Heaux

Literally such a dumb thing for ppl to say when she went on record talking about how happy the writing/recording process of AKA was and how inspired she felt   

tbh i nwver really understood people saying aka is so jarringly different from btd. like yeah they have fairly different production but the writing style and themes always seemed quite similar to me. like the differences between thwm feels equivalent to the differences between uv and hm. and i feel like honestly aka is more similar to her discography overall than btd is so its always been weird to me that fans act like she artistically wasn't the lana we know and love yet. 
 
the only logical reason i can think of to why its not vwry popular with lots of fans especially new fans is bc its so hard to find/access. like either they don't have a lot of experience listening to it so they haven't had time to fall in love with it or even they use it "not being good" or being "too problematic" as an excuse for not listening to it instead of admitting to themselves that its just too much work to find it. 
 
like i truly find it one of her best albums but i feel that way about most artists' debuts. its the clearest image of her as a regular person and has the most relatability to the average person. like yeah she's improved artistically and as a songwriter so much over the years but theres something so special about this album and i hope she does rerelease it someday (it took both david bowie and elton john a few decades to rerelease their out of print debut albums so lana still has plenty of time). i'm at least glad lana has started acknowledging it as her debut again bc its too good to ignore.

I think the biggest factor is that it is pretty much buried beneath her now 9 albums plus collabs, EPs, remixes, etc. on top of the mountain of unreleased music, it becomes really overwhelming for a newer fan to start combing through her material. It is also a pretty unique sounding album with the 'surf noir' sound and B movie aesthetics, it clashed with Lana's then luscious hollywood glamour image.
I remember vividly opening up iTunes and seeing BTD's cover, looking Lana up on Youtube and falling in love with her music. By the time I learned about AKA's existence, Honeymoon was months away to be released and I had already been playing BTD and UV to death while waiting for Honeymoon, so I had plenty of time to get familiar with AKA. Queen of The Gas Station was my favourite song off of it for a loooong time, but nowadays I think that title goes for Pawn Shop Blues.

Been a fan since Born to Die and I have always loved AKA, I love the organic production and imo it's as surfy as NFR, like NFR night time version
 
There was a time where I was obsessed
 
Now I don't find myself listening to it that much because I remember having it downloaded on my iTunes, and now I don't use that anymore so I have no direct access to it
 
My boyfriend became a stan during NFR/Chemtrails and I made him listen to AKA twice, he liked it but said it was way too different and not exactly his cup of tea, although he appreciated the music
 
I personally don't include it in rankings simply because, in my view, Lana Del Rey begins with Born to Die
The fact that AKA existed before that feels more like an easter egg to me
It is the debut and final album of Lizzy Grant and I absolutely love that

It's pretty funny, I admit I never really liked it much, but while reading through this thread I decided to give it another chance and I feel like I'm falling in love with it for the first time, lol. 
 
One of the reasons I didn't like it before might also be the mass of songs and albums I was confronted with becoming a fan in 2020. I feel like I'm not even properly done with her regular released discography, especially as she keeps on releasing and releasing, plus all the unreleased songs and leaks... Lol. AKA might have been a bit more difficult to approach than some others. 

Ohhh bahahah I was definitely around at that time actually. Must have just blocked out the trauma 

Ohhh bahahah I was definitely around at that time actually. Must have just blocked out the trauma 

In no way am I a new fan, and I loved reading your input on it (some lyrics might have been not very « 21st century feminism » or that the newer uploaded versions on TB or SoundCloud are sped up or cheap-sounding). 
I like aka although it probably is my least favourite album from Lana, even if there are gems on it. 
to me, aka is her first attempt at the « LDR sound » and it’s not as baked or completed as BTD and her other albums. It lacks the grandeur, the majesty, the « world-building » she brought on from BTD to HM, where each album had its own distinct sound and atmosphere. Heck, it’s got Oh Say Can You See and Brite Lights on the same album  (I know that we could say the same thing about OB or LFL, but those two were albums where she stepped out of that « world-building » mindset, as opposed to her first LDR-Interscope LPs)
that being said, it has its merits: it’s minimalistic and very « trailer-park » youth kitsch. 

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if they are scared of aka imagine what they'd do if they knew about sirens

Oh, you know I love to talk about HER 
 
 I feel like another factor in AKA getting a bit buried is (maybe obviously) that she’s just released so many more albums. Like, even becoming a fan in the Honeymoon era, there were only 3 studio albums and an EP, as opposed to 5 more since then. New fans have a much larger, readily available back catalogue to explore, and probably aren’t as driven to find every scrap of music (although there are still plenty, as evidenced by this site!!). 
 
