Vertimus

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.

That's a good way to put it. I don't understand why it's overlooked, even despised by some, the way it is.

I agree about what she meant by the Video Games comment, and while I didn't care much for Arcadia when it was released, it's grown on me more than any other LDR song and I love it now.

And then HIAB as released was such a disappointment to me. I rank it among the worst of her officially-released songs, which is a very short list. I don't see that happening with Henry, if Henry ever sees release.

It was the absolute worst, made worse by the viciousness of some of the routine attacks here. I'm so glad those days are over. I'd rather get no news and no snippets at all than "I really don't know when it's going to come out" from Lana and two singles released a year before the album itself, and then reversals and incorrect information. In the broadest fashion possible, I think she's learned not to over-promise. Is she the most mercurial artist ever when it comes to statements about releases? YES.

SUCH A BEAUTIFUL SONG. Thanks for reminding me.

I agree with everything American Whore said here.

I'm glad I'm reading these latest posts because so much of the OB producing and mixing sounds muddy and awful to my ears. To me, all of the new tracks on Blue Banisters sound 100% better. This is why I have 'problems' with Jack A., though I liked his production on Lorde's Solar Power.

Thanks, everyone. I must have been asleep. I missed so much. How beautiful Lana looks and how nice to see her dueting with Mason Ramsey and Stephen Sanchez. Her connection to artists around her continues.

Thank you, LTLI.

Thanks, Embach. I appreciate it. Maybe I can find a video on YouTube. It sounds like something I'd appreciate.

What intro? Did I miss something? Was it played when she toured?

And during Tori Amos's heyday, there was a wisely-titled website called A Dent in the Tori Universe—a dent because it acknowledged that a dent was really all fans and Stans could make, in fact, in the almost equally-complex world of Amos at the time.