Agnese13

Exactly - I like that she is slightly nervous because to be quite honest it makes her seem like a normal person who has a passion for music - not the fame. It's all about art and music with Lana - she doesn't want the attention which is totally understandable. She clearly just wants to do what she loves. But these journalists just play on her insecurities and keep pushing in hope to get something out of her - because she doesn't actively talk about her life or anything because she's a private person and she has a right to be and doesn't want losts of attention like most other artists. 

I think what Lana meant was she would rather be dead than doing long interviews with someone asking her personal questions.

I think she simply has different views on death than the majority of people in this world and saying it quite openly like she did in the interview leads to these kinds of ''sensations''. I just think it says a lot about the world we live in and in what kind of culture do we find ourselves. This definitely was blown out of proportion and twisted, I do believe in that.
I honestly don't get it, I don't understand what has she done to deserve all the bullshit she gets, because really, it seems like she does get more than other people do. How about just let her be/create music/sing? So simple, yet it seems that our media-driven culture is incapable of just appreciating things for what they are. There always has to be some-kind of ranking/competition system that puts people/artists against each other. And more than anyone else, I don't understand critics. Like, what kind of job exactly is that? It's like all they do is sit all day make fun of/criticize others for what they do, because, well, at least they DO something in their lives. The rant's over, thank you

I think she simply has different views on death than the majority of people in this world and saying it quite openly like she did in the interview leads to these kinds of ''sensations''. I just think it says a lot about the world we live in and in what kind of culture do we find ourselves. This definitely was blown out of proportion and twisted, I do believe in that.
I honestly don't get it, I don't understand what has she done to deserve all the bullshit she gets, because really, it seems like she does get more than other people do. How about just let her be/create music/sing? So simple, yet it seems that our media-driven culture is incapable of just appreciating things for what they are. There always has to be some-kind of ranking/competition system that puts people/artists against each other. And more than anyone else, I don't understand critics. Like, what kind of job exactly is that? It's like all they do is sit all day make fun of/criticize others for what they do, because, well, at least they DO something in their lives. The rant's over, thank you

I think she simply has different views on death than the majority of people in this world and saying it quite openly like she did in the interview leads to these kinds of ''sensations''. I just think it says a lot about the world we live in and in what kind of culture do we find ourselves. This definitely was blown out of proportion and twisted, I do believe in that.
I honestly don't get it, I don't understand what has she done to deserve all the bullshit she gets, because really, it seems like she does get more than other people do. How about just let her be/create music/sing? So simple, yet it seems that our media-driven culture is incapable of just appreciating things for what they are. There always has to be some-kind of ranking/competition system that puts people/artists against each other. And more than anyone else, I don't understand critics. Like, what kind of job exactly is that? It's like all they do is sit all day make fun of/criticize others for what they do, because, well, at least they DO something in their lives. The rant's over, thank you

People are so hateful towards Lana... that makes me sad, sad girl cause I love her so much and I just can't understand why... We lana fans are 2 good for this cruel world
 
Don't ask me why I felt the need to post this, I just... nevermind 

Read from the bottom up

 



 

All the times I've listened to it, I cried. I can't really deal with this perfection. I actually don't even remember when was the last time I cried because of a song, or at all. I fucking love her.
 

Maybe I'm projecting, but I see Lana as being very brave, taking a stand for sensitivity, with her Ultraviolence era.
 
I honestly can't tell whether it's just me getting older and hopefully wiser, or whether it really is a whole culture war going on since 2008 over toughness versus sensitivity. I see it everywhere, in the media, in churches, in conversations with family and friends: those who weathered the economic storm and who see it as a sign of their personal merit are very committed to assigning various sorts of blame to the marginalized, to the outliers, to anyone who fails to benefit from the system which rewards those who have successfully conformed. In such a system it can become vitally important for some people to hoard compassion as yet another commodity for the "deserving."
 
No, cheating isn't cool. But it also isn't cool to pit women against each other, the "good girls" versus the "bad girls," on a societal level. It isn't cool to pit moralities against each other. We should be able to see all virtues as good, not competing. We should be able to embrace the Other.
 
People speak of not letting the good become the enemy of the best. But I fear our society is far more guilty of letting the "best" become the enemy of the good. And there is something good, something likable, something valuable in everyone. I believe it is because every person is created in the image of the Divine -- but you don't need to be religious to see it. There is good in everyone, if you only have eyes to see.
 
