Valentino

Potential Arthur Lynn stuff.
 
I was looking for an Arthur Lynn blog post and ended up looking through his posts. I noticed he referred to Van Halen as "kings" and the "band that changed my life and kicked me in the balls." He specifically tags them as "david lee roth, diamond, edward van halen." And that reminded me of Mermaid Motel:
 
'maybe we could go to Suede Tokyo
See Van Halen at their reunion show
Heavy Metal hour on TV
Diamond Dave and Ray Lee'
 
I mean, there's nothing saying none of her other long-haired boyfriends/paramours/whatever couldn't have liked Van Halen, but:
Arthur Lynn is confirmed as a boyfriend we have songs referencing his origins (Greenwich) we have songs referencing his favorite drink (Diet Mountain Dew) It doesn't seem odd that this could be a reference to him.

Lana Del Rey lived in New York City from like 2006 to 2009-ish. Van Halen's reunion tour with David Lee Roth 2007-2008 had a stop in NYC November 13, 2007 and May 23, 2008. Neither of these dates would conflict with her known shows. I don't know when she wrote Mermaid Motel, but she performed it at Arlene's Grocery February 3, 2009, so it's possible for it to refer to the reunion show as a past event (as opposed to a future event).


 
Ray Lee is currently a drummer for Korn but "served as the drummer of the Van Halen frontman’s solo band from 1997 to 2005, performing on 1998′s ‘DLR Band’ and 2003′s ‘Diamond Dave’ albums."
I'm still not sure about Suede Tokyo. There is a band by the name of Suede and they have indeed performed in Tokyo, but I don't know why Lana would refer to that. More educated people, help?
 
So I'm speculating Mermaid Motel is about Arthur Lynn. Which brings me to something else...
 
One site listed Lynn's interests as such (trying to find the site since, like an idiot, I just saved the interests). Pay attention to the bolded ones.
music, girls, guitars, america, diet mountain dew, van halen, ice cream, photography, jersey, angiescreams, indian summer, woods, food, freckles, the sun, the moon, seasons, amplifiers, family, friends, karma, october, yo mama, yo mama's apple pie, and those little people we call doggies
 
JERSEY
Note his blog is subtitled "thoughts from a jersey boy." His flickr lists his hometown as Jersey but "currently" (not sure when screenshot was taken) Greenwich, CT. I was already pretty sure that Motel 6 was about Lynn due to DMD references, but "to Jersey with love" makes more sense now.
 
MORE VAN HALEN STUFF + CONEY ISLAND + YOUR MOM:
This is the most recent screenshot I’m showing – we’re going in reverse chronological order, from ‘last login date.’
In this screenshot from her Lizzy Grant MySpace, url therichwhores, she lists Diamond Dave as an influence (along with Britney Spears and motorcycles, two other lasting influences). Notice she lists her location as New Jersey. Also notice that she describes her music as metal - not a musical genre I would put any Lana Del Rey song in, ever. I wonder if Arthur Lynn, who could conceivably be the one into "heavy metal hour," influenced her calling her music "metal."

 
She's still therichwhores here, but her location is now Alabama. Her genre is glam, blues, experimental. No metal – not yet, anyway. David Lee Roth is one of 3 influences, along with Britney Spears and motorcycles.
 

 
The earliest Rich Whores screenshot I’m showing. In this one, she lists David Lee Roth and Coney Island as influences... along with "your mom." Yeah, just like Mr. Lynn listed "yo mama." Britney and motorcycles remain, but the other influences have shifted. Arthur Lynn is explicitly listed as a member here. She's living in New York now. (aside: pretty things is an influence here. we'll see that again later)

 
 
 
AMERICA
Lana said this about one of her ex-boyfriends:
 
Lynn loves rock and roll, that's perfectly clear. But what distinguishes him from Gnecco or Carney or other musical liaisons? Well, the 4th 'like' listed by Lynn was America. It's a weak connection, but I don't think we've ever tied that comment to any other boyfriend. Lana didn't always talk or sing about America. Her May Jailer era stuff, for example, seems more focused on the details of personal relationships than concepts like America or archetypes like the gangster boyfriend. I don't know when Lana started playing with Lynn, but it'd be curious to see if that date coincides with an increasing number of references to Americana. If we assume Mermaid Motel is about Lynn, then we also have a connection to Coney Island, another interest of hers that you don't see mentioned in the early days.
 
To see how big the change from her May Jailer stuff to her Lizzy/Lana stuff was, let's look at more MySpace pages...
 
Folk, acoustic, experimental! Only one of these genre descriptors survived into the post-May Jailer MySpace descriptors. Her influences are Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead... only Nirvana is repeated as an influence in the later MySpace page, although Daniel Johnston seems to be in the vein of singer-songwritery stuff.

A year later (according to last-login date) and "Cony Island" (sic) and "pretty things" have been added as influences. She's now experimental, blues, folk - the acoustic part is gone. Another mid-2000s screenshot shows "Bread and Oranges" appearing alongside Money Hunny, Fordham Road, and A Star for Nick. It now has its final name, Pawn Shop Blues, and For K Part 2 has shown up - the LDR album appears to be forming (Jump, Kill Kill, and Put Me In A Movie show up in the Lizzy screenshots above).
 
The last login date for this one is 5/17/2007, whereas the last login date for the earliest Rich Whores page is 12/12/2007. It appears to be a transitional state, not just with regards to her layout, but also her name and influences. The music is less acoustic. Coney Island starts showing up, as well as motorcycles and Van Halen. Metal inexplicably becomes a descriptor.
Would fit in pretty well with Arthur Lynn showing up… just sayin’. 
 
(one last thing... under band members, she lists "TAGS & TIM." Who are these people?)

 
CONCLUSION?
From 2007-ish to maybe 2009-ish, Lana dated Arthur Lynn. Arthur Lynn may be the boyfriend who loved rock-n-roll and America. Before his introduction into her band (and we don't know when they met, so they could have met before Lynn was part of the Rich Whores), Americana references were rare in her music, she made singer-songwritery stuff about people's lives, and she basically had a very different persona. Lynn becomes part of the Rich Whores, she now likes Van Halen, specifically David Lee Roth and the album Diamond Dave, Coney Island (all mentioned in Mermaid Motel), her music is described very differently (metal, really?; and glam), she somehow picks up on his jokes (yo mama)... I think he was an influential boyfriend.
 
Oh, and to tie this back to other boyfriends...
 
According to the Galore interview by Chuck, Lana broke up with Steve Mertens when she was 22. So 2007?
Lana mentioned a seven-year relationship with a record producer in the 2014 Fader interview and I think Mertens is the only one who could potentially fit that.
 
 
Which would make the timeline of that relationship 2000-2007. Which means she would have been 15 when she started dating Mertens... If Mertens is the 7 year relationship (and I don't think any of the other ones could be that relationship), then that means she would have had 4 major ex-boyfriends.
Mertens 2000-2007.
Lynn 2007 to 2008 or 2009
Mizrahi 2009 to 2011
Barrie 2012 (?) to 2014
 
Thoughts? It's like early in the morning and I've spent a couple hours doing this, so I'd like fresh eyes.

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.

I love her May Jailer period. I group the 'new' albums as bonus tracks on Sirens because I hate overlap in albums... but I still keep the original orders in separate folders because I can't stand to mess around with them.
 
