Vertimus

I can like in Safari but not in Chrome.

So let me ask this: another member said yesterday that they hadn't seen a lot of dislike for Violets For Roses here on LanaBoards, and also for Arcadia, if to a lesser degree. Overall, Blue Banisters seems unpopular with the majority of members. Did I dream this?

If COVID hadn't happened, my own life would be much better, because I lost a great job here in NYC, which was devastated by the pandemic in 100 ways. And the wolf was right at my door: though there are only 9 apartments on my floor, two men in other apartments died of COVID, and an older friend whom I had known also died of it, very suddenly. COVID destroyed so much and so many. The government's fumbling and junk science didn't help. BUT if there was no COVID, we wouldn't have Violets For Roses, one of my all-time favorite Lana tracks. And Black Bathing Suit might not exist either, or might in a different form. I'm glad Lana responded to COVID in her own way and didn't ignore it.

I think we've been lassoed. Again. Whatever results, it seems will be another compromised LDR album. Except for Honeymoon and perhaps NFR!, hasn't every LDR been compromised, ending up as a sort of jumble of the original conception? We know she didn't have full control over BTD, we know Paradise resulted from the abandoned Tropico, we know UV was considerably reworked and reconceived, as was LFL to an even greater extent. So was what became Blue Banisters, which was announced under another title, and then 4-6 songs were reportedly abandoned, with the older already-leaked material replacing it. I'm not sure about COTCC, but I know Lana was hesitant about releasing it as it was in terms of production and arrangements. So that leaves Honeymoon and Ocean Boulevard, and now Lasso is also going through a reconception, likely with an unknown number of songs dropped. Of course, I want Lana to be happy with whatever she releases, but it's the constant announcing of dates, conceptions, and album titles and then all the delays and changes that bites for Stans and fans. It's redundant to have to say so. I think it alienates and exhausts fans in the long run. All she and her team have to do is keep mum until the details and facts about the forthcoming album are absolutely confirmed--until vinyl is being pressed.

She looks great!

That article is a total mishmash and doesn't tell us anything we didn't know. Just because she's claiming Lasso is coming in the future doesn't mean she won't change her mind again. If she's going to release another album of some kind--compilation of outtakes, unreleased, etc.-- before Lasso, then that's only going to push Lasso back that much farther. I continue to wait calmly and to emotionally anticipate nothing. Then when something actually drops I'll get excited.

I'd only buy this if it were also a digital release and contained officially released outtakes of songs we haven't heard and haven't leaked. It's nice for the Stans, however, the diehards.

Well, I'm thinking of the history of modern popular music, with artists like Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Eminem, Will Smith, John Legend, and others who have written songs about their families, especially their children. These usually come--naturally--when they're over 30 and experiencing family life. In my experience, most such songs--like Sweet Carolina or Tori Amos's Ribbons Undone--are largely met with derision or apathy. For a long time, on her Wikipedia entry, there was a quote from Lana in which she said, "I grew up in a Carly Simon household," so I've been saying here for years that such an influence, conscious or not, is going to eventually come out in Lana's music as she enters middle age--which she is (I understand that anyone can add or take away things from a Wikipedia entry). I see the Carly Simon influence on 'Love,' 'White Mustang,' 'Love Song,' 'Let Me Love You Like A Woman,' 'White Dress,' 'Arcadia,' 'Beautiful,' 'Violets for Roses,' 'Blue Banisters,' 'Sweet Carolina,' Sweet,' 'The Grants,' 'Let the Light In,' 'Margaret,' 'Hollywood Bowl,' and even 'Suburban House,' which Lana didn't write, among others, some more, some less. I'd also like to see Lana leave the piano alone for a while and give us something with more of a pulse, and not just one or two songs.

She seems and sounds healthy on BB, does she not? Happy, mature, at peace in her "deepest place," as you say? Even on Arcadia and Violets For Roses, the negatives are balanced by a calm inner strength. And so are Beautiful and Text Book. In Black Bathing Suit, she's rather politely but cleverly telling off the critics and others who mocked and ridiculed her. And while If You Lay Down With Me might be an older song, it's also a show of quiet control and strength. That's why I dislike A&W, which I don't find credible. After the more mature, approaching middle-age, Carly Simon-esque sound and lyrics of BB, I see A&W as a failed attempt to come across as edgy again, and in the coarsest way possible, claiming for herself the same image so many critics had of her to begin with. I also see the fuck me to death line in the title track as pathetic—and beneath her. The You fucked me so good I said I love you from NFR! I find just as bad. I agree about NFR! Much of it is ho-hum and unchallenging. I greatly prefer songs like Heroin, 13 Beaches, and WTWWATWKOD, where she stepped outside of her comfort zone and succeeded in being creative and world-building, to use one of her terms. I do like The Greatest very much—it's world-building and world-destroying in the same track. Even Venice Bitch, let's be honest, is 98% Jack Antonoff and 2% Lana Del Rey. He took a slight lyric and expanded it into a world of his own. Viva Blue Banisters. Peace.

Beautifully stated. Funny that so many don't get BB, or actively dislike it--for me, it's her purest record, one hundred times better in every way than OB, which I find clumsy, concocted, poorly produced in places, and repetitious. She seems at peace throughout BB, even on WFWF, because she's releasing that demon and freeing herself of it in the process. Two of my Top Five of Lana's songs are on BB--IYLDWM and Violets For Roses. To my ears, BB still sounds as fresh as the first day I listened to it.

The period when it dropped was a wonderful period of my life, which helped me appreciate it but I would have loved it at any time.

Things seem so off it's as if, out in the ether, there is no Lasso. Maybe there was, but it feels as if there isn't anymore. It's interesting that so many of us are intuiting this at the same time. I said here a few weeks ago that I had lost all interest in Lasso. That's about when it started for me.

BB, despite my not liking the title track, remains my favorite Lana Del Rey album and definitely the one I play the most. Happy birthday!

It doesn’t happen with 98% of the other artist I follow.

It's not the wait between albums, it's being fed consistently wrong information by Lana and her team. It's not a good sign when a person, artist, or team never learns from the past--and in this case, the recent and continuous past--though of course I realize her managers can't and don't muzzle her or control her in any way. I wouldn't care if it were 3-4 years between albums, which is what we may be looking at due to her marriage and the potential children that may arise from it. That is, if she decides to remain in the business at all, which I suspect she will if she does have kids.