I think Lana Del Rey has eyes to see. And I think, whether calculated or not, she's trying to help the rest of us open ours.

I worry about Lana. Honestly have expected her to take a hiatus for a while, might be good for her. She has it tough, cops way more criticism than she deserves. And it is so easy to focus on the criticism and completely disregard the amount of love people, especially fans, have for her. And not just superficial love. I, as do many others, adore HER MUSIC, HER WRITING. My God, she's like a fucking poet. She writes like no other. Her lyrics hold a very special place in my heart, they evoke emotions I have never felt before. She has so much talent and intelligence. In my prayers
 
Went a little deep there, but I really do think that, despite her success, her authenticity and talent and a singer/ songwriter is STILL underrated, particularly by harsh critics.

All the times I've listened to it, I cried. I can't really deal with this perfection. I actually don't even remember when was the last time I cried because of a song, or at all. I fucking love her.
 

Finding Her Future Looking to the Past Lana Del Rey Still Stirs Things Up With ‘Ultraviolence’
The New York Times Interview: Lana Del Rey
 
LOS ANGELES — In October, before starting an international theater tour, the songwriter Lana Del Rey consulted a clairvoyant. She was instructed to write down four questions in advance and sleep on them. The first question on the list, Ms. Del Rey said in an interview in May at her house here, was “Am I meant for this world?”
It’s probably not the kind of question most multimillion-selling pop singers would ask themselves with their careers clearly ascendant. This year, Ms. Del Rey was called on to sing a spooky remake of “Once Upon a Dream” for the Disney film “Maleficent,” and she sang at Versailles for the pre-wedding party of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
But doubt, regrets, obsessive longing and self-destructive impulses are often at the core of Ms. Del Rey’s songs and videos. “I wait for you babe, that’s all I do/You don’t come through babe, you never do,” she sings in “Pretty When You Cry” on her new album “Ultraviolence” (Polydor/Interscope), due for release Tuesday.
Since her emergence on a major label with the single “Video Games” in 2011 and the album “Born to Die” in 2012, Ms. Del Rey has drawn passionately opposed responses. Her songs and video clips demurely step into cultural minefields, exploring eroticism, mortality, power, submission, glamour, faith, pop-culture iconography and the meaning(s) of the American dream. She has faced, in reviews and online discussions, shifting accusations of inauthenticity, amateurishness, anti-feminism and commercial calculation (although her only Top 10 single in the United States was unplanned: a dance remix by Cedric Gervais of her wistful ballad “Summertime Sadness”). But she has also, largely through YouTube, gathered an adoring worldwide audience that takes her every lyric to heart.
“Ultraviolence” will doubtless stir up more disputes. But one thing the album should immediately eliminate is the notion that Ms. Del Rey is only chasing hits. The album reaches deeper into her slow-motion sense of time, her blend of retro sophistication and seemingly guileless candor. It also moves gracefully between heartache and sly humor, sometimes within the same song.
The music on “Ultraviolence” sets her further outside whatever passes for current pop mainstream. While radio playlists are full of futuristic electronic dance beats and Auto-Tuned testimonials to self-esteem, Ms. Del Rey, 28, has taken a contrary path, melodic and melancholy. Much of her music has been lush and downtempo, invoking vintage movie scores and echoes of the 1950s and 1960s; it opens quiet spaces. Her voice sounds human and unguarded, offering sweetness and ache even when she sings four-letter words.
The tracks on “Born to Die” drew on hip-hop, with grunted samples and hefty beats, but now, she said, “I’m not crazy about some of that production.” The hip-hop influence was already receding on “Paradise,” the EP she released in 2012. And “Ultraviolence” is more languorous than ever. Its first single, “West Coast,” actually downshifts to a slower tempo for its chorus, where standard radio formula calls for a big buildup.
In a throwback to a less-computerized era, many of the tracks on “Ultraviolence” were built around Ms. Del Rey and a seven-piece band recording together and responding to one another. The songs often float in a psychedelic haze that she described as “narco-swing.” Dan Auerbach, the Black Keys’ guitarist, produced and performed on the album, and said, “She was watching us and swaying while we were playing.”
Mr. Auerbach was drawn to her songs because, he said, “They felt old and new at the same time.” Ms. Del Rey freely cites inspirations including Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Cat Power, Nirvana and Eminem, but none of them emerged in this century. “Think of what’s going on now,” she said. “Where am I going to get my inspiration? I couldn’t think of a thing today that I would really genuinely want to be a part of.”
In conversation, Ms. Del Rey isn’t the low-voiced chanteuse of songs like “Video Games” or “Blue Jeans”; her voice has a girlish, soprano lilt, punctuated with giggles. Wearing a blue mini-dress and clear sandals that revealed toenails painted a pearly peach, she sat on her couch here, sipping coffee and smoking through a pack of cigarettes, under a painting of cherubic angels. She showed off a recent tattoo on her right arm: “Whitman Nabokov,” two authors she has quoted in songs. She had just returned to Los Angeles to finish her North American tour, with a show at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall.
After living in London and touring the world, Ms. Del Rey bought her house here, an elegant English-style residence in need of repair, seven months ago. The walls are newly painted in the blues and greens that were also the palette of “Video Games,” the homemade video clip — she edited it on her laptop — that catapulted her career and has now been viewed more than 119 million times on her two YouTube sites alone. The paintings in her living room are of icons — the Virgin Mary, Elizabeth Taylor — and a book on the coffee table had Marilyn Monroe on the cover.
“I have strong relationships with icons,” she says. “They’re probably my most meaningful relationships. They feel personal to me, but maybe that’s what being an icon is. Maybe everyone feels like they have that special relationship that’s different from everybody else, like you love them and you think you understand them more than anyone else, or you get them for who they really are.”
It’s not a position she aspires to for herself. “I wouldn’t really know how to shape myself as an icon,” she said earnestly.
