Lirazel

Lana Del Rey and the Chateau Marmont have history. The Los Angeles hotel, where Tinseltown’s rich and famous have partied since 1929, featured in the singer’s first music video. “Singing in the old bars, swinging with the old stars, living for the fame,” an elegant voice sang over grainy footage of the Beverly Hills hotspot, and an instant pop sensation was born.
 
Eight years after Video Games, that breakout hit, Del Rey drives her shiny black pick-up truck past the place regularly; her management has just set up an office overlooking the hotel, a house nestled in the hills. It’s fitting. Since blasting directly to the top table of pop with that dreamy, devastating debut single, the songwriter has doubled down on those ideals of faded Hollywood glamour and romance across four bestselling albums. Her latest, Norman F***ing Rockwell!, is similarly threaded with tortured tales of doomed love and unavailable men, the sort who would stalk the corridors of the Marmont and drink themselves into oblivion by its pool. Where better for her management to set up shop than in view of the notorious hangout? Del Rey, after all, has created a pop empire singing about the Chateau; the glitz and tragedy it represents and the type of lost souls who once wandered it.
 
We meet at her management’s new pad on a scorching hot August afternoon. The walls are adorned with platinum records and other emblems of her seismic success: her 3.2 million album sales in the US alone, her glossy magazine covers, her Billboard, MTV, Ivor Novello and Brit awards. Del Rey, 34, is indisputably one of the biggest artists on the planet, a stadium-packing superstar adored by everyone from Adele to Stevie Nicks (with whom she collaborated with on her last album). She has 13.7 million fans following her every move on Instagram and 9.4 million Twitter followers. Her quintessentially Californian sound has made her as synonymous with LA as the Santa Monica pier or Sunset Boulevard. However, these accolades apparently don’t matter much to her.
“It’s not that I don’t care what happens,” she says, curled up on a sofa in the living room, dressed in denim shorts and a black jumper, “but by the time [an album] is done and gone to vinyl, it’s kinda over for me.” The real reward for her is in the writing. “Of course I love when people like my songs, but I get a lot of value from just knowing that I’ve found a special little melody. You know?”
 
“Special little melodies” are evidently not in short supply for Del Rey. Norman F***ing Rockwell! — named after the American author and painter whom Del Rey has described as “this genius artist [who] thinks he’s the shit and won’t shut up about it” — is her fifth album in seven years, a prolific output for an artist regularly on the road. This record, however, is a little different from the others. There are musical differences, for a start. Working with Jack Antonoff, a close collaborator with Taylor Swift and Lorde, Del Rey has stripped her sound down to bare, folky essentials on songs such as the lead single Venice Bitch, which blossoms from gentle guitar chords into an enveloping eight-minute psychedelic jam (“I wanted it longer. Urgh,” she jokes). It’s the mood of the album that marks the biggest change, however. Del Rey’s music has long been a fantasy of a forgotten America, a Coke-bottle-cool daydream of 1950s cars and young love found on sun-kissed beaches. Recently, though, the doomy state of the world has crept inside that fantasy bubble.
  “I’m surprised more people aren’t writing about certain things that are going on,” Del Rey says. This month she released Looking for America, written in response to the back-to-back shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. The song pleaded for stricter firearm regulation and proceeds from the track went to charities for victims of gun violence. Elsewhere, she’s been vocal in her support for the Me Too movement, hit out at Kanye West (at whose wedding she performed in 2014) for his support of Donald Trump and claimed to have placed a “witchcraft hex” on the president. (“Why not? Look, I do a lot of shit,” she said at the time.)
 
On the new album there are allusions to last year’s LA wildfires and West’s politics, and an overall sense of an impending apocalypse. It’s not that she has recently become politicised, Del Rey explains, but more that, in a time of immigrant children in detention centres, when racism is on the rise and white supremacists open fire on shoppers in Walmart, she hit a point where she could no longer remain mute.
“When I go to the movie theatre I always make sure I know where the exits are,” Del Rey says. “We all do. The same with any big parade or Fourth of July event.” Regular Americans, she says, are on edge at practically every public event now, such is the regularity of mass shootings. “I’m not the only one who thinks about it. It’s everybody.” To her there’s no great mystery why. Trump has a “personality problem”, she says, “and it’s hurting people and encouraging violence in the culture. If people think that’s not a coincidence, my opinion is that they’re wrong.” Asked who she would like to see challenge him in 2020, she replies: “I think things will be better with someone more emotionally stable at the helm. So to answer your question: anyone.” A noise follows that’s part-giggle, part-exasperated groan of despair.
 