What is the evidence for Pretty Baby being For K Part 1? I imagine it has to do with the "Pretty Baby" refrain in For K Part 2, but is there anything more? Lyrically I don't see much of a relationship to any other K song. While For K Part 2 is confusing titled Rehab as a demo, there are still references to K being a musician in other songs (Blue Jeans, anyone?) so I theorize it's a hybrid Jimmy/K song. Drive By/Sirens/For K Part 1 has the distinction of being the only song to actually name drop K in the lyrics and is very explicit about who K was and what he did; For K Part 2 is only a mysterious title.
 
I love all the mystery surrounding Sirens. The fact that we're still debating the song titles is evidence of how much is still unknown. I think K was definitely an influence, but maybe some other romances or incidents we don't know about. "A Star For Nick," "Dear Elliott," and "In Wendy" are really interesting because they mention people that don't show up anywhere else. Kind of like how LDR mentions Ray in Kill Kill and Raise Me Up.
 
Here's some quick Lanalysis on Sirens. The other two albums/EPs will have to come another day because I'm tired. Please other people talk about May Jailer songs! There's a lot in them and they're barely ever talked about.
 
 

Yeah. She's trying to "transmit" to him in space by turning on the lights and the TV (radio waves). Also increasing her energy usage to create a more intense signal. That's why she asks "can you hear me? Ground control to Major Tom, can you hear me all night long?" But like in Space Oddity, Major Tom has slipped away, and she cannot reach him now. She lost him in "space."

The "Rich Whores" leak inspired me to look for more of her early stuff and I noticed something kinda neat. Remember that list of interests from Arthur Lynn's flickr?
 
 
According to this site, this was once the biography on lizzygrant.com. We've seen most of this stuff before, about the circus and whatever, but notice one more thing.
 
 
"Yo mama's apple pie?" The Arthur Lynnfluence lives on, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if Arthur Lynn wrote that biography for her, now that I think about it. 
 
Finally, this one mystery was kind of cleared up. I wondered who the "tags & tim" listed as band members on this Sirens-era myspace page:

 
But a closer look at another myspace era page tells me they continued being her band members into the Arthur Lynn period. So they're old friends she continued playing with for a while. Kinda neat!
 

 
Continuing the Arthur Lynn info dump, I found out that "angiescreams," which was the username he used for flickr iirc, was also a band of his, and that the drummer for this band of his was also the drummer for the Rich Whores, Aaron Brooks! This band appeared to have existed from 2005 to 2009, so it overlaps with the "Rich Whores" period. I wonder if this was how Lana met Lynn? I'm especially curious about the fact that she got one of his drummers to join her band.
 
And for even more evidence that Arthur Lynn was a hugely influential boyfriend, check out the News section on that website...  "9.11.07 G-d bless America. G-d bless our troops." G-d is a pretty idiosyncratic way to spell "God," wouldn't you say? And it also shows up in that biography of Lizzy's up there! Now I really can't help but wonder if Arthur Lynn wrote that biography as a joke. Which she would be in on, of course. Or maybe their cross-pollination was so much that Lana just adopted that much of his humor, spelling, tastes, and interests.
 
Lanalysis is (barely) alive and breathing.

Potential Arthur Lynn stuff.
 
I was looking for an Arthur Lynn blog post and ended up looking through his posts. I noticed he referred to Van Halen as "kings" and the "band that changed my life and kicked me in the balls." He specifically tags them as "david lee roth, diamond, edward van halen." And that reminded me of Mermaid Motel:
 
'maybe we could go to Suede Tokyo
See Van Halen at their reunion show
Heavy Metal hour on TV
Diamond Dave and Ray Lee'
 
I mean, there's nothing saying none of her other long-haired boyfriends/paramours/whatever couldn't have liked Van Halen, but:
Arthur Lynn is confirmed as a boyfriend we have songs referencing his origins (Greenwich) we have songs referencing his favorite drink (Diet Mountain Dew) It doesn't seem odd that this could be a reference to him.

Lana Del Rey lived in New York City from like 2006 to 2009-ish. Van Halen's reunion tour with David Lee Roth 2007-2008 had a stop in NYC November 13, 2007 and May 23, 2008. Neither of these dates would conflict with her known shows. I don't know when she wrote Mermaid Motel, but she performed it at Arlene's Grocery February 3, 2009, so it's possible for it to refer to the reunion show as a past event (as opposed to a future event).


 
Ray Lee is currently a drummer for Korn but "served as the drummer of the Van Halen frontman’s solo band from 1997 to 2005, performing on 1998′s ‘DLR Band’ and 2003′s ‘Diamond Dave’ albums."
I'm still not sure about Suede Tokyo. There is a band by the name of Suede and they have indeed performed in Tokyo, but I don't know why Lana would refer to that. More educated people, help?
 
So I'm speculating Mermaid Motel is about Arthur Lynn. Which brings me to something else...
 
One site listed Lynn's interests as such (trying to find the site since, like an idiot, I just saved the interests). Pay attention to the bolded ones.
music, girls, guitars, america, diet mountain dew, van halen, ice cream, photography, jersey, angiescreams, indian summer, woods, food, freckles, the sun, the moon, seasons, amplifiers, family, friends, karma, october, yo mama, yo mama's apple pie, and those little people we call doggies
 
JERSEY
Note his blog is subtitled "thoughts from a jersey boy." His flickr lists his hometown as Jersey but "currently" (not sure when screenshot was taken) Greenwich, CT. I was already pretty sure that Motel 6 was about Lynn due to DMD references, but "to Jersey with love" makes more sense now.
 
MORE VAN HALEN STUFF + CONEY ISLAND + YOUR MOM:
This is the most recent screenshot I’m showing – we’re going in reverse chronological order, from ‘last login date.’
In this screenshot from her Lizzy Grant MySpace, url therichwhores, she lists Diamond Dave as an influence (along with Britney Spears and motorcycles, two other lasting influences). Notice she lists her location as New Jersey. Also notice that she describes her music as metal - not a musical genre I would put any Lana Del Rey song in, ever. I wonder if Arthur Lynn, who could conceivably be the one into "heavy metal hour," influenced her calling her music "metal."

 
She's still therichwhores here, but her location is now Alabama. Her genre is glam, blues, experimental. No metal – not yet, anyway. David Lee Roth is one of 3 influences, along with Britney Spears and motorcycles.
 

 
The earliest Rich Whores screenshot I’m showing. In this one, she lists David Lee Roth and Coney Island as influences... along with "your mom." Yeah, just like Mr. Lynn listed "yo mama." Britney and motorcycles remain, but the other influences have shifted. Arthur Lynn is explicitly listed as a member here. She's living in New York now. (aside: pretty things is an influence here. we'll see that again later)

 
 
 
AMERICA
Lana said this about one of her ex-boyfriends:
 
Lynn loves rock and roll, that's perfectly clear. But what distinguishes him from Gnecco or Carney or other musical liaisons? Well, the 4th 'like' listed by Lynn was America. It's a weak connection, but I don't think we've ever tied that comment to any other boyfriend. Lana didn't always talk or sing about America. Her May Jailer era stuff, for example, seems more focused on the details of personal relationships than concepts like America or archetypes like the gangster boyfriend. I don't know when Lana started playing with Lynn, but it'd be curious to see if that date coincides with an increasing number of references to Americana. If we assume Mermaid Motel is about Lynn, then we also have a connection to Coney Island, another interest of hers that you don't see mentioned in the early days.
 
To see how big the change from her May Jailer stuff to her Lizzy/Lana stuff was, let's look at more MySpace pages...
 