Many of the accusations that were leveled at her major-label debut were inaccurate. She wasn’t a pretty face serving someone else’s concept, or a dilettante. As Lizzy Grant — born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant — she had worked at being a songwriter since her teens, and playing in small clubs on the Lower East Side and in Williamsburg. She grew up in Lake Placid, N.Y., and came to New York City with, she said, “a Dylan-esque dream of a community of writers,” but never found it.
In 2007, she got her first recording contract when she was a senior at Fordham, studying metaphysics. She recorded a debut EP in 2008, and briefly released an album in 2010 — “Lizzy Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Ray” — before it was withdrawn while she renamed herself Lana Del Rey. The songs on that album were already exploring the tarnished innocence and dangerous compulsions that she would return to on “Born To Die.” The production would change with her collaborators, but her perspective did not.
As many songwriters do, she works with more trained musicians who supply foundations for her melodies and lyrics. Sometimes they offer chord progressions while she improvises; sometimes she brings finished words and tunes for them to harmonize. “She’s very clear about what she wants and doesn’t want,” said Rick Nowels, who wrote “Young and Beautiful” and “West Coast” with her, and who has collaborated with Madonna and Dido. “She is the captain of her own ship.”
Ms. Del Rey describes her songwriting simply. “I want one of two things,” she said. “I either want to tell it exactly like the way it was, or I want to envision the future the way I hope it will become. I’m either documenting something or I’m dreaming.”
On “Ultraviolence,” that means songs like “Cruel World,” in which she breaks away from a long failed relationship — “Shared my body and my mind with you/That’s all over now” — and “Sad Girl,” a bluesy reflection on “being a mistress on the side”; she also sings “The Other Woman,” a song recorded by Nina Simone.
Already braced for disapproval, she said: “If you really do want to analyze me, if that’s maybe something you’re interested in, let me tell you my story and you can look at that.”
The recording of “Pretty When You Cry” is built around the original writing session: chords from her band’s guitarist, Blake Stranathan, a fluctuating tempo and words she was making up on the spot. “I’m stronger than all my men,” she sings, “except for you.” A more conventional approach would be to redo its shaky, scratchy lead vocal with something prettier. “I didn’t even think to go back and fix it,” she said, “because if you know the story behind it, then you can tell why it was sung that way.”
The angry responses to “Born to Die” left scars. “Carl Jung said that inevitably what other people think of you becomes a small facet of your psyche, whether you want it to or not,” she said. Her new album includes a retort: “Money, Power, Glory,” which claims, with deep sarcasm, that those are what she’s after.
“I learned that whatever I did elicited an opposite response, so I’m sure ‘Money, Power, Glory’ will actually resonate with people as being what I really do want,” she said with a shrug. “I already know what’s coming, so it’s O.K. to explore irony and bitterness.”
A recurring criticism was that her songs about being swept away by love were anti-feminist in their passivity; she contends that she was writing about private, immediate feelings, not setting out doctrine. “For me, a true feminist is someone who is a woman who does exactly what she wants,” she said. “If my choice is to, I don’t know, be with a lot of men, or if I enjoy a really physical relationship, I don’t think that’s necessarily being anti-feminist. For me the argument of feminism never really should have come into the picture. Because I don’t know too much about the history of feminism, and so I’m not really a relevant person to bring into the conversation. Everything I was writing was so autobiographical, it could really only be a personal analysis.”
She has also been denounced for video clips that culminate in her death: by drowning, by falling, by choking. The video for “Born To Die” ends with her in a boyfriend’s arms, inert and covered in blood. She agrees that her videos have often been “exploring ways to die,” she said, adding: “I love the idea that it’ll all be over. It’s just a relief, really. I’m scared to die, but I want to die.” The title song of “Ultraviolence” ventures into precarious territory. In an arrangement that melds Baroque dirge and wah-wah guitar, the singer describes herself as “filled with poison but blessed with beauty and rage,” and goes on to quote a fraught 1962 song from the Crystals, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss).”
The lyrics also mention a “cult leader,” and Ms. Del Rey said the song looked back to a time soon after she moved to New York City, when she considered following a guru who “believed in breaking you down to build you back up again.” “It sounds kind of weird,” she added, “but that is what it’s about, and having romantic feelings entwined with the idea of being led and letting go and surrendering. That’s always a concept to me, like I’m wavering between independence and falling into lifestyles and being led.”
There’s an underlying pattern to the songs throughout “Ultraviolence”; Ms. Del Rey’s voice appears alone and often fragile in the verses, then is swarmed by instruments and multiple backup vocals. “Each tune fully represents the ebbs and flows, the periods of normality mixed with this uncontrolled chaos that comes in through circumstances in my life,” she said. “It’s your story. If you’re the one writing it, you want to tell your story right.”
The next night Ms. Del Rey was at the Shrine’s Expo Hall before a packed, standing audience. There were high-pitched screams when she strolled onstage, and from the front to the back of the hangarlike hall, voices were raised to sing along. It wasn’t, like some concerts, a social occasion; this audience was devotional, sharing every word, sometimes close to drowning her out. Onstage, Ms. Del Rey just stood there and sang, swaying occasionally; when she did her one planned bit of choreography, a single hip flip in “Body Electric,” the whole room roared.
“The energy is so much higher in the pit than it is onstage,” she noted afterward. She strolled twice down into the photo pit, trailed by a video camera, as fans reached for her with offerings and hugs; one fervent embrace looked like a half-nelson. “I’ve lost a lot of hair on this tour,” she said later, backstage. “The audience has been an unexpected well of comfort that I’ve dipped into recently. It was never something I even thought to go to for strength or affirmation.”
But the adoration hasn’t quite broken through the solitude of her songs. “Yes, I’m in a different place today than I was four years ago,” she said. “But I’m some ways I’m still in the exact same place. I’m still on the periphery.”
 

