Valentino

Me. I Am Mariah would have been proud... Re-listened to Honeymoon and the strings are gorgeous, too bad the track has no forward movement except in the bridge. Also the chorus... That's one UV artifact I wish she wouldn't have brought back. Terrence Loves You is the most hilarious track name ever. I am so excited for Salvatore, mostly for potential Lanalysis. I always thought it was because she needed a name in Backfire and it had no significance other than ~mafia boo~, but here it is again. I get this feeling that HM won't be a good Lanalysis album. Well, she does deserve her privacy.

Love the cover, very Americana. I'm glad it's not just a pretty picture of a pretty face. No computer now, so I can't search for stuff, but I'm excited for new songs. The thirst is over.

VG is about Josh. We have no proof K is a real person, unfortunately.

Thanks for the photos! Great to have proof that Carney dated her (I wonder if she dated him to get back at Jimmy for ignoring her "How do you like me now" indeed). I love how everyone is finding these photos of Josh on their own, doe, eventually his last name is gonna come out. Yeah, I kept reading through the thread and realized that the record guy relationship was on and off. The guy was not married. I'll have to re-read it more carefully then to come up with a tentative timeline for Mr. Major. They met in her early twenties, when she was shopping for labels, so it sounds like after Steve Mertens (she was 22 when they broke up, and he produced an early version of LDR that has never leaked afaik). Maybe around the same time as or after she made the No Kung Fu demos (I know it's a fake name but it's useful)? If it started in 2006, then it would have ended in 2013. It also lasted through Arthur, Mike, Josh, and Barrie. You go, girl. And if it turns out it was Van Wilson... man, what kind of throwback to early Lanalysis would that be? As for Gnecco's January 2014 comment, I think he meant that he met up with her at that date and discussed the song UV with her, since he also makes sure to mention he's not the subject of the song UV. I didn't take it to mean that it was the first time he had ever met her. "HM: Any shout outs you’d like to make? JG: I guess I should address the most recent events of my life, speaking of Lana Del Rey. I just want to say, what an amazing woman for putting me on those shows. Keep a warm place in your heart for Lana because what she did putting me on those shows, I’ll love her forever for it. What courage to do that. People might not understand why and maybe one day we can talk about why, but I’m just going to say, what a woman. So thank you. Give her as much love as you can give her." http://hearmagazine....s-jimmy-gnecco/ I get the feeling that he treated her badly in some way, which is why he's talking about her courage to put her on - she's 'big enough' to ignore the past and put him on the show. If that earlier post is correct, it sounds like Lana was kind of a big joke in Gnecco's circle. Maybe that's what he feels guilty about. Maybe it's something worse. He unfortunately chose to play the "we'll discuss that another time" card that Lana loves too.