Del Rey is confident and intermittently hilarious, cradling a coffee cup, but too busy talking excitedly to take more than an occasional sip. In her music videos and on stage she’s immaculate and otherworldly, gliding about in gowns and big hooped earrings. In real life this supposed “gangster Nancy Sinatra” is endearingly goofy, reciting tales about game nights with friends and how she used to live on Kingsland Road in east London, buying whatever weird stuff she could find at Ridley Road market (“one time I got these contact lenses that made me look like a f***ing lizard”).
She has struck a nervous figure in interviews. Before we start talking she politely lets me know that she is recording our conversation on her phone. This, I suspect, is because in 2014 she was quoted as saying “I wish I was dead” in an interview with The Guardian, and when asked if stars who die young are “glamorous”, she replied: “I don’t know. Ummm, yeah.” The comment earned her a scolding online despite her insistence that the remarks were taken out of context.
 
Part of her confidence is down to her new home: a secluded spot in northern San Diego. Her work and friends are still in LA, so she drives her pickup truck back and forth every day. “Eighty miles there, eighty miles back,” she says with a grin, and says that those long drives have unlocked new perspectives and creativity for her. “I have a lot of time to think.” What does she think about? Well, there’s a modern retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that she’s writing and composing music for, for one. “It’s more about the story of the author and the real-life Alice back in Cambridge. I have to learn a lot more about it, but the songs are really sweet.”
 
At other times her mind wanders to her beginnings as an artist, to the whirlwind of fame that threatened to swallow her after Video Games blew up, and experiences that she is now able to identify as tinged with misogyny. “I’ve had to stay pretty intellectual about it,” she says. “The interrogative nature of the way people would approach me was quite intense.”
 
Del Rey delves into stories of being dismissed by journalists and bombarded with accusations of being inauthentic. The presumption at every turn was that this songwriter, professing her love of James Ellroy novels in interviews, and singing about love, diamonds and Diet Mountain Dew, was somehow being controlled by male music-industry executives, lurking somewhere in the shadows, quietly pulling the strings. When the internet discovered that her real identity was Lizzie Grant, born in Manhattan and raised in Lake Placid by two former advertising industry employees, many classified it angrily as a form of deception rather than good old-fashioned showbiz.
 
“So many defensive, condescending reactions. Luckily, I always thought, F*** YOU!” she roars, her laughter echoing down the hall. “It said more about them than me. What’s funny is everyone was constantly, like, ‘You’re so eclectic, so different.’ ” She pauses and stares out towards the pool in the yard outside, which glimmers in the sunlight. “But I felt most of the time like I was the most normal one in the room.”
Del Rey’s success has changed that. In 2012 the enormous success of her first big-label album, Born to Die, sparked what critics called a sad-pop revolution. Pop was dominated by saccharine cheer. Del Rey’s unapologetic sadness on that LP and its acclaimed follow-ups, drifting through downtempo songs that luxuriated in melancholy, proved that female expressions of sadness in pop were not only commercially viable for labels, but deeply relatable to a new generation of listeners who had grown up discussing their emotions on platforms such as Tumblr and Instagram.
“There were, like, four pop singers, and I was the weird one,” she says. “Now you see [new artists] and they’re super-weird and all over the place. You have all these mumble rappers being crazy and weird and wearing dresses and everyone is applauding, saying, ‘Good for you for being you!’ That’s really new.”
It cheers her to think that acts such as the 17-year-old phenomenon Billie Eilish, whose moody lyrics touch on depressive feelings in a not dissimilar way to Del Rey’s, might have been able to look at her path to pop supremacy and use it as a blueprint. “She’s so sweet and very prodigious. The culture is catching up to how people really are. People aren’t always cheerful 24/7. They have losses and things they go through things. I like to think I had a part in it, in opening that door for a little bit more . . . thoughtfulness.”
 
Eight years after blazing to fame, Del Rey says she is happy. Yes, she despairs over the state of the world sometimes and her dating life could be more stable by the sounds of it. “It’s, erm, colourful!” she says with a giggle when I ask, which is all she’s willing to say on the matter (previous partners include Francesco Carrozzini, an Italian photographer, and the Scottish singer-songwriter Barrie-James O’Neill, who performs under the name Nightmare Boy).
On the whole, however, Del Rey seems content and creatively energised. Norman F***ing Rockwell!, she reveals, will be followed by another album. “I’ve already written parts of it,” she says, beaming. “It’s called White Hot Forever. I feel like it probably will be a surprise release sometime within the next 12 or 13 months.” The sun has sunk in the evening sky, painting the Marmont at the bottom of the hill in peachy orange light. “I’m really excited right now. I don’t want to take a break.”
 