Folk, acoustic, experimental! Only one of these genre descriptors survived into the post-May Jailer MySpace descriptors. Her influences are Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead... only Nirvana is repeated as an influence in the later MySpace page, although Daniel Johnston seems to be in the vein of singer-songwritery stuff.

A year later (according to last-login date) and "Cony Island" (sic) and "pretty things" have been added as influences. She's now experimental, blues, folk - the acoustic part is gone. Another mid-2000s screenshot shows "Bread and Oranges" appearing alongside Money Hunny, Fordham Road, and A Star for Nick. It now has its final name, Pawn Shop Blues, and For K Part 2 has shown up - the LDR album appears to be forming (Jump, Kill Kill, and Put Me In A Movie show up in the Lizzy screenshots above).
 
The last login date for this one is 5/17/2007, whereas the last login date for the earliest Rich Whores page is 12/12/2007. It appears to be a transitional state, not just with regards to her layout, but also her name and influences. The music is less acoustic. Coney Island starts showing up, as well as motorcycles and Van Halen. Metal inexplicably becomes a descriptor.
Would fit in pretty well with Arthur Lynn showing up… just sayin’. 
 
(one last thing... under band members, she lists "TAGS & TIM." Who are these people?)

 
CONCLUSION?
From 2007-ish to maybe 2009-ish, Lana dated Arthur Lynn. Arthur Lynn may be the boyfriend who loved rock-n-roll and America. Before his introduction into her band (and we don't know when they met, so they could have met before Lynn was part of the Rich Whores), Americana references were rare in her music, she made singer-songwritery stuff about people's lives, and she basically had a very different persona. Lynn becomes part of the Rich Whores, she now likes Van Halen, specifically David Lee Roth and the album Diamond Dave, Coney Island (all mentioned in Mermaid Motel), her music is described very differently (metal, really?; and glam), she somehow picks up on his jokes (yo mama)... I think he was an influential boyfriend.
 
Oh, and to tie this back to other boyfriends...
 
According to the Galore interview by Chuck, Lana broke up with Steve Mertens when she was 22. So 2007?
Lana mentioned a seven-year relationship with a record producer in the 2014 Fader interview and I think Mertens is the only one who could potentially fit that.
 
 
Which would make the timeline of that relationship 2000-2007. Which means she would have been 15 when she started dating Mertens... If Mertens is the 7 year relationship (and I don't think any of the other ones could be that relationship), then that means she would have had 4 major ex-boyfriends.
Mertens 2000-2007.
Lynn 2007 to 2008 or 2009
Mizrahi 2009 to 2011
Barrie 2012 (?) to 2014
 
Thoughts? It's like early in the morning and I've spent a couple hours doing this, so I'd like fresh eyes.

The screenshots was simply serendipitous: someone bumped this thread, bringing it to the front page. Unfortunately some of the images beyond the 1st page are broken, so I couldn't use them.
I found out about Lynn's blog and his flickr through Lanalysis. I also got dates for Mizrahi from there, too. And anything else is just looking stuff up. evil's early shows section helped, as well as this list of interviews I had saved.
 
And it's good that I get to make this 2nd post because I want to add some stuff about Steven Mertens. Here's a bunch of interviews mentioning him, plus evilentity's world-class sleuthing:
 
Steve Mertens 1
In a Lizzy Grant-era piece for the Huffington Post, she told a reporter, “Strangest performance: Alone in a basement for a handsome record executive. Strangest [song] ever written: Back at his office while I was making out with him.” When I ask her if she regrets joking like that, given how often people perceived her as a puppet of some executive team, she says, no, the story was true: “I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.” (JUNE 4 2014, FADER)
(the referenced interiew is form May 25, 2011)
2
You could work with outside songwriters. Are you open to that kind of thing a bit more now?
Lana: Yeah, I’m more open to it now, ‘cause personally I’m not really feeling it. (Laughs) Like this guy I worked with eight years ago, Steven Mertens, who made my first record [editor’s note: David Kahne is credited as the producer of her debut, 2010’s Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant; Mertens is a member of the Brooklyn band Spacecamp]. He knew me really well.
3
Now, I know you don’t love to talk about this because journalists have sort of mythologized your past but let’s talk about the trailer park you lived in for a few years- I shot you there when you were 22 [my note: 2007] and continued to shoot you there for a couple years while you were writing and entertaining and wrapping up your album with David Kahne. You were so sweet and happy that you had your very own place to write and reside in, and extra money from that $10,000 indie contract. It was also a sad time for you because you separated from Steven Mertens who had originally produced that record and who was your boyfriend at the time. I don’t really have to ask you this because as your sister, I think I already know, but would you say this was your most enriching time as an artist and happiest time in New York (despite the split from Steven.) (GALORE INTERVIEW 2014)
4 (the saddest one, imo)
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. 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. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. (Complex august 2013)
5
EVILENTITY ANALYSIS
                TrailerParkDarling, 16 Aug 2013: Steven Mertens used to play back up w/ her, I guess at various gigs.    
                He used to w/ Regina Spektor, too
 
http://web.archive.o...ace.com/4026640

SitarHero, Aug 16 2013: But no seriously Sirens was 8 years ago and AKA wasn't...like I think she may have just actually referenced it. Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng
 
I totally overlooked the "eight years ago" part at first (    at a possible reference to Sirens or her other early recordings) but I'd been meaning to contact Steven Mertens for months since @Trash Magic and I put some things together about him (which perhaps belong in Lanalysis). When I saw she mentioned him by name in this article, I got on that immediately and sent him an e-mail. I'll report back any response, but please don't bother him in case it interferes with my attempts to correspond with him.
 
In addition to sharing the bill with her at a Cross-Pollination show, and playing in her backing band as TPD noted (he's the guy that looks sort of like McNulty from The Wire in the Canal Room videos), Mertens has actually been referred to in at least two other interviews with Lana. Remember that Megan and Menace in the Mornings interview?

When I was young, my boyfriend in the city made my first record. His best friend Jack was Regina [spektor]'s longtime boyfriend. They're married now.
 
(You can listen here at around 5:20.) Regina Spektor (who TPD notes Mertens also played for) is married to Jack Dishel who was in a band called The Moldy Peaches. Guess who else was in The Moldy Peaches? Steven Mertens. I wasn't completely convinced at first that that's who she was talking about (I thought it was more likely another Moldy Peaches member, Adam Green, since his initials are AG, likely a red herring) until @Trash Magic pointed out something I'd missed-- in that Mizrahi interview she said:
 
One of the first producers I worked with, Steven Saint, learned a lot from Dick Dale (father of surf music, pre-Beach Boys) so the beginning of the sound was influenced by some sounds from Hawaii and surf guitars, so that’s where the surf comes from.
A little digging shows that Steven Saint = Steven Mertens (see here and here).
 
6 (surf music + Steven Mertens is from LA)
I had a very handsome ex boyfriend from here [interview takes place in California] once. Surf punk rock bands. It was loud all the time in the house, in the car.
(KPRI interview)
(also notice she calls him handsome here and refers to the record executive as "handsome," too. Makes me think of For K Part 2: "how you get so handsome, my boy?")
 
For reference, a pic of Steven Mertens in 2008.
 
That thing where she mentioned feeling like a change of routine... wow. That got me, honestly.
 
And now for some more discrepancies...
 
Who are these people?
 