The only thing about Radio is that Lana says it was about a guy coming back after she became famous. Maybe he reached out to her and she thought it was romantic but it wasn't? "I mean you know people always said you know people will come out of the woodwork and change their mind about you. They’ll start to like you ‘cause you’re on the radio. And it is true but I don’t mind ‘cause I’d rather people be nice to me. I don’t really care why people are nice to me I just like it when it’s easier. I just wrote it when this guy that I used to know came back into my life. So now my life is sweet like cinnamon. Cause he came back. " I'm amused by that picture because it seems someone took a picture of a frame. They couldn't even be bothered to take the picture out of the frame and scan it, lol. Who still keeps framed pictures of their ex-girlfriends? Maybe they were just friends when that pic was taken. Which would make sense. She was dating other guys from like 2007 to 2010 and I hope she didn't cheat on them with him ("I am sleeping with your best friend" !????). In 2010/11 she starts dating him, even though she knew about him before. The VG interview says 10 months ago, in November 2010, which was when Mizrahi got married. Maybe he was always trying to get with her and she finally gave him a chance? I don't know her hairstyle chronology so other than saying "this pic looks old" I can't pinpoint a year. The more recent Josh pics are hard to match with that early pic because he's grown facial hair. He does have a bump on his nose which this guy has, but I'm not certain about the rest of his face. The tattoos definitely look new. Maybe Lana liked him after he got tattoos. A childhood friend becomes a lover? Who ends up playing WoW instead. His instagram has a pic of another gf and someone said something like "is a year of dating you like a year's subscription to WoW?" which shows that even in more recent relationships, he hasn't quit the MMORPGing. I still think Yayo is about Jimmy, if only because he has a blue dragon ("snake... ink blue") tattoo and she posted it on his FB page. Or maybe she's taunting him? She posted the pic March 2009, potentially after she started dating Mizrahi. Gnecco is still a mystery. Here's a post from @@trashtrashtrash (and I think someone else) from this thread: BUT Jimmy wrote a song called "Fall into my hands" that seems to be dedicated to Lana. He said, after the UV stuff, that the song was not about him (it was about ~alcohol~) and that he never dated Lana. Their relationship remains ambiguous. Is there any non-song proof that she dated Reeve Carney? EDIT: Just noticed this similarity: From you're gonna love me: "there's nothing from you that I wanna take/I just wanna be like you" From Catch and Release: "I didn't want a thing from you/just to be like you" Another interview: "I once had a boyfriend who talked about all the reasons why he loved flags, Rock-and-Roll, and America. I didn't know much about all of that, but I did love him and I wanted to be just like him." EDIT 2: Re-reading Lanalysis is so useful. Found this quote from Spacecamp, a band Steve Mertens used to play in: "Well, we were her back up band once cuz her and Steven used to make-out sometimes, for like a year" So Steve isn't our 7 year record executive. The search continues. Let's assume Lana broke up with the 7 year record executive and immediately got with Mertens. So she would have been 14 when she started dating him. Interestingly, she says she always felt like a change of routine for him, not like the main dish: "I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern." EDIT 3: From the interview about the BTD trilogy: He doesn’t know (that BTD, VG, and BJ are about him). His mother knows. We’re in touch. (XFM interview 2012) She's friends with Josh on her old FB. But Josh totally knows (or at least thinks) VG is about him... Mystery Record Executive: 1999-2006 Mertens: 2006(?)-07 (surf punk musician from LA) Lynn: 2007-08/09(?) (guitarist for Lizzy from Jersey with ties to Greenwich/loves DMD) Mizrahi: 2009-10(?) (filmmaker from NY(?), Jewish) Josh: ???-2011 (he plays WoW a lot) Barrie: 2011(?)-14 (musician, depressed)