Norman F***ing Rockwell! is released by Polydor today.

it's late so im going to sleep but if there isn't a thread yet, i'll make one tomorrow. strictly violet bent backwards over grass poetry, right?

I skimmed  through the guardian review and honestly it's not true she keeps repeating herself... why does she have to become someone else to get praise? Of course there are certain staples in her music and songwriting but I don't see how this is a bad thing?  I don't believe this album is just a repetition of her previous work.

Remember when lorde stans were doing this when LFL came out? good times

Even tho I love her and I want her to have all the praise in the world I've had to accept that Lana just isn't for everyone and there's always going to be people who don't get what she does.

Someone pointed out it would be impossible for her to have that much debt. Hang on, I got it:
 
"To be fair, she wouldn't have been able to have Credit Card debt of $17,200 if someone fairly rich wasn't supplying the credit card.
​
Still respectable to put in all the time and effort to make it but it probably is a lot easier, when you have the ability to run up $17,000 credit card debt and possibly have your housing and maybe even a car paid for by someone enabling you to spend a lot of time writing music and singing in bars."
 
and
 
"Over $17,000 though for a young woman without an actual job, she'd need to have probably at least 10 credit cards to get that much in debt and it would be hard to get so many since if you get one your rating goes down and you need to wait quite a while to apply for more or you get rejected and if you get rejected you need to wait even longer again.
​
To me it's more likely her parents if they are Millionaires had credit cards with $20//30/50,000 limits and she just used one for food and clothes and stuff while she lived there and her dad probably paid it but then she could have given him the money back once she got rich enough and was making her own money.
​
I'd also guess the ding craigslist jobs thing was something she more done just for experience or maybe something to do, rather than it being something she had to do for money. Same as she said she lived in a trailer but I remember reading before how she bought it but never really lived in it, just used it to go to sometimes to hang out or to write songs in it."
 
I mean, if I had wealthy parents, I could probably go play in trailer parks too for the ~experience~ without worrying about shit.
 
There was a famous guy who did an interview and said she met Lana before she was famous and said Lana liked to lie lmao.
She's a damn liar and we know this. Justice for Norman Fucking Rockwell.

Even her whole background as a trailer park broke songwriter was questioned since her father is apparently rich. Though it doesn't mean that he is generous lol 

I saw someone mention we should make this a thread a few hundred pages ago in the NFR Pre-Release thread and couldn’t find one. This is a thread for the lies she’s told us and the unfulfilled promises that will probably never actually happen.
 
So I’m starting it.
 
Let’s start off with some of the more obvious lies:
 
2012: “I’d like to re-release (remake?) my first album [AKA]”
2012: "I'm going to release a video for Dark Paradise"
2017: “I’m thinking about releasing an album of 25 favorite unreleased tracks”
2017: "I'm going to release a video for Cherry"
2017: "Yosemite and BAR will be released as folk singles - possibly in a folky EP."
2018: “Norman Fucking Rockwell will be released top of the new year [2019]”
2019: "Violet will be out Jan 4" [Source]
May 2020: "I'll be releasing my album (Chemtrails) September 5"
Nov. 2020: "I'm going to digitally release an album of covers for you for Christmas"

my heart did break a bit when i discovered 13 beaches was written for the fans, really starts to feel almost apologetic the more you listen to it 

Welcome to the White Hot Forever
Pre-Pre-Release Thread
Annual Discussion & Meltdown!
 
 
Just mere hours after Norman Fucking Rockwell drops.. Lana has announced her next album titled White Hot Forever, most likely to be a surprise release in 2020!
 
“I’ve already written parts of it,” the artist told The Times. “It’s called White Hot Forever. I feel like it probably will be a surprise release sometime within the next 12 or 13 months.” 
She added: “I’m really excited right now. I don’t want to take a break.”  
 
Full Times Article

I always have a mental image of wild A$AP Rocky jumping out of bushes to rap and Lana just   swaying next to him and moaning all the 'mmm' and 'yeahs' till he fucks off again. 
For that reason, I can't treat the song completely seriously.

I don't care if you think that I sounded aggressive, that was not my intent, but I am entitled to speak my thoughts just like everyone else - and that's how I felt at the moment.
 
I know she changed her stance on feminism (whether for real or for clout, we don't know, but yeah) but it was extremely ignorant and holier than thou of her to imply that caring about issues of marginalized members of society is somehow beyond her because she's moved on to bigger and greener pastures aka Tesla and Space. That's like peak I'm Not The Other Girls 
Especially when you are disconnected from the 'real world' and strangely fascinated with shit situation many women are in because they don't have better options (and if she wanted to portray the sex worker by her own choice in her music, it's also really shitty to imply that woman's issues are just not that cool as smelly Elon Musk).
I don't hold it against her now but it's a proof that she can be incredibly uncaring and ignorant when it comes to social issues.
 