RADIO GUY
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 lie 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. (ITALIAN INTERVIEW on FACEBOOK, MAR 12 2012)
 
RICH GUY
"It's a song about a man who thought I was one of the most exotic things he had ever seen and me indulging in his appreciation and love. On the outside he was handsome and wholesome, but under wraps he was running an illegal electronic business which ended up taking him and his friends under." (Unknown interview, about MDM)
 
Like, you know, I used to live a really crazy life and, like, OTTR is one of those songs were you can tell by the energy of it that I’m right in the middle of, like, a relationship where times were happy but also chaotic. We were travelling between LA and Las Vegas, he- I can’t gamble ‘cause I’m not good, he was gambling, I was just swimming. (ITALIAN FB interview, MAR 12 2012)
 
ALABAMA (this could be Mertens since one of the May Jailer pages listed Alabama as a place and that would've been pre-Lynn)
I lived down in Alabama with my boyfriend, I lived here in Brooklyn and in Jersey. I’ve been a lot of different people, I guess.” (FADER JULY 2014)
 
LONG TIME LOVE MAN + EX BOYFRIEND COUCH MAN
What about love and loss, the other dark note in her oeuvre? “I felt the same way for a really long time, and then I met someone who I guess I fell in love with,” she says. “I just didn’t know I could feel differently. That time with him became sort of a place that I fell back to in my memory.” And the breakup? “Well, I mean, the breakup is a part of it in the way that in the midst of loss you try to still look towards the light and not fall to pieces or do self-destructive things.”
[…]
Before she goes, I ask her where she lives. She’s looking to buy a place, but for now is in Williamsburg. “Staying with my ex-boyfriend,” she says nonchalantly, then bursts into nervous laughter and admits, “I live on his couch.”
I give her a look like, You just told me all that about falling in love and breaking up and you’re on the dude’s couch? She pins it on the touring, letting out another embarrassed laugh. “Because no, I’m busy though!” (FEB9 2012)
 
REHAB ROCK STAR (Jimmy Gnecco?)
Which lyric are you most proud of?
There was an older song that you've never heard called "Pawn Shop Blues". [sings] "In the name of higher consciousness / I let the best man I met go / Because it's nice to love and be loved but it's better to know all you can know." Because I remember I'd met someone so special and famous but I knew he wasn't enlightened about how to be a good person. I knew it would get in the way of me becoming a nice person. That's a difficult choice to make.
How did you meet this famous person?
Um, it was in a self-help group. [laughs]. He wasn't that famous. I just thought he was famous…
TV famous or movie star famous?
Rock star famous.  Just middle of the road ish. To me he was famous because I didn't know anyone who was wildly recognisable. I remember thinking it was exciting at the time. (SEP 19 2011)
 
VIDEO GAMES MAN (MEN)
(supposedly VG is about Mike Mizrahi, and he supposedly tried to control her career)
Lana: Video Games was a song that came after I abandoned all ambition of becoming anyone noteworthy in music. It was only ten months ago. I just wrote it when I felt love again. It was about a time when it was nice to focus on a relationship and simple things; watching your boyfriend play videogames. It sounds sad, but it was sort of happy. I’d let go of the idea of being a singer because things had gone so terribly for so long.(SEP 23 2011)
 
 
LDR: A boy. I think we came together because we were both outsiders. It was perfect. But I think with that contentment also comes sadness. There was something heavenly about that life – we'd go to work and he'd play his video games - but also it was maybe too regular. At the time I was becoming disillusioned with being a singer and was very happy to settle with a boyfriend who I loved, but in the end we both lost sight of our dreams. Maybe there's something not-so-special about domestic life. (OCT 4 2011)
 
“The verse was about the way things were with one person, and the chorus was the way that I wished things had really been with another person, who I thought about for a long time,” she says, breaking into an acapella of the song. “‘Swinging in the backyard, pull up in your fast car, whistling my name’. That was what happened, you know? He’d come home and I’d see him. But then the chorus, ‘Heaven is a place on earth with you, tell me all the things you wanna do’ wasn’t like that. That was the way that I wished it was – the melody sounds so compelling and heavenly because I wanted it to be that way. The verse is more matter-of-fact because that’s how it was. It’s a mix of memories and the way I wished it could have been. Just because things happened a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the way that they are. (Dazed 2011)
(NOTE: She's said in a more recent interview that many of her songs are like this - the verses about one person and the chorus about another. I am pretty sure she said this about West Coast; I need to track that interview down)
 
BTD, VG, BJ - a trilogy about one guy?
 
 

(5:47)Q: I didn't realize until recently that Born To Die, and Video Games, and Blue Jeans, you said they were kind of a trilogy about this one dude and his effect on you and your relationship and what you thought. Is he, Adele-style, is he aware of that? Have you talked to him about that? Is he aware of the reaction it's getting?
L: What is Adele style?
Q: She's very vocal about this one person. It's about this person and we talk about it and now we can have a laugh about it, but the time there was so much emotion going on.
L: He doesn't know. His mother knows. We're in touch. But no. 
Q: He hasn't pieced it together and gone hey!
L: Not really.

Maybe we can ask her for the full video. Or more things she remembers from it.
 
I agree this article seems more a way for the author to validate her own life choices than anything particularly revealing about Lana. I would have liked to know more about "the scene." And it seems even more likely now that Stefani and Lizzy may have met. Very interesting.
 
I kind of want to resurrect my music just because this author spent so much time complaining about theirs.

I thought the aliens represented that they needed a different force to take them to "Bel Air," that they couldn't rely on the God(s) they had offended/betrayed/idk. Finding a new sort of spirituality, I guess.
 
The whole part between G&M and Bel Air where they're throwing their stuff away and exchanging their black clothes (sin!!!) for white ones (purity!!!) shows abandonment of old ideals. The water scenes = baptism (into a new religion? hence the aliens?).
 
It was very choppy on my laptop so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. I found myself getting frustrated by some of the poetry and pretty scenes because at times it felt like nothing was really going on and she wanted to fill the space with pretty words and pictures. Overall, it was okay. The aspect ratio...
 
Elvis's reactions were gold, though. I know it's not supposed to be a comedy but someone give that Elvis impersonator a high five.

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.

Potential Arthur Lynn stuff.
 
I was looking for an Arthur Lynn blog post and ended up looking through his posts. I noticed he referred to Van Halen as "kings" and the "band that changed my life and kicked me in the balls." He specifically tags them as "david lee roth, diamond, edward van halen." And that reminded me of Mermaid Motel:
 
'maybe we could go to Suede Tokyo
See Van Halen at their reunion show
Heavy Metal hour on TV
Diamond Dave and Ray Lee'
 
I mean, there's nothing saying none of her other long-haired boyfriends/paramours/whatever couldn't have liked Van Halen, but:
Arthur Lynn is confirmed as a boyfriend we have songs referencing his origins (Greenwich) we have songs referencing his favorite drink (Diet Mountain Dew) It doesn't seem odd that this could be a reference to him.

Lana Del Rey lived in New York City from like 2006 to 2009-ish. Van Halen's reunion tour with David Lee Roth 2007-2008 had a stop in NYC November 13, 2007 and May 23, 2008. Neither of these dates would conflict with her known shows. I don't know when she wrote Mermaid Motel, but she performed it at Arlene's Grocery February 3, 2009, so it's possible for it to refer to the reunion show as a past event (as opposed to a future event).


 
Ray Lee is currently a drummer for Korn but "served as the drummer of the Van Halen frontman’s solo band from 1997 to 2005, performing on 1998′s ‘DLR Band’ and 2003′s ‘Diamond Dave’ albums."
I'm still not sure about Suede Tokyo. There is a band by the name of Suede and they have indeed performed in Tokyo, but I don't know why Lana would refer to that. More educated people, help?
 
