Vertimus

If she recorded the famous version of STAS than Tim Buckley sang on the second season of The Monkees, that would be wonderful if done right. It suits her perfectly, in theme and sound, and would probably fit well on the new album. She’s clearly into the beach and mermaids at present. So it would be perfect. Good call.

I was lucky enough to be hanging out in the East Village in the years when he was just starting out and playing Sin-e and other small dive cafes. I wouldn’t say he was a difficult person, just an apparently average human being suddenly and quickly being swallowed by fame and celebrity and doing his best to cope with it. The East Village was and remains a very tough place, and I am not surprised to hear that the young Sis or LDR met with antagonism or hostility from Buckley and/or others. That is the norm there. Everyone tends to pose and be as hard, cynical and ‘over everything’ as possible. It’s not a very human place. It’s the birthplace of the Velvet Underground and CBGB, what can you expect?

Speaking of Jeff Buckley, I would love, one day, for LDR to produce a song as perfect, as moving and as powerful, as ‘Lover, You Should Have Come Over.’ ‘Old Money’ comes close for me. I don’t Stan Buckley, but I am a great fan of his and also of his father, Tim, who was certainly a good example of an artist who was give complete artistic freedom and quickly threw his career away.

It’s interesting to witness firsthand the need so many have for gods and goddesses, which goes back to the dawn of recorded history. It’s the motivator behind all celebrity. And it can be dangerous—we see how hero worship can go wrong, can turn to envy and hatred, or how fans can become stalkers and killers, obsessed with their god or goddess, or how some fans can tire of their goddess vessel and blithely transfer that adoration to another artist at the drop of a hat. Jung wrote extensively about all of this. I agree with everything you say. I have been very critical of two LDR albums and certainly don’t care for at least 15 of her officially released tracks. Of course I try to determine whether I just don’t like the song, or if it honestly seems like a very weak song in itself, in its structure, and may also be badly produced or arranged. And of course we can rightfully be critical of the way in which an album is rolled out. I didn’t think anything could be worse than the LFL rollout until now.

Being a cultist is the worse thing any fan can do for an artist, being an all-praising, never-critical worshipper, as if the artist were a god and above imperfection, mistake or error. I have seen this behavior in cults of R.E.M., Tori Amos, Hozier, Bob Dylan, 21 Pilots, Amy Winehouse, Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Father John Misty and the Clash among others, and filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Woody Allen. Sometimes a great artist will release one bad album or film after another, and her or his adoring fans will remain silent at best or praise the bad work regardless, instead of saying, “Wow, your new album is really poor, as I see it, for the following reasons...” You don’t have to be mindlessly rude, but you should state your truth if you feel like doing so. I have recently done this on FB with Rayland Baxter, the Cactus Blossoms and Great Peacock, all of whom I follow and who released lousy records over the year or so. Certainly LDR has her cultists. You can be an LDR Stan without being a cultist, insisting that you yourself and everyone else love every LDR song, poem and photo. Maintaining some distance and objectivity is ALWAYS good. It helps you see clearly and without blind emotion.

The new beach selfies give me more hope than anything else that we might be moving into the home stretch for the new album. They could even be, or pass for, liner note photos. They’re certainly much better than those ugly, distorted selfies she posted during the lead-up to LFL. The beach selfies show that a LDR selfie, with or without makeup, need not be grotesque.

She did say that half a year ago, but that doesn’t mean it has continued to be true. She jumped back into LFL and changed it significantly at the 19th hour, so there’s a definite precedent for her doing so—and with her very last album.

There was never ANY official confirmation from Interscope, and official confirmation from them is all that matters. Everything else is speculation, hearsay, or gossip, or more very likely unreliable information from her and her team.

And record companies insisting on changes, or the addition or deletion of songs, or which single is released, or what the cover art looks like, that’s been a reality since the dawn of recorded music. It may not be going on now with NFR, but it’s definitely a reality many musicians have faced.

Maybe LDR doesn’t want to get the reputation of being ‘difficult’ within the industry, if she’s thinking of changing labels, as Tori Amos came to be known after her endless battles with various labels and many public statements about those battles.

The piece in the video is Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy.

Sometimes ‘Indie’ is erroneously seen as a musical genre like ‘Alternative,’ rather than meaning ‘on an independent label.’ I agree LDR is not Indie.

