Vertimus

Full agree. As if the LFL rollout wasn’t unprofessional enough, the NFR has been inexcusable from a professional POV. There’s no arguing it, no excusing it. It’s as if her music career has also become ‘self-published, like her poetry book. And now there appear to be all kinds of SNAFUS with the actual album release in various jurisdictions.

The ‘NFR’ blurb looks much better on the cover art than the full name did yesterday, and balances the ‘LDR’ in the lower corner.

The chartreuse album color was probably chosen because it’s very close in shade to the jacket she’s wearing on the album cover, which may be a lemon yellow but photographed chartreuse.

That’s the luxury of iTunes and all other contemporary music platforms. We can customize our own versions of any album, add any cover art we choose, delete (but save) songs we don’t like, etc. I am already using the version of the album cover someone created here, where LDR has a white top on and white nail polish.

I don’t care about cars or anything else, only that it’s aesthetically pleasing and photography worthy of an artist of her caliber. And for me, this album art isn’t, just as LFL’s was not.

If she had been hugging him and at least looking towards him it would have been better. The reaching out to the viewer pose is clumsy and awful. Everything looks washed out. It would ha e been better if the colors were more saturated and there was more contrast. That greenish yellow is awful too. She should have used a primary yellow instead.

I agree. She can afford/get the best photographer the world has to offer, and yet this anemic, clumsy photo is what she uses for her new album cover. It’s hilarious how overused the word ‘iconic’ is here and all over the internet, like ‘literally’; I get the impression many use both but have no genuine idea what either mean. It would be nice to know what the track times are. One or more might be as long as VB.

Hilarious and true.

Full agree. Very awkward, especially the reaching forward part. The top she has on may be yellow, but it looks chartreuse, and chartreuse is never a good color for photos of any kind.

I agree. The good thing is that the colors in the cover can be manipulated by various programs to look a lot better and less washed out than they do.

Hopefully, it’s an all-new arrangement of the song, NOT produced by Nowels, but since she’s crediting him, it may be the version we already have.

Not the worst I have seen, but pretty bad. The colors are awful, including the yellow nail polish, and she looks plain and washed out. Geez. You have to wonder who is advising her. Maybe those Yes Men some of us discussed yesterday.

I don’t want BAR on NFR unless it has a completely new arrangement. The Nowel production curse is a slow, mellow beginning, then a lot of lukewarm bombast. LDR has too many songs that follow that pattern. I like BAR well enough, but the production and arrangements are tired and rote. We will get ‘Yosemite’ when LDR releases some kind of ‘greatest hits,’ ‘best of’ or career retrospective, like Tori Amos’s multi-disc ‘A Piano,’ which offered Amos’s rarities and some never-released-but-sought-after-tracks similar in status to ‘Yosemite.’

She’s probably had her astrological chart done and knows for a fact that that year, at the time she was born, she’s a Cancer. I have the same thing—born on the Capricorn/Aquarius cusp, but officially 6 hours into Aquarius though I have a lot of Capricorn placements.

Most famous artists throughout the 20th century and into this, by mid-career, find themselves surrounded by Yes Men and Flatterers, from Picasso, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, , The Rolling Stones and Andy Warhol to Nico, Whitney Houston, Jeff Buckley and beyond. Shakespeare wrote about. It’s an ages-old phenomenon wherever there is fame and power. So LDR is no different in that respect, and a lot of sycophants will do and say anything to stay close to the famous and powerful, even the famous and powerful in decline.

Right. Until there’s an official press release from Interscope/Universal about the date it drops, nothing is certain.

You say, “Hey Siri, play Cinnamon Long Snippet” and since I have the snippets on my iPhone and in my iTunes account, Siri recognizes the long snippet and plays it. Just like any other song you have in your iTunes account.

If there are exclamation points and you don’t like them, just take them out in your iTunes account. If you don’t like the album art, you can change that too to whatever you want. If you don’t like a song, remove it from the album but keep the file on your Mac or PC in case you want to hear it later. As far as piano ballads go, it’s the melody that counts. If it’s strong, the track will most likely work, as in ‘Bel Air,’ ‘Old Money,’ or ‘Is This Happiness.’ If the melody is weak, trite, poor, flat or nonexistent, then you have a lot of nothing.

I like it as well, and, if accurate, it’s also a tribute/shout out to the Neil Young song. We know she loves to drop references to the classic rock era. Her references have been getting way too obvious and un-clever, but I am not bothered by Cinnamon Girl. In response to the poster who asked, “What does it even mean?”, it could mean many things, symbolically, or even be a simple observation of the color of the girl’s skin.

Exactly. It certainly doesn't come off as satiric. It sounds a lot more like, "Hey, I've got another lukewarm, 3/4ths-finished song that I'd love to shove onto the album, what can we do to make it sound more substantial, more alive? Should we add a guitar solo a la 'Shades of Cool'? Or a ska rhythm? Or how about we have a male say, 'bitch' in the background a few times, and call it a day? I wanna get out of here."

It wasn't a general complaint about her swearing in her songs/lyrics, it was the use of the swear words on 'Cherry' specifically. Those who defended the use of those words on that song are the members who broadened the argument to all the songs she uses swear words on, which no one was complaining about here.

It depends on whether it’s integrated into the song and seems part and parcel of it, or just tacked on. Obviously, on a buoyant pop song like ‘Radio,’ the ‘fuck’ is intended to be clever and teasing, as it goes against the tone of the song, and it works. The same with ‘Cola,’ G&M,’ etc. To me, ‘HBTB’ was another not-quite-there song that didn’t work.

I agree. 'Cherry' was a 3/4ths-finished track, but LDR couldn't find a way to beef it up to a fully-developed song (the same way that 'White Mustang' was only half or 3/4ths of a song) so she added the 'bitch' and 'fuck' to attempt round it out, which didn't work, was on obvious attempt to flesh out the song, and made her look pathetic as an artist. There's a clean version out there, and that's the version I play when I play it at all, just as there is a 'Groupie Love' without the rap. Hopefully, there won't be any such cheap shots on the new record. I would think Jack would steer her away from them, as his name is also on it, but we'll have to wait and see.

This was the perfect time for her to reintroduce the name 'Norman Fucking Rockwell' to the world, or remind everyone of it, the non-Stans out there, and yet she referred to it only as "the new record."