IanadeIrey

Thank you so much! <3 Right back at ya - you bring so much of the fun to this site and it wouldn’t be the same without you! I second the other users you mentioned as well.

So excited! And I have to echo the queen@annedauphine, these Blue Banisters title-cards are my fave <3 I wouldn’t mind a LB theme in the vein of these… Thank you for organizing all of this, @Elle!

I’ve been thinking about this record so much lately, and how its entire composition would be so important in the years to come. Lyrically, God Knows I Tried and Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood are, in a way, alternative responses of some of the tracks on Blue Banisters that address public relations. That sentiment is portrayed so implicitly but powerfully on Honeymoon. It’s truly her in album form and is very much a portrait that is diaristic as it is stylized. Forever my favourite <3

What I said applies to a very specific group of people and refers to a larger cultural problem, rather than a couple witty jokes here and there like you seem to think I am taking an issue with. I myself as an OG fan know exactly the overblowing on Tumblr you're talking about and I had a disdain for it then, too, so it's not exclusive to just new fans –– it is a type of fan that is just more visible now. I, too, didn't relate to the extremities on their part in terms of trivializing or blaming Lana for their deep-seated issues, but I never thought something was wrong with me for not relating to that. I knew then and I know now how a large portion of listeners (of any artist) instinctively project their issues onto the artist with whom they resonate. I agree that music taste indicates parts of your personality, but let me be clear that I was referring to the generalizations people make based on said music taste, the rampage of which only continues to stigmatize topics at the risk of marginalizing mostly women. People poking fun at women for having 'daddy issues' because they listen to Lana points to a bigger cultural problem where we blame women for psychological distress caused by their emotionally or physically absent fathers. Lana is not to blame for someone's psychological issues. The reality is that those issues were already there and, perhaps, Lana is being used as a scapegoat. And that's not to fully vilify the fans, either – I can recognize where those behaviours come from and feel sympathetic that they have to manipulate the music like that. But I don't have to excuse it. Perhaps that sounds like 'gatekeeping' – but to that, I would encourage you to see the nuance in which I initially made that post.

AW LOL! You are so funny (and sweet!!!) — it’s a topic I think about so much, I feel like enough of us can put our heads together and shift the discourse

Whenever I encounter something online — usually a Tik Tok video, or an Instagram post — that kind of makes fun of Lana, or oftentimes, a post where a fan will say something about a track/album and attach it to some cringeworthy archetype or an experience they’ve had, I can’t help but feel some sense of shame — almost like the way they go about talking about Lana’s catalogue bastardizes the music. I feel there’s a new wave of fans that don’t really get the music, (which out of context, may sound kind of pretentious), but the reality is that people are severely adding to the negative discourse surrounding Lana’s music, often latently creating hierarchies or suggestions about what kind of person you are based on your favourite album — and not in a fun personality quiz way, but in a weird way that cheapens what each record’s themes are. And that feeds journalists’ uninformed “critiques” and interpretive-portrayals of Lana’s records. They’re getting these opinions from the culture (the fans who participate in the platforms that enable said culture). I take particular notice to fans who say that AKA is a record about “grooming” or “glamorizes trauma”, deeming it unlistenable. Or those who attach Ultraviolence to a wave of Tumblr content that is superficial and vapid, compared to the record, which is anything but. I get that it’s not done in bad faith, but it’s just so…careless. But it’s also these same fans that make blatant statements about Lana’s appearance over 10+ years because she’s — according to them — overcome habits related to her health (when in reality, Lana has never commented on any such thing). It’s this kind of rhetoric that contributes to misinformation, too. We’re in an age where the boundaries between celebrities and followers are so undefined, that it’s easy to say something so absentminded about someone and have it spread like a wildfire. Luckily, I don’t see this on LanaBoards at all — and the rare times it has happened, everyone is quick to shut it down lol. Just some thoughts this evening 💭 I can’t help but feel the need to defend the integrity of the music when I see content like this online. I’m not saying I absolutely know the complete backstory to Lana’s music or have complete insight into her thoughts - but I also know that it’s never as vulgar or flippant as some make it out to be.