Do I think they’re making a huge mistake? Duh! I’ll always believe AKA should’ve been bigger in its own time, and should be way more valued as part of Lana’s artistic legacy now. It’s honestly bizarre that with a producer as well-known as David Kahne involved, it hasn’t had a widespread reappraisal… but we can hope, and until then, I’ll enjoy AKA being our best-kept surf noir secret 

I had a quick look on Youtube just now and this appears to be one of the only uploads of the correct original version of all the songs. I haven't listened to it in detail but flicked through and it seems good.
 
I don't use spotify but I've heard that people upload unreleased lana stuff there as podcasts so there might be a version on there
 
https://soundcloud.com/user-44795412/lana-del-ray-aka-lizzy-grant-full-album
This is also a good option. seems high quality and has the correct versions. These are both gapless too.

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.
 
Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 
 
I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.
I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.
 
I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it
 
Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.
 
Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.
 
Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 
 
I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.
I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.
 
I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it
 
Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.
 
Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.
 
Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 
 
I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.
I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.
 
I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it
 
Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.
 
Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.
 
Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 
 
I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.
I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.
 
I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it
 
Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.
 
Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

Wait scat trolls???? Thankfully I think I left before that started happening hahaha

Well it doesn't seem you were on this site back in 2013 unless you're on a new account. That may have been the case in whatever part of the fandom you were in at the time. There was huge differences in general opinions between say Twitter stans and Lanaboards stans in 2013. In the same way that Tiktok stans don't seem to like AKA but people on here still love it. Anyway how can we truly quantify the popularity of an album either then or now that doesn't have a metric like streaming numbers. I'm just commenting on a huge wave of negativity against AKA that I've seen online that didn't use to exist in my experience and also the fact that I've seen it left out of most album ranking I see online (not talking about on here).
 
She talked about rereleasing it and specifically said that she owns the rights to it. So she's certainly considered it.
 
I agree about Honeymoon and Chemtrails. Its good though, I've always loved Honeymoon so I'm glad people are giving it a second chance and I never gave Chemtrails a chance myself so I've been listening to it more recently because I see it getting a lot of love.

hahah hi thats so funny.
Goddd some of the old threads on here are so messy. I went back through some of my posts today and its funny to read but so odd because its like a time capsule of your personality. I was literally 13 when I started going on here so I said the dumbest shit.

Well it doesn't seem you were on this site back in 2013 unless you're on a new account. That may have been the case in whatever part of the fandom you were in at the time. There was huge differences in general opinions between say Twitter stans and Lanaboards stans in 2013. In the same way that Tiktok stans don't seem to like AKA but people on here still love it. Anyway how can we truly quantify the popularity of an album either then or now that doesn't have a metric like streaming numbers. I'm just commenting on a huge wave of negativity against AKA that I've seen online that didn't use to exist in my experience and also the fact that I've seen it left out of most album ranking I see online (not talking about on here).
 
She talked about rereleasing it and specifically said that she owns the rights to it. So she's certainly considered it.
 
I agree about Honeymoon and Chemtrails. Its good though, I've always loved Honeymoon so I'm glad people are giving it a second chance and I never gave Chemtrails a chance myself so I've been listening to it more recently because I see it getting a lot of love.

hahah hi thats so funny.
Goddd some of the old threads on here are so messy. I went back through some of my posts today and its funny to read but so odd because its like a time capsule of your personality. I was literally 13 when I started going on here so I said the dumbest shit.

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.
 
Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 
 
I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.
I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.
 
I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it
 
Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.
 
Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

Well it doesn't seem you were on this site back in 2013 unless you're on a new account. That may have been the case in whatever part of the fandom you were in at the time. There was huge differences in general opinions between say Twitter stans and Lanaboards stans in 2013. In the same way that Tiktok stans don't seem to like AKA but people on here still love it. Anyway how can we truly quantify the popularity of an album either then or now that doesn't have a metric like streaming numbers. I'm just commenting on a huge wave of negativity against AKA that I've seen online that didn't use to exist in my experience and also the fact that I've seen it left out of most album ranking I see online (not talking about on here).
 
She talked about rereleasing it and specifically said that she owns the rights to it. So she's certainly considered it.
 
I agree about Honeymoon and Chemtrails. Its good though, I've always loved Honeymoon so I'm glad people are giving it a second chance and I never gave Chemtrails a chance myself so I've been listening to it more recently because I see it getting a lot of love.

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.
 
Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 
 
I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.
I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.
 
I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it
 
Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.
 
Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

I had a quick look on Youtube just now and this appears to be one of the only uploads of the correct original version of all the songs. I haven't listened to it in detail but flicked through and it seems good.
 
I don't use spotify but I've heard that people upload unreleased lana stuff there as podcasts so there might be a version on there
 
https://soundcloud.com/user-44795412/lana-del-ray-aka-lizzy-grant-full-album
This is also a good option. seems high quality and has the correct versions. These are both gapless too.