Vertimus

Thank you?

Again, if that's true, it's silly and self-defeating as I see it. Lana should Fight the Power, not acquiesce to it. Like the Good Witch blithely saying, 'Begone, you have no power here' to the Wicked Witch of the West.

JinnWithin, thanks. We have no way of telling whether what you're conveying is legitimate or not. I can easily see everything you've shared being legitimate, but as many are saying, we've been misled and lied to many times in the past, so we can't take everything you say as gospel truth; in fact, we have to assume it's not true for the sake of our own sanity. But if you'd like to continue to spill, please do. If it turns out you're correct and have been honest, of course we'll thank you.

As someone said yesterday, it is possible that someone in the industry, even in a minor or support role, might have heard several of the tracks, especially as we're moving into the period when the album is/was supposed to be released. Remember the short video of a group of people listening to Candy Necklaces with Jon Batiste among them? Who were all the other people?--not that there was a mob. We don't know; they could have been anyone, even friends of those either invited or there working at the time in some capacity. Lasso is on lockdown, but not absolute, complete lockdown. It's easy to imagine someone at the label finally hearing one or more tracks and calling in someone else to hear them too. So that part I can see as realistic. The rest seems rather teasing and harebrained.

Thanks for the link and that interview. Yes, we knew from the time LFL dropped, with WTWWAWWKOD and the other "anti-Trump" or "five political songs" recorded but ultimately not used for that album, that Lana was anti-Trump and said she felt "safer" after Biden was elected. We do live in a political world and it's definitely affecting us all in a big way right now, but I think it's a mistake to surrender one's independence to it, to become obsessed with it to the degree that so many are, and allow it to ruin our day-to-day life and mood. What if she doesn't want to release Lasso due to a possible Trump second term and then Harris wins, which certainly looks possible? To my ear, a lot of Lana's stated political beliefs (still) sound forced or deceptive. And I'm someone who loved WTWWAWWKOD and didn't mind the Black Lives Matter lyric in Text Book, because I believe she probably did attend one or more BLM rallies and experienced what she sang about in that song.

The Trump thing--"not keen on releasing"--seems bogus to me, and is, I hope. WHY Lana or any other artist would let that affect their decision about releasing an album of Americana/Country/Standards is beyond me unless it's to make some sort of a hoped-for statement. We're in the midst of an economic crisis, but America is not in a WWII, a Viet Nam, or even the Cold War. That's why America is in such turmoil: it's as if we're all paralyzed by everything that happens or is reported to have happened, part of a domino set that has to be deeply affected by every move, counter move, and comment made in the political arena, the media, and social media. We're surrendering our own personal immediacy and freedom--and doing it willingly--for no good reason, often out of fear and/or for imagined 'brownie points,' PC-ism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, or whatever. We're being manipulated and we're falling for it. Lana, you are free! Release Lasso as planned. And I do take politics and the state of the world seriously. End of rant.

Many thanks—! Wish I were there.

Did anyone post the entire set list? I went through the posts but didn't see it. Glad you all enjoyed it so much.

It sure has changed a great deal over the last 50 to 70 years, like most things, for better and for worse. When I lived there, it was a paradise, and the people were civil—they were like the Cleaver or Anderson families on Leave It To Beaver or Father Knows Best. There are all kinds of Southern and/or country people—from farmers to rednecks to "hill people" to lower- and middle- middle-class people to urban poor and professionals and 'yuppies.' Unfortunately, from my perspective at least, redneckism prospered, even exploded, throughout the South since that time, including much of Florida (part of the South but not the Deep South) all the way down to Miami. After we moved from Nashville, we moved to Miami, and I watched as redneckism slowly took over (which is why I moved to NYC and have been here ever since). So adult Floridians I knew whose parents were also like the Cleavers or Andersons instead embraced redneckism and started speaking like this: "I'm gonna go to Dunkin' and get me some munchkins," instead of the King's English they were raised with and spoke as youths and young adults.

Another truth about the South and Deep South is that, more than any other region of the United States, it's maintained its music, food, and manner traditions while still progressing, unlike almost every other part of the country, which has abandoned theirs and become largely homogenized—though there are of course small pockets of the United States that remain true to their traditions of all varieties.