So here's another Mr. Campbell dilemma. The following post mentions real but non-famous people. I don't know if I should name them or not. The problem is they've willingly put out all the information themselves, and it's not hard to find. I want to see what the ethics committee (i.e. you guys) has to say about this situation. Okay, so this song, Joshy and I. It leaked August 2015. This was posted in June 2015: So this guy says his cousin dated Lana, and that his cousin posted an instagram video backstage from a Lana concert. If you look at the instagram video, you'll see it's made by somebody called Josh. The caption: "Sometimes this happens when you ignore your gf to play World of Warcraft." Now this is a bit odd. This guy claims to be the reason Lana wrote Video Games. However, we had received "insider info"~ from the ldr.fm days (alas, I wasn't there) that the song was written about Mike Mizrahi. If you take into account that Lana said BTD, BJ, and VG are all about one guy, it gets even murkier. Here are some interviews where Lana mentions why she wrote the song (emphasis mine).[/size] The date the song "Joshy and I" leaked with was 2011, the same year Video Games started blowing up. Moreover, she said she picked the model for the BTD video based on his resemblance to a former boyfriend. Once again, hesitant to give links, but Josh's instagram shows that he is heavily tattooed. So here's a crazy theory - could Josh be a guy Lana dated after Mizrahi? We have a date for when Mizrahi first met Lana (January 2009 iirc) but we don't have any solid indicators of when they broke up that I know of. Before Joshy and I leaked, there's a guy who says his cousin, Josh, dated Lana Del Rey (before she "became Lana"). We didn't have any clue that a Josh would be someone in the Lanaverse, so it's hard to say this is some guy BSing who happened to come up with the right name. Josh fits the description of the BTD model, who is said to be based on an ex. Could the Mizrahi relationship have ended before 2011, and could Lana have started dating Josh in 2011 (ultimately breaking up with him and then getting together with Barrie, can anyone find the earliest known reference to Lana and Barrie dating?). I can't find the original tweet for the second image up there, so if anyone would like to help, that'd be swell. EDIT: Found it. It was posted October 25, 2014. And it was directed at Josh's cousin. So this isn't every poser with a cousin named Josh coming out of the woodworks after the leak to claim he's the real Josh - this is way before Josh was even a twinkle in our eyes. DOUBLE EDIT: It gets better. Mike Mizrahi got married to someone else November 2010. Obviously he must have broken up with Lana by then. She says in the September 2011 interview that Video Games became a thing because she abandoned all pretenses of being a singer ten months ago. That would be November 2010, after Mizrahi got married. What boy could there be in her life, then? Josh. Revised timeline: Mertens: ???-2007 Lynn: 2007-08/09? Mizrahi: 2009-10 Josh: ???-2011 Barrie: 2012?-14 Collecting hearsay from the thread: from SitarHero: "I guess my only defense is that I'm only collecting the information others have written about publicly. For instance, everyone called "Afraid" a sister to "Video Games", and I trusted that. Do I have a statement that Mike controlled her? No." "Just recently, some stalkers insiders made it vaguely apparent that they were positive "Video Games" is about Mike Mizrahi." from evil: "I also suspect that the Knocks from the Underground review he wrote may have been a friendly or planted interview. (It wouldn't be the first. The Index magazine interview was done by Brea Tremblay, another musician who played at the same Songwriter's Hall of Fame New Writer's Showcase and was also mentored by Bob Leone.) I suspect this based on the fact that they were supposedly together two years (according to a source extremely close to the situation ) in conjunction with the fact that a video of his marriage to another woman was uploaded to his YouTube account in November 2010 means they had to have been living together at least a couple months prior to the February 2009 Arlene's Grocery show he reviewed, unless their living together overlapped his marriage, which I doubt, or he married the other woman almost immediately after they broke up and the source is exaggerating the two years time frame somewhat. Although, this Facebook post, which predates that show by only a few weeks, sure doesn't sound like they were living together yet. I don't know. It's all very strange. But if they were living together at the time of that interview, it means she might have had more control over its content. " gameboy (Posted 12 December 2012 - 11:25 PM): "MM is Michael Mizrahi. She lived with him for 2 years in the Village. She got her record deal and left him in a bad way. She tried to come back to him and even tried to get between him and his new GF who he married. He told me "never date a musician!" He gave her those film credits to help her before she was Lana. I googled mike and found this page. I'll let him know, I'm sure he won't care." (this member only has 1 post, which is this. the 2 year timeline doesn't fit the fact that he met her in 2009 and was married in 2010)

How do you know this? What would his name be? It seems like a really early picture. EDIT: Wait, is that Mizrahi? Why does she look so young there? You are too kind, but I really appreciate it. Do you have any ideas who the record executive guy could be? 7 years is just such a long time. If it was Mertens, it means they would have started dating when she was 15 ("we were just teenagers"?). If it wasn't Mertens, then her relationship with Mertens (which ended in 2008) would have been really short or her relationship with this other guy started before she was 15. Mertens wasn't really a "record executive," so that definitely throws him into doubt. Another Lynn thing I wanted to mention but forgot: his Flickr account (angiespeaks iirc, same as his blog) has pictures of American flags on the early pages. I feel pretty confident that Lynn is the boyfriend who loved America.

