evilentity

She has been victimized by the media, but not by this journalist. No, I actually don't think this journalist victimized Lana in any way or even did anything ethically wrong. Lana on the other hand... And if anyone was victimized here it was the journalist.

The background vocals (those 'ooh-ooh's) on the bridge and perhaps other parts of the song were sung by 3/4 of a quartet of African-American sisters called The McCrary Sisters.

I don't think the point was that this was unusual. I think the point was to contradict the claim Lana has often made recently that she's not interested in fame at all, but she clearly is interested in the positive aspects, just not the negative ones. And also that being respected as an artist may be more important to her than her art itself. I'm so vain I probably think this quote is about me. (Though I'm going to ignore the offensive implication that analytical types can't also be creative.) I don't have a problem with her saying she wished she was dead. I do have a problem with her attacking a journalist just for quoting her saying that. To push the absurdity of your HIV example: If I fucked around a bunch without wearing a condom and I didn't like the result of my HIV test I wouldn't go blaming the doctor. Oh, and BTW, I'll give up my high horse when you pry it from my cold, dead intellect.

Lana's gonna be singing her "satirical" MPG right at you. Despite her statements to the contrary, I think this is exactly right. You really hit the nail on the head. Although I could see her doing this after coming to the realization that the negative aspects are an unavoidable part of fame.

Well, let's hope you're all wearing underwear then... I pretty much agree with this. To be clear, I'm not advocating she stop making music and I agree that I don't think that would make her happy. My point was more that I think much of her sadness is innate or internal, but to the extent that it's caused by external factors there are many different courses of action she could take to minimize them, but she'd rather just continue playing the victim and scapegoating the media far beyond the extent she was actually victimized. It's bad enough when she complains about media coverage of her generally (it's been two and a half years since SNL now), but particularly shitty in this case because she personally attacked a journalist who did absolutely nothing wrong or unusual-- in fact, he'd almost be negligent as a music journalist if he decided not to lead with that quote-- mostly in reaction to how other media outlets covered the interview. Surely this is not the way to get favorable media coverage or dispel negative media narratives about her.

She also performed at Sin-é.

Hmm, missed this detail before. I'd always been thinking drugs.

But who doesn't want to know if Scarlett Johansson is wearing any underwear? #DirtyOldManPost No, you're not. I completely disagree with this and almost everyone in this thread. I really don't understand Lana's reaction or the reaction of most of this fanbase to the interview. Many of you have completely lost any shred of objectivity in worshiping your queen. "I'm your cult leader", indeed. Neither the interviewer nor the editor did anything wrong here. (Oh, BTW, they never used the word "suicidal".) This is as clear cut a case of attacking the messenger if there ever was one. Shame on any fans who sent hate messages to them. It's also just stupid. You only validate all the negative press she's ever received. I'm also really bothered by the tendency in this fanbase (perhaps online millennial culture generally?) to celebrate "sassy" responses even when in the wrong as if it's somehow inherently admirable because it's "sticking up for yourself". I find that really warped. In my view Lana did three things wrong here: 1) Saying dumb shit in the first place. 2) Saying more dumb shit on Twitter blaming the journalist for the original dumb shit she said. 3) Deleting the dumb shit she said on Twitter even though someone has certainly screencapped her dumb shit. If Lana doesn't like headlines like these, there's an easy solution: Don't give journalists soundbites like this to work with. And if she just can't help herself there's an easy solution to that: Stop giving interviews. This is just the umpteenth example of Lana's victim-playing far exceeding her victimhood. It's getting really old. I mean, most of what Lana has been bitching about is the media and how she doesn't like how it's portrayed her... so of course the logical thing for her to do is give a shitload of interviews to the media. And then act surprised and indignant when she inevitably doesn't like how it portrays her... You know, by quoting her verbatim in their headline. But, you know, it's just oh so scandalous that anyone would even raise the question that someone who titled their album Born to Die or sang "but I wish I was dead" or "I wanna die" et cetera et cetera might have a death wish. Please. This whole kerfuffle is also just dumb from a PR perspective. In light of her unfair criticism of this interview, her praise of the very good NYT article will likely now be seen (unfairly) as a puff piece. And instead of coverage dominated by mostly positive reviews and successful worldwide sales figures, she fucks it up with this bullshit. Unless it's part of a deliberate strategy to stir up controversy on the thinking that all publicity is good publicity, but nothing about Lana's media strategy since she hit the big time has seemed very well thought out to me. People who think this is actually Lana being some sort of media Svengali are like political pundits who used to talk about Obama playing multi-dimensional chess: fawning partisans who see what they want to see. *** Something I've been thinking about lately is a theme in both her music and interviews: passivity. (And also in this instance passive-aggressiveness.) The passivity or submissiveness in her lyrics has been pretty well dissected, especially the feminist angle, but as it relates to her interviews, I don't think it really has been. She's always talking about how sad she is and how her treatment by the media makes her sad and that she keeps playing for her fans even though it doesn't make her happy and she doesn't want to do this shit anymore... as if she has absolutely zero agency and is just an object acted upon by external forces. She constantly blames others and takes no responsibility for her own role in her current situation or her ability to take action to get out of it. I mean, she has resources at her disposal such that she could do almost anything she wants. If she really doesn't want to do this shit anymore, barring contractual obligations (which would still be her responsibility, she signed the papers), she should be able to stop making music today, never work a day in her life again, and still live a quiet, comfortable middle-class life on the money she's already earned, if she hasn't completely squandered it on topiary ponies or making self-indulgent 30-minute short films. And if she's contractually obligated to produce a certain number of albums, she's got plenty of stuff already recorded she could use. At some point she needs to put up or shut up. Or at least stop pointing her finger everywhere else and look within. Really, this episode is a low point for both her and her fanbase.