I love the 2nd, I love Lana in black. So used to seeing her in white, but black is gorgeous. Black beauty

Blue hydrangea, cold cash divine
Cashmere cologne, and white sunshine
Red racing cars, Sunset and Vine
The kids were young and pretty
 
Where have you been, where did you go
Those summer nights seem long ago
And so is the girl, you used to call
"The Queen of New York City"
 
But if you send for me, you know I'll come
And if you call for me, you know I'll run
I'll run to you, I'll run to you
I'll run run run
I'll come to you, I'll come to you
I'll come come come
 
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh...
Aah, aah, aahh....
 
The power of youth, is on my mind
Sunset, small town
I'm out of time
Will you still love me when I shine
From words but not from beauty
 
My father's love was always strong
My mother's glamour lives on and on
Yet still inside I felt alone
For reasons unknown to me
 
But if you send for me, you know I'll come
And if you call for me, you know I'll run
I'll run to you, I'll run to you
I'll run run run
I'll come to you, I'll come to you
I'll come come come
 
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh...
Aah, aah-ah-ah-ahh..
 
And if you call, I'll run run run
If you change your mind, I'll come come come
 
Ooh, ooh, ooh...
Aah, aah-ah-ah-ahh..
 
Blue hydrangea, cold cash divine
Cashmere cologne, and white sunshine
Red racing cars, Sunset and Vine
And we were young and pretty

I think people perceive the things she says way too seriously sometimes. Plus, about the men, well, I just think it's her experience that leads to those kinds of views. I kinda agree, I also prefer masculine energy (although it doesn't mean that masculine energy can be found only in men), or rather say the societal view of ''masculine'' energy. We all have our past experiences that is the influence of our current perceptions and I think that's really the case, so again, I personally don't see anything wrong with it. I mean, she is who she is and that's the charming thing about her.