So I'm speculating Mermaid Motel is about Arthur Lynn. Which brings me to something else...
 
One site listed Lynn's interests as such (trying to find the site since, like an idiot, I just saved the interests). Pay attention to the bolded ones.
music, girls, guitars, america, diet mountain dew, van halen, ice cream, photography, jersey, angiescreams, indian summer, woods, food, freckles, the sun, the moon, seasons, amplifiers, family, friends, karma, october, yo mama, yo mama's apple pie, and those little people we call doggies
 
JERSEY
Note his blog is subtitled "thoughts from a jersey boy." His flickr lists his hometown as Jersey but "currently" (not sure when screenshot was taken) Greenwich, CT. I was already pretty sure that Motel 6 was about Lynn due to DMD references, but "to Jersey with love" makes more sense now.
 
MORE VAN HALEN STUFF + CONEY ISLAND + YOUR MOM:
This is the most recent screenshot I’m showing – we’re going in reverse chronological order, from ‘last login date.’
In this screenshot from her Lizzy Grant MySpace, url therichwhores, she lists Diamond Dave as an influence (along with Britney Spears and motorcycles, two other lasting influences). Notice she lists her location as New Jersey. Also notice that she describes her music as metal - not a musical genre I would put any Lana Del Rey song in, ever. I wonder if Arthur Lynn, who could conceivably be the one into "heavy metal hour," influenced her calling her music "metal."

 
She's still therichwhores here, but her location is now Alabama. Her genre is glam, blues, experimental. No metal – not yet, anyway. David Lee Roth is one of 3 influences, along with Britney Spears and motorcycles.
 

 
The earliest Rich Whores screenshot I’m showing. In this one, she lists David Lee Roth and Coney Island as influences... along with "your mom." Yeah, just like Mr. Lynn listed "yo mama." Britney and motorcycles remain, but the other influences have shifted. Arthur Lynn is explicitly listed as a member here. She's living in New York now. (aside: pretty things is an influence here. we'll see that again later)

 
 
 
AMERICA
Lana said this about one of her ex-boyfriends:
 
Lynn loves rock and roll, that's perfectly clear. But what distinguishes him from Gnecco or Carney or other musical liaisons? Well, the 4th 'like' listed by Lynn was America. It's a weak connection, but I don't think we've ever tied that comment to any other boyfriend. Lana didn't always talk or sing about America. Her May Jailer era stuff, for example, seems more focused on the details of personal relationships than concepts like America or archetypes like the gangster boyfriend. I don't know when Lana started playing with Lynn, but it'd be curious to see if that date coincides with an increasing number of references to Americana. If we assume Mermaid Motel is about Lynn, then we also have a connection to Coney Island, another interest of hers that you don't see mentioned in the early days.
 
To see how big the change from her May Jailer stuff to her Lizzy/Lana stuff was, let's look at more MySpace pages...
 
Folk, acoustic, experimental! Only one of these genre descriptors survived into the post-May Jailer MySpace descriptors. Her influences are Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead... only Nirvana is repeated as an influence in the later MySpace page, although Daniel Johnston seems to be in the vein of singer-songwritery stuff.

A year later (according to last-login date) and "Cony Island" (sic) and "pretty things" have been added as influences. She's now experimental, blues, folk - the acoustic part is gone. Another mid-2000s screenshot shows "Bread and Oranges" appearing alongside Money Hunny, Fordham Road, and A Star for Nick. It now has its final name, Pawn Shop Blues, and For K Part 2 has shown up - the LDR album appears to be forming (Jump, Kill Kill, and Put Me In A Movie show up in the Lizzy screenshots above).
 
The last login date for this one is 5/17/2007, whereas the last login date for the earliest Rich Whores page is 12/12/2007. It appears to be a transitional state, not just with regards to her layout, but also her name and influences. The music is less acoustic. Coney Island starts showing up, as well as motorcycles and Van Halen. Metal inexplicably becomes a descriptor.
Would fit in pretty well with Arthur Lynn showing up… just sayin’. 
 
(one last thing... under band members, she lists "TAGS & TIM." Who are these people?)

 
CONCLUSION?
From 2007-ish to maybe 2009-ish, Lana dated Arthur Lynn. Arthur Lynn may be the boyfriend who loved rock-n-roll and America. Before his introduction into her band (and we don't know when they met, so they could have met before Lynn was part of the Rich Whores), Americana references were rare in her music, she made singer-songwritery stuff about people's lives, and she basically had a very different persona. Lynn becomes part of the Rich Whores, she now likes Van Halen, specifically David Lee Roth and the album Diamond Dave, Coney Island (all mentioned in Mermaid Motel), her music is described very differently (metal, really?; and glam), she somehow picks up on his jokes (yo mama)... I think he was an influential boyfriend.
 
Oh, and to tie this back to other boyfriends...
 
According to the Galore interview by Chuck, Lana broke up with Steve Mertens when she was 22. So 2007?
Lana mentioned a seven-year relationship with a record producer in the 2014 Fader interview and I think Mertens is the only one who could potentially fit that.
 
 
Which would make the timeline of that relationship 2000-2007. Which means she would have been 15 when she started dating Mertens... If Mertens is the 7 year relationship (and I don't think any of the other ones could be that relationship), then that means she would have had 4 major ex-boyfriends.
Mertens 2000-2007.
Lynn 2007 to 2008 or 2009
Mizrahi 2009 to 2011
Barrie 2012 (?) to 2014
 
Thoughts? It's like early in the morning and I've spent a couple hours doing this, so I'd like fresh eyes.

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."

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.

The screenshots was simply serendipitous: someone bumped this thread, bringing it to the front page. Unfortunately some of the images beyond the 1st page are broken, so I couldn't use them.
I found out about Lynn's blog and his flickr through Lanalysis. I also got dates for Mizrahi from there, too. And anything else is just looking stuff up. evil's early shows section helped, as well as this list of interviews I had saved.
 
And it's good that I get to make this 2nd post because I want to add some stuff about Steven Mertens. Here's a bunch of interviews mentioning him, plus evilentity's world-class sleuthing:
 
Steve Mertens 1
In a Lizzy Grant-era piece for the Huffington Post, she told a reporter, “Strangest performance: Alone in a basement for a handsome record executive. Strangest [song] ever written: Back at his office while I was making out with him.” When I ask her if she regrets joking like that, given how often people perceived her as a puppet of some executive team, she says, no, the story was true: “I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.” (JUNE 4 2014, FADER)
(the referenced interiew is form May 25, 2011)
2
You could work with outside songwriters. Are you open to that kind of thing a bit more now?
Lana: Yeah, I’m more open to it now, ‘cause personally I’m not really feeling it. (Laughs) Like this guy I worked with eight years ago, Steven Mertens, who made my first record [editor’s note: David Kahne is credited as the producer of her debut, 2010’s Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant; Mertens is a member of the Brooklyn band Spacecamp]. He knew me really well.
3
Now, I know you don’t love to talk about this because journalists have sort of mythologized your past but let’s talk about the trailer park you lived in for a few years- I shot you there when you were 22 [my note: 2007] and continued to shoot you there for a couple years while you were writing and entertaining and wrapping up your album with David Kahne. You were so sweet and happy that you had your very own place to write and reside in, and extra money from that $10,000 indie contract. It was also a sad time for you because you separated from Steven Mertens who had originally produced that record and who was your boyfriend at the time. I don’t really have to ask you this because as your sister, I think I already know, but would you say this was your most enriching time as an artist and happiest time in New York (despite the split from Steven.) (GALORE INTERVIEW 2014)
4 (the saddest one, imo)
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. 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. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. (Complex august 2013)
5
EVILENTITY ANALYSIS
                TrailerParkDarling, 16 Aug 2013: Steven Mertens used to play back up w/ her, I guess at various gigs.    
                He used to w/ Regina Spektor, too
 
http://web.archive.o...ace.com/4026640

SitarHero, Aug 16 2013: But no seriously Sirens was 8 years ago and AKA wasn't...like I think she may have just actually referenced it. Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng
 
I totally overlooked the "eight years ago" part at first (    at a possible reference to Sirens or her other early recordings) but I'd been meaning to contact Steven Mertens for months since @Trash Magic and I put some things together about him (which perhaps belong in Lanalysis). When I saw she mentioned him by name in this article, I got on that immediately and sent him an e-mail. I'll report back any response, but please don't bother him in case it interferes with my attempts to correspond with him.
 