It's also important to remember that the reason so much—or almost all, if not all—of the late50s-early-60s Folk Revival was criticized was because almost none of its American practitioners came from backgrounds rooted in Americana or came from impoverished rural backgrounds, where American folk music derived from Britain was born with the first Scottish, Irish, and English settlers (later settlers of all kinds, from Italian to Polish to Cuban, etc.—brought their own country's folk music with them, and the slaves and the descendants of slaves whose families originated in Africa, even if by way of the Caribbean, certainly brought their own musical traditions and folk songs with them from their first arrival on these shores). In the Britain of the late 50s and early 60s, many of the folk practitioners had grown up in rural poverty where the folk songs of their region had never died out or ceased to be sung or celebrated, but been passed down through the generations and also recorded as soon as they could be. I'm referring to people like Ewan MacColl, A.L. Lloyd, and the Watersons, and then later-60s artists like Donovan and Fairport Convention who admired those artists and began writing music in the folk style, often with more progressive rock, electric guitar, or jazz elements, which came to be called folk music, even though it would more accurately be called music in the folk music style. Just as early Joni Mitchell came to be known as folk, though in fact it was contemporary music in the folk style. Early Leonard Cohen, ditto.

Then that's like saying I could move to Jamaica and write a dance hall, ska, or reggae song and say it's authentic, even though I'm American and from the Deep South. I agree non-Southerns can write books, plays, or songs in the Southern Gothic style, but it will be limited in how far they can say it's authentic through and through.

If it's authentic Southern Gothic, then the writer/musician essentially has to come from the American Deep South*. Lana can adopt a Southern Gothic vibe, tone, or mood—she adopts all kinds of styles and genres and puts them to use—but she's never going to be a tried-and-true Southern or Country artist regardless of Lasso and whatever else she does in that direction. Look at Orville Peck—he's adopted a Country music style but he's from South Africa. He's free to do as he pleases, but he can't say he's from the Deep South or even America—and Country as a musical genre really comes from all over America, not just the Deep South (though predominantly from the Deep South), unlike Southern Gothic. Southern is in the name! *It's like an other geographical area—you can do an album or write a song in the style of the early Beatles, but you will never be able to say you're a Liverpoolian if you weren't born there. Look how Joni Mitchell has consistently stressed that her music was formed and shaped by her early life as a Canadian Prairie Girl. The regional area we're raised or live in often seeps into us, for better or worse. Exactly. Thanks. I just basically said the same thing.

But those aren't Southern in any sense of the word. Southern Gothic means rooted in the American Deep South, so Hozier or Fleetwood Mac can't be examples, as Stevie and Lindsey were not born or raised in the Deep South and the rest of the band are British—as is Hozier (I realize it wasn't you who put his name/song forth). What I think you're describing are witchy-sounding songs, of which the Eagles' Witchy Woman would be an excellent example, among several others of theirs, like the excellent Too Many Hands. Let's not appropriate regions.

I hope so too. I was born in Laguna Beach but spent my formative years out in the country in Nashville, TN, and feel I know the South and Americana as a broad musical style fairly well. I wasn't too thrilled with those country-style songs she played live a few years ago, but I don't expect Lasso to sound or be as lyrically cliched as those.

Thank you for your thoughts—I certainly never interpreted the song that way and I think it's a typically dangerous 1970s American reaction to homosexuality—so awful a thing that one night with a man is reason to commit suicide. I interpret the song the way you do—ironically, for the most part, as if his unremarked-upon death is just another subject or event in a sleepy Southern town. Max Baer Jr., with portrayed Jethro in The Beverly Hillbilies, produced it, but I doubt had anything to do with the homosexual angle. They probably wanted to come up with something that could cause a young man to kill himself, short of getting a young girl, or the wrong young girl, pregnant. In the movie, she wants everyone to think he killed himself because he got her pregnant, so she goes away for a year, saying she'll return childless, so everyone thinks that her pregnancy was the real reason for his suicide and that she gave their child up for adoption. How far we've come.

What are the similarities, LTB? I know the Gentry song of course, and in the 70s, it was made into a film in which Billie Joe commits suicide because he spends a night with his male boss, presumably in the passive role. I was surprised that that was the spin placed on the song.

Yes, maybe, regarding Lasso. To me, Honeymoon sounds more like something with slight jazz-big band-torch song overtones and a jazz pastiche at best, which is fine. Because she mentioned Miles Davis and listened to him and other jazz artists while writing and recording it, I still hear a lot of people calling it either a jazz album or Lana's jazz album, and it isn't jazz of any kind. The Blackest Day is obviously the most indebted to Blues and Jazz, but more in theme and approach than musically. I thought the Paradise version of Yayo was much closer to a true torch song than the Honeymoon title track was, with its to me, tiresome two-word refrain. Since we're supposed to be discussing Lasso here, I won't go any further, but I agree, Lasso may only be Country in the broadest sense, like she said Ride was, to her mind, a country song--or could have been with a few presumably musical alterations.