The three singles released didn’t flop. As many have noted, they were ‘fan singles’ and probably no one on her team or at Interscope intended them to chart or make any kind of commercial impact. On the other hand, unless LDR bought NFR back from Interscope, will basically release it herself and doesn’t give a damn who buys or doesn’t buy it (she’s a millionaire already, probably many times over), a new release by a major artist produced by one of the hottest producers out there IS a significant commercial proposition with a lot of money riding on it, and thus one that needs to be promoted. A company cannot promote an anticipated new album when it is being sporadically released in dribs and drabs, amidst conflicting reports from the artist, and in such a manner that the non-Stan general public cannot get a sense of when they can purchase it. So I don’t agree that everything (or anything) that has happened with NFR since last September represents some kind of brilliant release or product build-up strategy.

When the Interscope website lists the album, only then, with whatever title is used—NFR or not—will we be sure of anything. Even if there’s no release date, at least we’ll have something official. Can anyone name one or more albums that were made available during the last 20 years—since the advent of iTunes and streaming services—which were released as a series of singles over the period of a year, culminating eventually in a hard album release?? I can’t think of one.

As far as we and her Stans everywhere go, I really doubt we figure into equation at all. Stans are part of celebrity culture, and if she’s distancing herself from its direct, major aspects, and aspects she sees as toxic, she’s very likely distancing herself from thinking much about her fans. She has hundreds of thousands, and many are of the more casual, non-Stan variety.

Well, we have almost all fully agreed to the point you’re making, that announcing an album as finished, saying it will be out within a few months, teasing songs, etc., was unprofessional at best and self-destructive and stupid at worst. But there were aspects we liked, like the release of the 3 singles. Don’t assume her life is in some sort of chaos, large or less than large, BUT, within THAT chaos, she is able to somehow make smart, objective choices about her career and the album’s release. The messiness of this era only underscores some problem or series of problems about which we know nothing, and can only guess at and theorize about.

Isn't 'White Mustang' also a phallic double entendre? Seriously. That's how I've always interpreted it, and not because I necessarily wanted to. Something made the narrator love crazy, and could only his car and his album dropping have done that? Full agree. Imagine any of us going through all of that, and trying to remain sane and coherent. I have a hard enough time balancing my long, high-pressure work days, long commute, wardrobe (I have to wear a tie and at least a sports coat to work every day in addition to everything else), family life, dog, and the fact that my Spectrum cable keeps going out and I need to make time for a cable guy to come out and fix it again.

Regarding Moby, she did say she ‘had slept with a lot of people in the industry and it never me anywhere.’ That’s a close paraphrase.

Tori Amos has also written extensively about her unhappy experiences with the music industry, and specifically about how older female artists are politely sidelined and ‘put out to pasture,’ though we don’t know if that is a factor in LDR’s case, as she’s under 35.

Right. It’s interesting how Mitchell often wrote about ‘the star-making machinery behind the popular song’ and the critics ‘bringing out the boards and the nails’ to wall-off and get rid of artists they had grown tired of. Rolling Stone famously voted her ‘Old Lady of the Year,’ which she found insulting. 40 years ago, she was going through much the same thing that LDR is now, and also in LA.

Like everyone, she has crises and hassles in her life, which is far more complicated than most of ours. I sensed a crisis after ‘Paradise,’ with the public feud with Lorde, falling out with BJON, the SNL disaster two weeks running, and then the eventual birth of UV, which was radically different from BTD/P. I think she’s going through a similar upset and re-evaluation of her life now, and where her career fits into it. We don’t know what the hell is going on, but it’s very likely that something is. Maybe like so many other artists, from Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell to Kate Bush, Fiona Apple and Marina, she’s just tired of being a celebrity and wants to reclaim her privacy; and she may be additionally conflicted about THAT. Maybe she’s just found herself in a huge muddle that only time and rest and relaxation will fix. Maybe she feels like she simply cannot make a decision about anything.

Agreed. She doesn’t OWE us or anyone else anything, but it’s just common sense and professionalism in this era of instant communication to update your fandom once you’ve made a claim that has turned out not to be accurate. I think she doesn’t know the release date due to some mysterious goings-on about which we can only speculate, and simply fears making everything worse by saying ANYTHING at all. Which, with her track record, might be a smart move.

Full agree.

Because we’re discussing her stepping into lyrical roles as a narrator or song protagonist, and whether doing so makes her ‘fake’ or ‘inauthentic’ or simply creative, and I used ‘Old Money’ as an example.

. The main thing for me is that the narrator is singing about the past “when we [and, later, ‘the kids,’ by which I think she means their children] were young and pretty,” and remembering regretfully about their failed love and well as their lost youths. Maybe she’s as young as 35, who knows? I see the kids as no longer ‘young and pretty,’ therefore at least 18 to 20. That would make the narrator approximately 40 or older. I see her as older, especially as she says, “I’m out of time.” This is an interesting example of how various individuals see and interpret things very differently.