In addition to sharing the bill with her at a Cross-Pollination show, and playing in her backing band as TPD noted (he's the guy that looks sort of like McNulty from The Wire in the Canal Room videos), Mertens has actually been referred to in at least two other interviews with Lana. Remember that Megan and Menace in the Mornings interview?

When I was young, my boyfriend in the city made my first record. His best friend Jack was Regina [spektor]'s longtime boyfriend. They're married now.
 
(You can listen here at around 5:20.) Regina Spektor (who TPD notes Mertens also played for) is married to Jack Dishel who was in a band called The Moldy Peaches. Guess who else was in The Moldy Peaches? Steven Mertens. I wasn't completely convinced at first that that's who she was talking about (I thought it was more likely another Moldy Peaches member, Adam Green, since his initials are AG, likely a red herring) until @Trash Magic pointed out something I'd missed-- in that Mizrahi interview she said:
 
One of the first producers I worked with, Steven Saint, learned a lot from Dick Dale (father of surf music, pre-Beach Boys) so the beginning of the sound was influenced by some sounds from Hawaii and surf guitars, so that’s where the surf comes from.
A little digging shows that Steven Saint = Steven Mertens (see here and here).
 
6 (surf music + Steven Mertens is from LA)
I had a very handsome ex boyfriend from here [interview takes place in California] once. Surf punk rock bands. It was loud all the time in the house, in the car.
(KPRI interview)
(also notice she calls him handsome here and refers to the record executive as "handsome," too. Makes me think of For K Part 2: "how you get so handsome, my boy?")
 
For reference, a pic of Steven Mertens in 2008.
 
That thing where she mentioned feeling like a change of routine... wow. That got me, honestly.
 
And now for some more discrepancies...
 
Who are these people?
 
RADIO GUY
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 lie 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. (ITALIAN INTERVIEW on FACEBOOK, MAR 12 2012)
 
RICH GUY
"It's a song about a man who thought I was one of the most exotic things he had ever seen and me indulging in his appreciation and love. On the outside he was handsome and wholesome, but under wraps he was running an illegal electronic business which ended up taking him and his friends under." (Unknown interview, about MDM)
 
Like, you know, I used to live a really crazy life and, like, OTTR is one of those songs were you can tell by the energy of it that I’m right in the middle of, like, a relationship where times were happy but also chaotic. We were travelling between LA and Las Vegas, he- I can’t gamble ‘cause I’m not good, he was gambling, I was just swimming. (ITALIAN FB interview, MAR 12 2012)
 
ALABAMA (this could be Mertens since one of the May Jailer pages listed Alabama as a place and that would've been pre-Lynn)
I lived down in Alabama with my boyfriend, I lived here in Brooklyn and in Jersey. I’ve been a lot of different people, I guess.” (FADER JULY 2014)
 
LONG TIME LOVE MAN + EX BOYFRIEND COUCH MAN
What about love and loss, the other dark note in her oeuvre? “I felt the same way for a really long time, and then I met someone who I guess I fell in love with,” she says. “I just didn’t know I could feel differently. That time with him became sort of a place that I fell back to in my memory.” And the breakup? “Well, I mean, the breakup is a part of it in the way that in the midst of loss you try to still look towards the light and not fall to pieces or do self-destructive things.”
[…]
Before she goes, I ask her where she lives. She’s looking to buy a place, but for now is in Williamsburg. “Staying with my ex-boyfriend,” she says nonchalantly, then bursts into nervous laughter and admits, “I live on his couch.”
I give her a look like, You just told me all that about falling in love and breaking up and you’re on the dude’s couch? She pins it on the touring, letting out another embarrassed laugh. “Because no, I’m busy though!” (FEB9 2012)
 
REHAB ROCK STAR (Jimmy Gnecco?)
Which lyric are you most proud of?
There was an older song that you've never heard called "Pawn Shop Blues". [sings] "In the name of higher consciousness / I let the best man I met go / Because it's nice to love and be loved but it's better to know all you can know." Because I remember I'd met someone so special and famous but I knew he wasn't enlightened about how to be a good person. I knew it would get in the way of me becoming a nice person. That's a difficult choice to make.
How did you meet this famous person?
Um, it was in a self-help group. [laughs]. He wasn't that famous. I just thought he was famous…
TV famous or movie star famous?
Rock star famous.  Just middle of the road ish. To me he was famous because I didn't know anyone who was wildly recognisable. I remember thinking it was exciting at the time. (SEP 19 2011)
 
VIDEO GAMES MAN (MEN)
(supposedly VG is about Mike Mizrahi, and he supposedly tried to control her career)
Lana: Video Games was a song that came after I abandoned all ambition of becoming anyone noteworthy in music. It was only ten months ago. I just wrote it when I felt love again. It was about a time when it was nice to focus on a relationship and simple things; watching your boyfriend play videogames. It sounds sad, but it was sort of happy. I’d let go of the idea of being a singer because things had gone so terribly for so long.(SEP 23 2011)
 
 
LDR: A boy. I think we came together because we were both outsiders. It was perfect. But I think with that contentment also comes sadness. There was something heavenly about that life – we'd go to work and he'd play his video games - but also it was maybe too regular. At the time I was becoming disillusioned with being a singer and was very happy to settle with a boyfriend who I loved, but in the end we both lost sight of our dreams. Maybe there's something not-so-special about domestic life. (OCT 4 2011)
 
“The verse was about the way things were with one person, and the chorus was the way that I wished things had really been with another person, who I thought about for a long time,” she says, breaking into an acapella of the song. “‘Swinging in the backyard, pull up in your fast car, whistling my name’. That was what happened, you know? He’d come home and I’d see him. But then the chorus, ‘Heaven is a place on earth with you, tell me all the things you wanna do’ wasn’t like that. That was the way that I wished it was – the melody sounds so compelling and heavenly because I wanted it to be that way. The verse is more matter-of-fact because that’s how it was. It’s a mix of memories and the way I wished it could have been. Just because things happened a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the way that they are. (Dazed 2011)
(NOTE: She's said in a more recent interview that many of her songs are like this - the verses about one person and the chorus about another. I am pretty sure she said this about West Coast; I need to track that interview down)
 
BTD, VG, BJ - a trilogy about one guy?
 
 

(5:47)Q: I didn't realize until recently that Born To Die, and Video Games, and Blue Jeans, you said they were kind of a trilogy about this one dude and his effect on you and your relationship and what you thought. Is he, Adele-style, is he aware of that? Have you talked to him about that? Is he aware of the reaction it's getting?
L: What is Adele style?
Q: She's very vocal about this one person. It's about this person and we talk about it and now we can have a laugh about it, but the time there was so much emotion going on.
L: He doesn't know. His mother knows. We're in touch. But no. 
Q: He hasn't pieced it together and gone hey!
L: Not really.