Can I just say this is the most interesting forum I've ever been onto? I love it

Can I just say this is the most interesting forum I've ever been onto? I love it

They say I'm too young to love you
I don't know what I need
They think I don't understand
The freedom land of the 70's
 
I think I'm too cool to know ya
You say I'm like the ice I freeze
I'm churning out novels like
Beat poetry on amphetamines
 
I say, I say...
 
Well, my boyfriend's in a band
He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed
I've got feathers in my hair
I get down to Beat poetry
 
And my jazz collection's rad
I can play almost anything
I'm a Brooklyn baby
I'm a Brooklyn baby
 
They say I'm too young to love you
They say I'm too dumb to sing
They judge me like a picture book
By the colors like they forgot to read
 
I think we're like fire and water
I think we're like the wind and sea
You're burning up, I'm cooling down
You're up, I'm down
You're blind, I see
 
But I'm free, I'm free...
 
Well, my boyfriend's in a band
He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed
I've got feathers in my hair
I get down to Beat poetry

And my jazz collection's rad
I can play almost anything
I'm a Brooklyn baby
I'm a Brooklyn baby
 
I'm talking 'bout my generation
Talking 'bout that newer nation
And if you don't like it
You can beat it, beat it, baby
 
You never liked the way I said it
If you don't get it, then forget it
'Cuz I don't have to fucking explain it
 
And my boyfriend's in a band
He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed
I've got feathers in my hair
I get high on hydroponic weed

And my jazz collection's rad
I get down to Beat poetry
I'm a Brooklyn baby
I'm a Brooklyn baby
 
Yeah, my boyfriend's pretty cool
But he's not as cool as me
'Cuz I'm a Brooklyn Baby
I'm a Brooklyn Baby

Can I just say this is the most interesting forum I've ever been onto? I love it

This makes me love the whole thing more and more, seriously   I just honestly feel like Lana tends to say a lot of things just in a playful, sarcastic way and then people are left with thinking God knows what and she enjoys it. Which makes me love her even more. When it comes to the lyrics itself, I just think it's very simple:''cult leader'' is just someone she looks up to in one way or another, that's about it. I mean, I don't know half as much about her/her songs etc. as many other people here do, but that's just how I see it. Although I don't know about the sect/cult thing, but I always wonder where does her faith in God come from, and all these things. Like, I just think it could be smth connected to how she quit drinking, because a lot of times those people do get involved into these so-called ''churches/sects'' (like the type of churches where people fall to the ground and where exorcisms are performed, and they like sing and do all that weird stuff) and that's how with ''God's help'' they quit the drinking. I mean, IDK, I might have just written the absolute nonsense, but it just somehow comes into my mind when I put things together.  

Can I just say this is the most interesting forum I've ever been onto? I love it

The phrase ''Fucked My Way Up To The Top'' as I see it is about how this other person/artist/IDK sees her, she sort of says it through sarcasm, because whatever they have said, is not really true.She references herself. Anyways, by each day I get to read/know more about Lana, the fascination is incredible. She's fucking crazy, but at least she's free

The phrase ''Fucked My Way Up To The Top'' as I see it is about how this other person/artist/IDK sees her, she sort of says it through sarcasm, because whatever they have said, is not really true.She references herself. Anyways, by each day I get to read/know more about Lana, the fascination is incredible. She's fucking crazy, but at least she's free

This makes me love the whole thing more and more, seriously   I just honestly feel like Lana tends to say a lot of things just in a playful, sarcastic way and then people are left with thinking God knows what and she enjoys it. Which makes me love her even more. When it comes to the lyrics itself, I just think it's very simple:''cult leader'' is just someone she looks up to in one way or another, that's about it. I mean, I don't know half as much about her/her songs etc. as many other people here do, but that's just how I see it. Although I don't know about the sect/cult thing, but I always wonder where does her faith in God come from, and all these things. Like, I just think it could be smth connected to how she quit drinking, because a lot of times those people do get involved into these so-called ''churches/sects'' (like the type of churches where people fall to the ground and where exorcisms are performed, and they like sing and do all that weird stuff) and that's how with ''God's help'' they quit the drinking. I mean, IDK, I might have just written the absolute nonsense, but it just somehow comes into my mind when I put things together.