So true. Breaking Up Slowly is the vibe — I am convinced that people would love it if it were a solo track, which is sad because Nikki sounds gorgeous on it.

She did say that she thought NFR was going to end up in one of two directions in an interview with 107.7 The End in Seattle on October 2, 2019 — it was either going to be “hip-hop girl-group” or “singer-songwriter-ish” but “in the end, there were just more songs like [the latter]”. And she compared the “hip-hop girl-group” sound to the title track of LFL, so, I wonder if this next record, including Loved You Then and Now/Rock Candy Sweet, is in that vein.

Totally appalled at how you managed to misgender @Super Movie when their pronouns are right there AND drag Barrie like that

Haha, that’s not what I meant. I was just stating how every other record of hers deserved the same acclaim, and critics’ opinions (that they are paid to offer) are not really on the basis of anything. With Lana, it’s often in bad taste that they write “reviews”. I agree that there was some sort of groupthink or bandwagon effect to an extreme where it was suddenly “cool” to like Lana Del Rey in 2019, but a widely-accepted cultural phenomenon to bash her in the years before. Thank you to @brandon for getting what I meant below lol

@Arcadia you’re a prophet!

Honeymoon deserved the same acclaim as NFR — but I get it, not everyone that is paid to “critique” has the insight to understand complex bodies of work.

Cinnamon Girl Humid

God Knows I Tried is one of her best songs of all time, and is perhaps even in the top 3 best tracks on Honeymoon (which is difficult to rank already)

I didn’t see this posted, but Daniel Johnston’s official account posted an unseen of him and Lana in November 2015. Taken at the premiere of his film that she helped produce 💔

She’s saying “and by the mayor, the rallies in the streets…”! This line seems to connect to part of a stanza in LA Who Am I to Love You: ”Hancock Park, it's treated me very badly, I'm resentful The witch on the corner, the neighbor nobody wanted The reason for Garcetti's extra security” Eric Garcetti is the mayor of LA, and Lana has a house in Hancock Park, so it seems that she lives close to the mayor and is alluding to this in both the poem and VFR!

The hate for it 6 years ago could very well have been my villain origin story.

You too, legend! Look at us go!

I’ll never forget where I was when I heard Terrence Loves You for the first time — I was staying at one of those lonely hotel inns for the night in the stretch between the city and the sea during a road trip along the west coast. It was the perfect setting to take in such a thoughtful, contemplative song. That was a surreal moment, and one of my favourite memories of experiencing the music in real time. I love the idea of beautifying your life and doing things that make it feel pretty — experiencing that song’s release the way I did was one of those instances where I felt like life romanticized itself on its own, and this entire record definitely encouraged me to create moments like that from then on.

I’d love that! Patches would go especially well on something like a classic Dickies jacket, almost like our individualized, custom variations of Lana’s Venice and DNC jackets. I loved when she came out with patches for the Surf Shop, they were really fun!

I agree, and thank you! I love what you say about it being detached, I think around 4 years ago I was talking back-and-forth with another member in the Honeymoon thread about that exact thing, how it kind of reads as a metaphysical self-portrait from which Lana detaches herself and distinguishes between herself pre-fame and post-fame. It’s got so many layers, I love it — I keep unravelling them even 6 years down the line

West Coast vs. The Blackest Day

Honeymoon is a record that she could release at any point in her life and it would still read as one that represents where she’s currently at in relation to the natural process of aging and acquiring wisdom. That record is really something else — it exists in its own space independent of time and maturity. I can’t believe it’s real, and I can’t believe it was critiqued so unfairly for the longest time. It’s absolutely untouchable and I think one that best represents how deep and soulful Lana is. The lyrics, melodies, and production all do so much more than create music — it all-around transcends any constructs of what defines ‘’music” or “storytelling”. It’s just her.

Terrence Loves You vs. Video Games