She wrote LG before she met Mike. We need to update the OP because it doesn't have anything about Steve Mertens and it gives Jimmy Gnecco way more weight than Arthur Lynn. It's also off in some places - the BTD VG BJ trilogy is about one guy, at least according to one interview that mentions it. I don't want to knock it because it's a fantastic post, it's just a bit out of date and it results in fans still thinking that Lana was secretly engaged to a drug dealing Jimmy Gnecco when more recent information sort of changes that.

NO 77: http://phatfriend.com/2012/01/25/before-lana-del-ray/ "In my initial post, I wrote that Lizzy had picked beats and wrote a bunch of songs to them. She then came to a studio , where she, two engineers/studio musicians, and me planned to make those songs. If you read the earlier post, you know how they turned out in my eyes. But, hey, I’m one man and maybe too involved in it…So , I figured maybe I’d let you judge for yourself… Here’s the original beat that she choose to write to: http://limelinx.com/files/d7ef38314ee7626b8fe78aeb24e81e28 [link to Heavy Hitter instrumental] (sorry, the link is down and I can’t find the original beat) Now, to be honest, I always though this beat was pretty mediocre. But, it had a certain ruggedness to it that I thought could work well with some singing on it (if not rapping). She picked it, and wrote something cool to it, so we went with it. Here’s the song that came out of that [youtube link to Heavy Hitter V1]"

Regarding "can we call anything a demo without it being released by Lana." Some people call any version of a song that isn't the final one a demo. Others might call them alternate versions. I, personally, prefer to use demo for early, unpolished versions of songs. So the two Hit & Run and DICWB songs are, imo, not demos, but alternate versions, even though we don't know which of them, if any, would have been used for release - they aren't rough and unpolished and incomplete. However, I consider Making Out a demo because of the heavy use of autotune on Lana's vocals. I don't think there are any known final versions of her songs with autotune, and it seems common for artists to be heavily autotuned when making demo versions of their songs (Lady Gaga did the same thing on some songs that ended up not being obviously autotuned in the final version), so I came to the conclusion that this is Lana "trying out" the song. A bit of conjecture on my part, I admit. I think as long as we have a consistent definition for demo, it should be fine. Of course, getting people to agree on this is a problem (remember the "outtake" dispute). As such, I think NO 11, Behind Closed Doors, is commonly considered to be a demo because the second verse is a repeat of the first, showing she hadn't written the whole song yet, and the bridge has no lyrics. The instrumental is also clearly a rudimentary version of the one used in the final. It's common for producers to send songwriters instrumentals to write on top of, and I think Lana has done this before (Noir, Daytona Meth are laptop demos on top of instrumentals, and as far as we know she's never made instrumentals beyond her basic guitar playing). A similar example would be Charli XCX's "You (Ha Ha Ha)", where she's also singing over an instrumental. In the demo, you can hear that the bridge has no lyrics, although it does in the final version. "Leaked as born bad baby, but is it Diet Mountain Dew -Born Bad Baby Demo-, is it standalone?" I don't understand this question regarding NO 19. NO 51: Doijroij is some weird fake crap. Someone with the instrumental to Playground used it to filter out the rap and then paste it over some stuff. I think @@evilentity is the one who came to this conclusion. NO 77: That is the instrumental to V1 of Heavy Hitter, yes. I'll see if I can find the post from the guy who made the instrumental. NO 129: I got the impression that Prom Song (Gone Wrong) was the entire title, not that Gone Wrong was an alternate title. There are songs that do this, e.g. Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) doesn't have the alternate title A Man After Midnight, but you can refer to the song as just Gimme Gimme Gimme if you don't feel like using the whole title. @@evilentity found this song on a Soundcloud page, I think, so he should know.