Henry, Come On didn't sound popish to my ears, though we don't know where the song is going after the snippet...but since she had Mason Ramsey and Stephen Sanchez as guests at her recent concert, and the songs they sang are definitely in the Pop or Country Pop vein---Sanchez's music doesn't sound like Country to me---maybe their appearances signaled a more pop-ish sound for the new record, and hasn't she said something to that effect about the lyrics? Experience has taught me that almost all musicians/songwriters have a Pop song in them, at least one outright Pop song--like Kate Bush's Rubberband Girl and Tori Amos's Bouncing Off Clouds. So maybe that's where she's heading and we're following. She's tried it a few times already, especially with Love, which I've grown to appreciate but not love. Also perhaps with Summertime Sadness.

I know the literary genre of Southern Gothic (Poe, Ambrose Bierce, William Faukner, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, et al) , but not the musical, though I know the term has also been applied to films made from Southern Gothic novels, and then television programs. The term entered the mainstream in the 1970s-1980s. Songs like The House of the Rising Sun I associate more with pure American folk music, then made famous by the Animals, and also covered by Marianne Faithfull in the 1960s. Brett Detar's two relatively recent solo albums, Bird in a Tangle and especially Too Free To Live have strong SG themes and motifs, and Rayland Baxter released a grim song called The Cold Easy Life Of A Loner, but I can't think of a lot of other Country or Americana artists that do. Most 'Country' for the last 50 years has really been Country Pop, very repetitive in theme and sound, and typically upbeat in intention. Ho-hum. So it's hard to know what Lana's grasp of the term country means, especially in light of her past album descriptions, which have often been off. I know she said some or all of Honeymoon was inspired by "long drives around LA at night listening to Miles Davis," but I still don't hear any genuine jazz underpinnings on Honeymoon. Buddy's Rendezvous did have jazz underpinnings or was outright jazz. I'm glad it's still called Lasso. If it's no longer a stab at Country, then the sky's the limit. As some have commented, that opening theme that was played sounded more like pre-NFR! Lana than post-.

I'd like to see Lana cover Lilac Wine, which would be a fitting bookend to The Other Woman and their love of Nina Simone.

Lately—lately she's been singing about walking to the mall, watching TV, and doing the laundry. Most musicians and actors—an even influencers more recently-- quickly realize the fame game is not what they thought it would be—there's literally hundreds of songs from diverse artists about the toxicity of fame. It's been clear from about the time of Honeymoon that she was turning her back on the life and lifestyle she lived briefly after the release of Born To Die—she no longer wanted to be photographed everywhere as she was when dating Francesco Carrozzini and no longer wanted to be seen as the international style guru she had become. On Facebook and IG, she began posting selfies of herself sans makeup. For someone who attends only select events, she sure attends a lot of them, and I doubt she thought no one in the media would be aware she was working a shift at the Waffle House and speaking freely to customers while wearing a name tag that read 'Lana.' I don't think it was an attempt for her to see what life was like for someone with a minimum-wage job in the South. Sure, it was probably a lark, but also a somewhat calculated one. A publicity stunt. She may be ambivalent about fame—and ambivalence is life—but there's no doubt she's still attracted to being seen, being an artist and celebrity, having a public profile, having a legacy, etc. She could still release albums but become essentially reclusive, as many musicians have in the past, but she's not doing that. And we don't want her to.

But there's so much she does--like attending the Met Gala--that she doesn't have to do but continues to do, and she clearly loves the red carpet and being professionally photographed, so I wouldn't personally say she dislikes present-day fame. Look at the Waffle House thing--what was that, if not an unusual bid for attention? I believe she loves all the attention showered on her by designers and the people who make her concert dresses/costumes, as well as the people who produce the more extravagant aspects of her shows--which she clearly has to green-light in some manner.

I think she cares a great deal about her career, about potentially squandering any sort of buildup she's achieved, about continuing to have access to the stage--which she calls home. That Leo moon doesn't let go easily. Whether some or more Americans under 40 now recognize her name, she probably cares not at all.

Her public profile is so high right now—especially after the acclaimed concerts and the Tough single—some average Americans under 40 years old actually recognize her name now--it would be a waste of all this buildup for her to release nothing until next year.