The monophthongization of /aɪ/ to [aː] is distinctively Southern. A farmer from Minnesota won't sound like that. A farmer from Mississippi might. You can still find city dwellers who do this although since it's a stigmatized feature it's less common.
 
Similarly, the breaking of /ɪ/ to [ɪjə] (ah weeyill) is Southern. It's more likely to be encountered if you're working class (rural or urban), but you can find middle class speakers. This particular feature (along with breaking other front vowels) is what people know as the Southern drawl.
 
When you say rural, do you mean like Appalachian english? That does share the monophthongization of /aɪ/, although it changes to a different vowel. It also doesn't have the drawl. They're often conflated in the popular imagination, though, so someone trying to sound "southern" or "rural" might borrow from both.
 
I can't explain that, but done as an auxiliary verb for past tense is a feature of Southern english. It's one of the many features of Southern english people mock. Perhaps some features have spread?

The "Rich Whores" leak inspired me to look for more of her early stuff and I noticed something kinda neat. Remember that list of interests from Arthur Lynn's flickr?
 
 
According to this site, this was once the biography on lizzygrant.com. We've seen most of this stuff before, about the circus and whatever, but notice one more thing.
 
 
"Yo mama's apple pie?" The Arthur Lynnfluence lives on, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if Arthur Lynn wrote that biography for her, now that I think about it. 
 
Finally, this one mystery was kind of cleared up. I wondered who the "tags & tim" listed as band members on this Sirens-era myspace page:

 
But a closer look at another myspace era page tells me they continued being her band members into the Arthur Lynn period. So they're old friends she continued playing with for a while. Kinda neat!
 

 
Continuing the Arthur Lynn info dump, I found out that "angiescreams," which was the username he used for flickr iirc, was also a band of his, and that the drummer for this band of his was also the drummer for the Rich Whores, Aaron Brooks! This band appeared to have existed from 2005 to 2009, so it overlaps with the "Rich Whores" period. I wonder if this was how Lana met Lynn? I'm especially curious about the fact that she got one of his drummers to join her band.
 
And for even more evidence that Arthur Lynn was a hugely influential boyfriend, check out the News section on that website...  "9.11.07 G-d bless America. G-d bless our troops." G-d is a pretty idiosyncratic way to spell "God," wouldn't you say? And it also shows up in that biography of Lizzy's up there! Now I really can't help but wonder if Arthur Lynn wrote that biography as a joke. Which she would be in on, of course. Or maybe their cross-pollination was so much that Lana just adopted that much of his humor, spelling, tastes, and interests.
 
Lanalysis is (barely) alive and breathing.

It's the same chord progression. It is striking for us as Lana fans, especially since we know Lana and Jimmy (and Reeve, with whom he was performing) have some kind of history, but I don't think two chords repeated is really enough to peg this as anything other than a coincidence. I've definitely heard it before in other songs as well; if I can remember names, I'll post here.
 
How old would Jimmy and Lana have been when they met/"dated" (I put it in quotes because it's fuzzy as to whether it happened or not)? I know he was older than her, but I don't know during what time period they hung around or anything of the sort. I think Barrie is the first confirmed relationship we know of where she's dating a younger man, interestingly enough.

I'm unsure if this has anything to do with this, but I find it curious that she uses a (bad) Southern accent on AKA. It's most prominent in Mermaid Motel (because ah am) and, infamously, OSCYS (and ah weeyill). Listen to any of her interviews and you'll be able to tell that this is not her native accent (neither is the exaggerated New York accent she uses on UV, but that's a different topic). If her time in Alabama coincided with her recording AKA, it could explain why she puts on this fake accent - she's feeling inspired by the people around her, who possibly had Southern accents (the Iggy Azalea defense? ) It also explains why it hasn't shown up since then - nothing from Born To Die on has had that fake Southern accent.
 
The odd thing is not all of AKA has this accent. Yayo doesn't really have it. Smarty doesn't. Brite Lites does (ah'm goin' back to Arbor Dean, where when I was a beauty queen). Kill Kill does in the 2nd verse (do ah know rye is going to meet you). Inexplicably, Raise me Up (Mississippi South) does not have this accent. Why? And why did she feel she had to put use an accent other than her native one for her debut album? I do think it's got to have something to do with her time in the South.
 
She also talks about Florida a lot - Aviation (Pensacola), Florida Kilos (title and "we could get high in Miami"), Florida Dark (Kill Kill), Axl Rose Husband (you look like a Florida native), Delicious (South Beach). That makes 3 Southern states she's mentioned: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi. And she says she got the name "Lana Del Rey" when hanging out with Cuban friends in Miami. Do I believe her? Who knows.
 
She also experiments with non-standard English in Sirens, with My Momma: my momma, she would say you was a hoodlum but I done known a hoodlum, you don't pass the test. She's still singing with her native accent, but she's clearly trying something out since she does not speak like this in her interviews or at concerts. "You was" is pretty run-of-the-mill in non-standard English varieties, but "done known" narrows it down to Southern American English.

Holy smokes. Every time I think Lanalysis is like, over, it just crawls back out of the dead with some head-spinning new info.
 
Like, how many real life people have been confirmed now?
Bill
Jimmy Gnecco
Arthur Lynn
Reeve Carney (?)
Mike Mizrahi
Josh
Steve Merten
Mr. H
Mikey
Rob
Barrie
Francesco
 
Some of these weren't relationships but they're still important to understanding her songs. And then there's people we don't even know about, like:
 
"record executive"
the "guy who ran an underground electronics business"
the "guru/cult leader"
K
 
I tried to attempt a timeline of all the men we knew about last time but there's just too much info now, wow. And somebody got her property records?   We really need to collaborate somewhere on updating that opening post... It's 6 years old and it still has Jimmy Gnecco as a potential relationship when we now know he not only wasn't a relationship, but probably not even the subject of that many songs.
 
So... is Born To Die about multiple people? She said Video Games was about Josh, but then Dark Paradise might be about Rob. What about Blue Jeans, which is supposed to be in a "trilogy" with Video Games/Born To Die (did we ever get receipts for this)? Are Body Electric and Bel-Air also about Rob? Some of UV seems to be about Barrie (Is This Happiness), but Cruel World is very mysterious, and Ultraviolence is about that "guru." Who or what is Terrence?

Potential Arthur Lynn stuff.
 
I was looking for an Arthur Lynn blog post and ended up looking through his posts. I noticed he referred to Van Halen as "kings" and the "band that changed my life and kicked me in the balls." He specifically tags them as "david lee roth, diamond, edward van halen." And that reminded me of Mermaid Motel:
 
'maybe we could go to Suede Tokyo
See Van Halen at their reunion show
Heavy Metal hour on TV
Diamond Dave and Ray Lee'
 
I mean, there's nothing saying none of her other long-haired boyfriends/paramours/whatever couldn't have liked Van Halen, but:
Arthur Lynn is confirmed as a boyfriend we have songs referencing his origins (Greenwich) we have songs referencing his favorite drink (Diet Mountain Dew) It doesn't seem odd that this could be a reference to him.

Lana Del Rey lived in New York City from like 2006 to 2009-ish. Van Halen's reunion tour with David Lee Roth 2007-2008 had a stop in NYC November 13, 2007 and May 23, 2008. Neither of these dates would conflict with her known shows. I don't know when she wrote Mermaid Motel, but she performed it at Arlene's Grocery February 3, 2009, so it's possible for it to refer to the reunion show as a past event (as opposed to a future event).