Lana is not a good lyricist... yet. She has moments where she comes up with beautiful lyrics, but off the top of my head I can't come up with that many songs where I like the lyrics as a whole. Raise Me Up, Yayo? Thankfully, I'm here for the music, not the lyrics. Although if she can sustain her moments of genius during entire songs, that would take her to another level. HBTB may be vapid, but at least it doesn't take itself too seriously, unlike Honeymoon. HM feels like someone else trying to make a Lana song, going through a checklist - slow, melancholy, sung mostly in low register, domestic violence reference, unusual sexual metaphor. I will say her voice is lovely on it, and the harmonies on "dark blue" are very nice. Unfortunately, I don't like the song as a whole. I actually love HBTB because it's a break from Lana being pretentious (I can never forgive "all of our friends are dead and we never even met them"), plus she's being sassy and moving away from someone's bull, which is a welcome change from "we're in a destructive relationship, but we can never leave". She truly keeps us on our feet. "You want BTD beats? Soundtrack-like song. More ballads? Muddy trap break-up anthem." I know I complain about Lana a lot, but I genuinely love her. She's one of my most listened artists and also an influence on my own music. She da bestest.

They said the songs they leaked were "bottom of the barrel," implying there's better ones out there. I need OTTR demo, I'll be so happy with that. And we'll finally have all BTD demos, which is awesome.

This is awful and petty of me, but seeing fans who expected Lana to continue releasing slow, sad songs forever get mad and accuse her of trying to get commercial success makes me a tiny bit happy. It's Lana taking over us, throwing us a curve ball. She's reminding us she does what she wants. I was so right in talking about the BTD demos because feel-wise this fits. But it's not rehashed either, because I can't think of a song in her catalog that sounds like this. The lyrics aren't impressive, but neither were Honeymoon's and at least these have bite to them. Can every person saying it's about Barrie back that up though? Like why him and not some other ex, or an imaginary ex?

Why does everyone think this is dedicated to Barrie? He's not my idea of a "bad motherfucker."

Why does everyone think this is dedicated to Barrie? He's not my idea of a "bad motherfucker."

Nooooooooo We were doing so well, too.

There are 3 songs that mention a Ray. Kill Kill, Raise Me Up, and Joshy and I. Not much to go on. K might not be real or a boyfriend. Plus, they don't fit into the timelines. Which is odd.

Mow the lawn for money is from BTTB. And the Lana Ray thing from Trash Magic. This is like something from an LDR lyrics generator.

More accessible, an anomaly? Compared to what? Paradise, UV, AKA? Her unreleased stuff? Her May Jailer era? And more importantly, in what way is it "more accessible" than your point of reference? Not trying to be confrontational, just don't really understand this point of view.

It even runs on Windows 3.1, for that ~*~retro vintage aesthetic~*~ Calling it now. Honeymoon will be vaporwave inspired. She's already got the tracky tropical part down, after all

I don't get why Lana keeps trying to invoke these jazz musicians. I'm not a Davis fan, but I've heard some of his stuff and I can't imagine Lana doing anything that sounds remotely like him. Then again, she did say inspired. She could say "I wrote a song inspired by Iron Maiden" and then release a slow UV-like ballad because "I really liked the juxtaposition of like, iron, which is hard, and maidens, which are soft, and like, maybe she's sad because her heart is iron, you know?"

