and then a picardy third at the very end. She never studied music theory, so she came up with that stuff on her own. Off the top of my head, Lady Gaga is the only other pop music artist that I've heard picardy thirds (So happy I could die) (don't complain that Lana isn't pop, I'm using pop as a catch-all compared to folk or "art" music).

I don't know how she writes songs nowadays. There's supposed to be a Cola laptop demo, but we've never gotten that. I don't think we have demos for any of the UV songs except maybe the "radio mix" of West Coast. We know a segment was cut from Cruel World. But if she doesn't use her guitar or create acappellas... how is she writing nowadays? Acappellas are what people who don't play an instrument use to write music (see: Michael Jackson's demo for Beat It). She's said she sits down to write at the same time every day "because your muse will know where to find you," but her process is still shrouded in mystery. If only interviewers asked about this stuff instead of the tired "feminism? depression? fashion?" questions.

Also about her decline in quality as a writer, apart from the fact that she doesn't seek inspiration somewhere else etc... I think the biggest issue is the shift in her writing process. She's always improvised songs lyrics, but from the AKA/BTD interviews it's clear that she also spent a lot of time writing, correcting, assembling the lyrics and her ideas... Crafting the whole thing in maybe a more pragmatic fashion. Since UV I think she doesn't really talk about writing lyrics or working on songs that way, it seems like it's mostly improvisation/figuring out lyrics rather than maybe sitting down afterwards to work on them, examples being PWYC or HBTB. We can't really know, but now she just looks easily satisfied by her writing while she's spending months on the mixing, when obviously there's some issues on the songwriting.

 

She just needs to put new perspective in her work and also to change her environment, which is composed in parts, of people sucking her ass 24/7 (her composers like Rick, her team, some random "artists" that stick around her), people being really harmful to her work and her personally (I think HM is the first record where she doesn't have any one the plain stupid pressures she got from Interscope) and also her working with people that aren't suited for her craft/aren't that competent just because she likes them (her sister etc).

Be honest with me... are you talking about James Franco? Or is there someone else we should know about?

@@Creyk
I thought it'd be obvious it was a joke by how ridiculous it was.   I hoped calling it the freaking ~indisputable~ Canon and adding Important Capitals would really take it over the top into "not serious" territory, but it seems not.

My opinion is not the definitive one. Nobody's is. I'm well aware I'm not the Lord of Lana Music. 

I'll make sure to type all my responses in assembly code to prevent future misunderstandings.