 
Ray Lee is currently a drummer for Korn but "served as the drummer of the Van Halen frontman’s solo band from 1997 to 2005, performing on 1998′s ‘DLR Band’ and 2003′s ‘Diamond Dave’ albums."
I'm still not sure about Suede Tokyo. There is a band by the name of Suede and they have indeed performed in Tokyo, but I don't know why Lana would refer to that. More educated people, help?
 
So I'm speculating Mermaid Motel is about Arthur Lynn. Which brings me to something else...
 
One site listed Lynn's interests as such (trying to find the site since, like an idiot, I just saved the interests). Pay attention to the bolded ones.
music, girls, guitars, america, diet mountain dew, van halen, ice cream, photography, jersey, angiescreams, indian summer, woods, food, freckles, the sun, the moon, seasons, amplifiers, family, friends, karma, october, yo mama, yo mama's apple pie, and those little people we call doggies
 
JERSEY
Note his blog is subtitled "thoughts from a jersey boy." His flickr lists his hometown as Jersey but "currently" (not sure when screenshot was taken) Greenwich, CT. I was already pretty sure that Motel 6 was about Lynn due to DMD references, but "to Jersey with love" makes more sense now.
 
MORE VAN HALEN STUFF + CONEY ISLAND + YOUR MOM:
This is the most recent screenshot I’m showing – we’re going in reverse chronological order, from ‘last login date.’
In this screenshot from her Lizzy Grant MySpace, url therichwhores, she lists Diamond Dave as an influence (along with Britney Spears and motorcycles, two other lasting influences). Notice she lists her location as New Jersey. Also notice that she describes her music as metal - not a musical genre I would put any Lana Del Rey song in, ever. I wonder if Arthur Lynn, who could conceivably be the one into "heavy metal hour," influenced her calling her music "metal."

 
She's still therichwhores here, but her location is now Alabama. Her genre is glam, blues, experimental. No metal – not yet, anyway. David Lee Roth is one of 3 influences, along with Britney Spears and motorcycles.
 

 
The earliest Rich Whores screenshot I’m showing. In this one, she lists David Lee Roth and Coney Island as influences... along with "your mom." Yeah, just like Mr. Lynn listed "yo mama." Britney and motorcycles remain, but the other influences have shifted. Arthur Lynn is explicitly listed as a member here. She's living in New York now. (aside: pretty things is an influence here. we'll see that again later)

 
 
 
AMERICA
Lana said this about one of her ex-boyfriends:
 
Lynn loves rock and roll, that's perfectly clear. But what distinguishes him from Gnecco or Carney or other musical liaisons? Well, the 4th 'like' listed by Lynn was America. It's a weak connection, but I don't think we've ever tied that comment to any other boyfriend. Lana didn't always talk or sing about America. Her May Jailer era stuff, for example, seems more focused on the details of personal relationships than concepts like America or archetypes like the gangster boyfriend. I don't know when Lana started playing with Lynn, but it'd be curious to see if that date coincides with an increasing number of references to Americana. If we assume Mermaid Motel is about Lynn, then we also have a connection to Coney Island, another interest of hers that you don't see mentioned in the early days.
 
To see how big the change from her May Jailer stuff to her Lizzy/Lana stuff was, let's look at more MySpace pages...
 
Folk, acoustic, experimental! Only one of these genre descriptors survived into the post-May Jailer MySpace descriptors. Her influences are Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, Radiohead... only Nirvana is repeated as an influence in the later MySpace page, although Daniel Johnston seems to be in the vein of singer-songwritery stuff.

A year later (according to last-login date) and "Cony Island" (sic) and "pretty things" have been added as influences. She's now experimental, blues, folk - the acoustic part is gone. Another mid-2000s screenshot shows "Bread and Oranges" appearing alongside Money Hunny, Fordham Road, and A Star for Nick. It now has its final name, Pawn Shop Blues, and For K Part 2 has shown up - the LDR album appears to be forming (Jump, Kill Kill, and Put Me In A Movie show up in the Lizzy screenshots above).
 
The last login date for this one is 5/17/2007, whereas the last login date for the earliest Rich Whores page is 12/12/2007. It appears to be a transitional state, not just with regards to her layout, but also her name and influences. The music is less acoustic. Coney Island starts showing up, as well as motorcycles and Van Halen. Metal inexplicably becomes a descriptor.
Would fit in pretty well with Arthur Lynn showing up… just sayin’. 
 
(one last thing... under band members, she lists "TAGS & TIM." Who are these people?)

 
CONCLUSION?
From 2007-ish to maybe 2009-ish, Lana dated Arthur Lynn. Arthur Lynn may be the boyfriend who loved rock-n-roll and America. Before his introduction into her band (and we don't know when they met, so they could have met before Lynn was part of the Rich Whores), Americana references were rare in her music, she made singer-songwritery stuff about people's lives, and she basically had a very different persona. Lynn becomes part of the Rich Whores, she now likes Van Halen, specifically David Lee Roth and the album Diamond Dave, Coney Island (all mentioned in Mermaid Motel), her music is described very differently (metal, really?; and glam), she somehow picks up on his jokes (yo mama)... I think he was an influential boyfriend.
 
Oh, and to tie this back to other boyfriends...
 
According to the Galore interview by Chuck, Lana broke up with Steve Mertens when she was 22. So 2007?
Lana mentioned a seven-year relationship with a record producer in the 2014 Fader interview and I think Mertens is the only one who could potentially fit that.
 
 
Which would make the timeline of that relationship 2000-2007. Which means she would have been 15 when she started dating Mertens... If Mertens is the 7 year relationship (and I don't think any of the other ones could be that relationship), then that means she would have had 4 major ex-boyfriends.
Mertens 2000-2007.
Lynn 2007 to 2008 or 2009
Mizrahi 2009 to 2011
Barrie 2012 (?) to 2014
 
Thoughts? It's like early in the morning and I've spent a couple hours doing this, so I'd like fresh eyes.

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.

There's an interview where Lana says her dad thought the opening line of Cola was hilarious whereas her mom didn't approve. I get the feeling maybe her mom was more concerned with seeming proper, preserving decorum and whatnot. The line in Old Money "my father's love was always strong, my mother's glamour lives on and on" is interesting. I  mean, she's comparing her father's love to her mother being glamorous, kind of a downgrade. The fact that she mentions her father a lot ("I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows," "that's the way my father made his life an art," "I heard the streets were paved with gold, that's what my father said") whereas her mom is rarely mentioned in her music (the unflattering "My Momma" and that line in "Old Money") makes me think her father was simply more influential and important in her life. If the Cola quote is anything to go by, her mother seems to disapprove of weird, off-beat stuff like saying your pussy tastes like Cola, and Lana is a weird, off-beat person, so that may have been a point on contention in Lana's family life. Moreover, My Momma shows her disapproving of a boyfriend. Dear Elliott also refers to a boyfriend who was "not approved." Now, My Momma also suggests her mother had a thing for her boyfriend, which is where the song gets weird. And despite Lana claiming her songs are 100% autobiographical, we can't take them at face value.
 
Personally, I don't think her mother didn't love her or whatever. They didn't jibe in some senses; maybe Mom wanted Lana to fit into society more whereas Dad was cool with it. That's what I get from her music and the rare times she's mentioned her. We know so little about her that I don't think it's fair to draw any conclusions about their relationship.