Honeymoon's a nice song, but it certainly doesn't seem like a step forward or "huge evolution" for Lana. It seems like more of the same persona she's actively cultivated since BTD - slow songs, lyrics about a bad boy, "cinematic." Sometimes I wish VG weren't the song that made Lana famous because it really locked her into that image. Most of the BTD demos weren't slow - just compare the incredible DP demo to the toned down final version. Unfortunately, I get the feeling that that's all Lana's gonna do from now on. It's gotten to the point where fans hoping for more upbeat songs are told off because Lana's "a sad person" and her music is "always gonna be slow." Brite Lites? Raise Me Up? Smarty? Queen of the Gas Station? Most of the BTD demos? Lana excels at doing upbeat music. The original VG demo was faster than the final version - Robopop were the ones who slowed it down to "a dirge" (their words). Lana's slow songs aren't more "authentic" or "her" - they're just what've made her popular. She has great uptempo and midtempo songs too, and wanting more of those doesn't make you a bad fan. I also feel like a lot of people confuse the appearance of depth with the actual thing. Like Lana is a deeper artist because she writes slow songs and because she talks about metaphysics in her interviews. But if you listen to the lyrics... she's not writing about metaphysics. She's writing about love, bad boys, America, nostalgia, daddy, awkward drug references, sex, little red party dresses, the pale moonlight. That's not to say I think her lyrics are trash, because she manages to write about the same topic over and over and still make it pleasant to listen to. But I don't think she's more "intellectual" than her mainstream peers. She could go in that direction if she really wanted to, I think - Pawn Shop Blues is the song that really gives me that impression - but she seems pretty content where she is. Big Bad Wolf isn't that bad. I mean, it's bad, but it's not worse than Delicious. @ Her May Jailer stuff is so important because it's her before she tried to cultivate any sort of image, before she had any sort of fame, international or local. Lyrically and musically it's very distinct from the rest of her stuff. I think it's very honest stuff. She's not singing low to be "taken more seriously", she's not yet started writing about America and cocaine, and her production isn't overwhelming her. It's her and her guitar (and I think it is her playing on that record - she makes a mistake on one of the songs and she stops singing to catch up with it, which would be harder to do with a backup guitarist), without having to worry about being judged by the world.

MMITPM leaked before West Coast was released and I've listened to that song more than all of UV.

Psychologists don't draw conclusions about people without having talked to them for a significant period of time. Nobody here knows Lana, no matter what we may think after having heard so much of her music or seeing her interviews. I do think it's inappropriate to speculate that her mom did anything to her of any sort without hard proof. It's entirely unfair to ruin Pat's reputation over a "feeling" - remember when people got carried away and started suggesting "Lana was in love with and wanted to run away with her English teacher~" over some song lyrics and like two interview quotes? Remember when people accused Jimmy Gnecco of domestic violence because of UV? As fans, we want to know everything, but I do think there's a difference between curiosity and making damning accusations that can have very real consequences. And if this sort of theory catches on, it's nigh-near impossible to correct it (some interview already mentioned the English teacher). Rumors spread, facts don't. With response to her alcoholism... Lana said she started drinking because the concept seemed "so fucking cool." And then she realized she was using drink to deal anytime she had a problem, and that's when she couldn't stop. Lana also says stuff like "I haven't had a drink in 10 years" when we have Facebook posts of her being relieved that alcohol is going to be offered at a party. She's given her reasons for her teenage alcoholism, we shouldn't come up with new ones without evidence. She definitely went to Fordham. Check the 76 page on Minor Questions; there's people who went to Fordham who know about her. There are Fordham publications that refer to her as a graduate. I emailed the alumni office and they confirmed she graduated in 2008 with a degree in philosophy. How she completed her degree is a question because she claims she did some independent study business, but I don't think it's fair at all to say her time at Fordham was "a lie" just because she doesn't talk about it much. Let's be real - university education is not valued by the music business, so why would interviewers care about that? As for Lana's "shadiness" ... she has a right to her privacy, and she's said more than once that she'd rather talk about the music than what's happened in her life. She's very loose with numbers; she's notoriously unreliable with regards to accurately telling how long ago something else happened, which is probably part of the reason why we can't construct a perfectly fitting timeline for her. I don't think she's only "shady" about her early years; she generally doesn't seem to like talking about her life. Chuck mentioned, in her interview with Lana, how she [Lana] hates it when people mythologize her past, especially the trailer park. I'm confident that her living in a trailer park was about getting away from her parents, proving she can make it on her own, and finding her own identity as an artist. How many kids leaving the nest get excited about living in some stupid rinky-dink place just because, for once, it's theirs? Lady Gaga lived in such an apartment for a year or so before getting her record deal for similar reasons, and her parents also came from money, so I don't think a sinister past is her reason for living in a trailer park. I'm going to end this post with two relevant Lana lyrics: "Stop looking at my trainwreck life and start listening to the way that I sing the blues." "And make up stories about my life and put on very cherry balm."

All I Want For Christmas Is the loon You