Vertimus

Are we thinking WCE might have originally been written for COCC or BB? Because the romantic vulnerability it reflects isn't in keeping with most of BB, where she shows a lot of resolve, independence and self control.

I personally thought there was a big shift from her BTD/P vocals to UV. We know she's had a lot of different singing styles over her entire career, going back to her pre-LDR eras, so everything we're seeing now, and have seen over the last 3-4 years, is probably just more of the same. She has her own reasons, about which we know little or nothing. Maybe she's seeking her 'authentic' voice, maybe not. If she is doing the Amertican classics covers album right now, she might be moving into something she feels is 'jazzier' or a little more retro.

We know she tries different ways and styles of singing. I think it's just more of that. I prefer the smoky voice she used on some of the 'Paradise' tracks. In the (distant) past, some famous female vocalists did their best work before they were told they really didn't know how to sing 'properly,' or 'correctly,' at all, and afterwards they attempted a very mannered style, empty of all energy and verve, and their careers took a huge dive. Ann Wilson of Heart is the most prominent example--you hear her bluesy, natural voice on 'Magic Man,' 'Crazy on You,' 'Sing, Child, Sing' and on all of the tracks on the first Heart album way back when, when her voice was magnificent, a force of nature, and you hear it on most of 'Little Queen' and 'Magazine' too. Then came 'Dog & Butterfly,' and her voice is very controlled and static. And that was the beginning of the end of that band. Wilson went from becoming a potential rock legend to a nothing almost overnight, and Heart ended up, a decade later, really by that time only 'Heart' in name only, churning out shlock pop. Linda Ronstadt said the same thing about her famous 70s work: "I didn't know how to sing at all then, I later realized." And when she apparently did learn to sing, her career became 'middle of the road' music, some of which was excellent. Especially in rock, post-rock, and a lot of alternative music, that primal vocal energy and confidence is everything. To some degree, Tori Amos also slowly abandoned her original beautiful vocal style, as on 'Black Swan,' though I never heard her say she didn't know how to sing previously. I would like to hear Lana attempt a more naturalistic and free singing style, a la Amy Winehouse, though I know that isn't Lana's wheelhouse.

I'm definitely not scared of her growing older, maturing, becoming an aunt or mother. Not at all. I know she'll still create beautiful music if she wishes to. But it's probably never going to be the Lana of 'Blue Jeans' or 'White Mustang' again, pining away for a man or lover, though of course people fall in love at all stages of life and so enter into the same statistics of success and failure.

I don't think it was a calculated move, to mention BLM, not at all. Something happened there and she wrote a song about it, or added a verse about it to whatever she was writing at the time. But the love and praise for NFR! I will never understand, except for a few tracks. The rest, to me, sounded like something she dreamt up in the tub, something that came too easily and were basically retreads of other, earlier songs.

Right. Look--whether we realize it or not, like it or not, she's in early middle age. Priorities change and hers clearly have--"the simple life, I chose this," "someone to walk home from the mall with," etc. She's still "racing her little red sports car" and "wearing her jewels in the pool (with her sister)," but family seems to have to have taken center stage, as we saw on BB with direct references to her sister, father, and mother. Her songwriting is probably going to reflect who she is now---and she's no longer the young woman who wanted to wear gold driving around Hollywood "shooting heroin and speedballs." That may be why she left 'Serene Queen' off LFL and emasculated the title track. She's probably continue this swerve and then in a few years, want to reclaim her youth and show the world she's still hip. I've seen this quite a few times with other artists. Or she'll have a child and that will become her priority, as it did for Kate Bush and Tori Amos, and she'll start writing 'cute' songs about her child like Bush's 'Bertie' and Amos's 'Ribbons Undone.'

That could be, BI. But while there are tens of thousands of hip people of all ages in LA, just as there are here in NYC, there are many tens of thousands more who are just regular folk, and may be crazed by drug addiction or hunger and thus more likely to sell it on the street. Sure, someone who made an effort could figure it out, but there might be the ‘Lizzy’ or ‘Elizabeth’ names thrown about or used on emails, and that may confuse them enough. Hip or not, there are many smart and shrewd people, but again, many many more who are clueless and out of touch. I can think of a lot of performers today who I do not follow, and if I found their laptop, I would probably care less about what was on it, much less thinking about monetizing it or trying to. But a buyer or other party might know LDR and be able to leak or monetize its contents. I may be wrong, I am just looking at all possibilities. Thanks

Absolutely. There’s no way in 2022 that the only mastered copies were on her stolen devices. We can all copy files in a blink of an eye, so can they, and do

It seems to me unlikely that the thief knew what they took or what they have even now. They may not know how to get the songs off the laptop to post, sell, or leak, and, in not a LDR Stan, certainly won’t know what are new tracks, what are finished tracks, what are incomplete tracks (they may just see the music as iTune-style tracks like many of us have on our phones and Macs). In fact they may delete all the music, photos, and videos to free up space so they can use it themselves, or they may have sold the laptop for food money, drug money, survival money, who knows. The laptop itself may be the only thing of value to them in their own eyes, and the camera or video equipment.

Like in a bank vault. I don’t know if banks still offer these services, but they used to.

If so, she takes it to the police and lets then handle it. Paying blackmail would be silly in today’s age of rapid copying and up-and downloading. And it would just encourage others to do the same thing: steal material worth millions.

But if so, they can have made a hundred, a thousand, backup copies by now. No use paying blackmail $$.

Thank you, SN.

And couldn’t CFY be something from that cache too? Or do we know for a fact that it’s older?

I live in NYC and haven’t driven in decades, and I am glad I don’t when I hear about crimes like this, because all my friends from all over the US have been reporting events like this for over a decade. It’s really sad.

Thank you.

What is a scat attack? I know what scat means, but in this context?

As Hillary Clinton would say, it’s a ‘nothing burger.’ “Don’t believe the hype, it’s a sequel”

It certainly doesn't sound like 'PWYC.'

The simple life, she chooses this.

I wonder how much influence her old dad Robert had on this project, especially if it's a cover album of some kind? Wouldn't it be grand if it were a double album? We don't see those much anymore.

Yeah, that's really broad. 'Dream pop' could mean almost anything from 'The Look of Love' by Dusty Springfield to ABBA to 'Pumped Up Kicks' and way beyond. She's spoken of so many varieties of 'cover album' that I wouldn't be surprised if LDR9 is a cover album of some kind. And typically, when artists do a cover album, they usually slip in one of their own songs that they feel somehow 'feels right' with the rest of the material, and, in my experience, they're almost always wrong. So Lana may do that. In what sense was BB even slightly a 'western record'?

It's in my Top 5 all-time Lana songs, and maybe at the top of the list.

I still listen to it all the time, especially BBS, IYLDWM, Arcadia, and VFR. I haven't come close to tiring of it.

Yup. maybe this is LDR9.