Actually we don't know much about Elizabeth Grant, only the persona she portrays as Lana Del Rey. Believe me that I want to believe that she is this talented songstress/poet with beautiful and dark soul. But I don't know that, not for real. I love her music and videos, look up to her talent in turning her life and fantasies into writing and take great pleasure from reading her interviews.
I was always defending her when people where shitting on her not being feminist enough for portraying a 'problematic' woman and singing about uncomfortable issues, so it's not like I am blinded by a cancel culture/SJW agenda.
 
I am allowed to not agree with her choices and be disturbed by them - I would say 'disappointed' but I don't feel entirely comfortable with that because while I am a fan of Lana, I no longer live on her every word (in the way that stans do, I am not talking about being an actual psychofan, kek) and in general, I do not feel this kind of personal connection to celebrities that I had in my teens and early twenties (yes, I am that old - and for sure I made things that made me cringe in the last few years, but mostly in the 'Jesus you are a socially awkward idiot' way, not 'supporting people with an -ist agenda').
I do not like or get what she is doing and I wish that it will turn out to be a red herring or a quickly abandoned, shameful phase. But things don't look that great now.    
 
I do not wish to fight with you, but I wanted to explain myself better, though I know that we will agree to disagree. Peace.
 
 

First, I must say that I overall agree with you. I am just wondering why Lana keeps going as a musician if she does not want that for herself? I think that being famous/releasing her music out in the wild must have some appeal to her despite the bad sides. Unless she is forced by some contract, of course. 
I am glad that she is not going anywhere but at the same time wondering if she is really that unhappy with her fame (I need to catch up on some interviews from the last year FYI, I might have missed some).

Either she's being a dumb, ignorant cunt again (remember her "feminism? I'm too smart for it, I care about BIGGER things like space and God, fuck sexually abused and murdered women because I am not one of them even though I like to portray myself as some poor sex worker in my songs" bs?) or she's a really vile person deep down under her artsy fartsy, depressive persona. Both of those options are fucking horrible, but as a stan who has much love for her art and person, I hope it's the first one, though it's becoming a bit hard.
 
One word: disgusting.
 
Sorry for the harsh words, but she makes loving her really hard sometimes.

late af but this book is like my obsession so i just have to reply lol. idk if you've read it since, but i loved it so. much. i know it was a critical success, but a lot of people who read it were disappointed because it wasn't the mansonesque thriller it was marketed as but a coming-of-age introspective story abt a not-always-likeable main character who becomes fascinated with another girl and kinda stumbles into a cult bc of it. emma cline is such a good writer, her descriptions of what is is to be a teen girl were sf accurate and beautiful. anyway, if i ever meet lana irl i'm gonna ask her if she's read this book bc i'm 95% sure she has & i wanna bond, lol.

i haven't read it yet, but reading this makes me happy and excited to read it soon 

So the poetry book is actually real? I thought it was a joke

Part 2 leaked  
I may be rich, but not how you think
I've got lots of knowledge and coats made from mink
My daddy builds websites and I am a singer
The taste of LA is a flavour that lingers
I may be a vegan but sometimes I meet
A grocery list full of such wonderful meats
Like:
1 fish
2 fish
Red fish
Blue fish
I fry them in lemon, rosemary and thyme
Then soak them in mustard like pickles to brine
My wheatgrass, my people, my city is neat
Stop with the DMs of pictures of feet!!

Some lines are good but the lines about being rich 

i'm gonna be brutally honest here: if that poem is representative of the whole book... she's gonna be ridiculed & called yet another indulgent celeb who thinks talent in one area equals talent in another and who only got published because of her name - and probably rightfully so, sorry to say.

People think that she's rich and she is but not how they think but also not how she thinks

I'm rich but not like rich in a way that makes poors mad at me

the bridge photo is so striking i don't know why
 
ugh..i get such emotion n love for these old photos and projects that only make me saddened by the 'her' of today, the bitch posing on some bridge, the girl who shoddily bleached her hair sitting in an abandoned fountain, the one that made a sketchy and greasy gas station in Utah romantic and timeless is the girl i love sm

Dream big

"She appears on the cover of her new album Norman Fucking Rockwell (to be released early next year) makeup free. Granted her face still glows in the manner of someone who religiously follows a 10-step skincare regime, but her skin is missing the excessive powdery pink blush. Her 50s style flat iron waves are replaced by a simple bob. I’ve never seen someone look more strange in a t-shirt."
 
What the fuck? Aren't they talking about the Mariners Apartment Complex cover? Not the actual whole album?