Get your ears cleaned out or a better set of headphones. I think you might be right. She definitely says something like this if not this exactly.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Though it seems like the background vocals were intended to sound like Barrie.

Maybe on the second syllable when she does her stretching out one syllable over multiple syllables thing, but not at the beginning of the word. But I'd transcribe that as "A-a-leluia" or "A-ha-leluia", not "Ah, hallelujah". The latter would be weird. Again, that's just something that comes from the context of lived religious experience. "Melisma", the technical term for this, is quite common in Christian worship music-- Catholics, Lutherans, and Orthodox Christians are notorious for call and response liturgy that is melismatic to the point of being unmelodic-- especially on words like "alleluia". In fact, the example the Wikipedia article on "melisma" uses is of the word "alleluia" in the hymn "Christ the Lord is Risen Today".

Lana lyrics or a reply in a LanaBoards flame war?

Amen to this. @@SitarHero I think you have the mistaken impression from my comment about "alleluia" being a "Greek-influenced form of the word" that it's obscure. Far from it. From attending Catholic masses with my wife I can tell you that an important part of the liturgy in every mass (except during Lent) is a call and response referred to as "the alleluia". And from my own very religious upbringing and years attending services at churches of various Protestant denominations I can say that "alleluia" is far more commonly used in worship music-- whether traditional hymns or contemporary praise hymns-- than "hallelujah". Now, whether Lana is aware "alleluia" has its own spelling and is not an alternate pronunciation of "hallelujah" is another question, but the word she is pronouncing is "alleluia". I should also note that to anyone familiar with contemporary praise hymns it's obvious ~lyrically and sonically~ (especially on the chorus) that she's trying to evoke a mock praise hymn to herself. If the lyrics were changed to attribute the "power and glory" to God instead of Lana, this would not sound at all out of place at the church I most recently attended regularly. Sorry, you're out of your depth on this one, heathen.

And she's never seen with pin curls in her hair anywhere oops

Though I'm not completely sure whether she says "drag and" or "dragon", she could be saying "I'm a drag" to imply that she's a boring singer or a downer of a singer because she mostly sings sad slow ballads, or that she thinks she's uninteresting in real life.

Because Ultraviolence is unlistenable, man. And mine.

Agree. I had the same thoughts. I also think the "Lay me down tonight in my linen and curls" line could possibly be a reference to Lorde's young age, like she has to be put to bed like a baby. Also agree that this line doesn't add up. Maybe the song's mostly about Lorde, but this line is directed at someone else? Mimicking me is a fucking bore.

Lana's blue period. Yeah, Lana, you keep telling those label people where they can shove it. In the words of the immortal Dr. Dre, "Slow is better." Hmm, maybe this is about Lorde. Or Beyoncé.

Lana's wins by default for me. This is bound to be an unpopular opinion, but I've never liked Nina Simone's voice on "The Other Woman". It's deep and otherworldly, but not in a way that I find enjoyable to listen to. On "Feelin' Good" her voice sounds more pleasantly androgynous like Tracy Chapman's (I'm still waiting for Tracy to take off her Aloe Blacc disguise btw), but the tone and timber of her deep vibrato and runs on "The Other Woman" sound unpleasant to my ears. Buckley's is best though.

"Flipside" really feels like the proper ending for Ultraviolence. Moar Stranathan plz.

Reminds me slightly of her "Brite Lites" performance at this show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX0_OQNGix0 She may wish she was dead already, but alterna-rock Lizzy lives!

That hairflip

Don't kid yourself. This was no "mistake". It was deliberate on the part of Lana and her management. She has directly lied about it herself in interviews at least twice. And a couple of the earliest articles after "Video Games" brought her attention tried to pass her off as two years younger. Although it's possible there might be a benign explanation for how this started-- perhaps a failure to update promotional material due to laziness and/or sloppiness-- and perhaps they just decided to double down on it after the "inauthentic label creation" accusations started flying, but even if so (and that's an extremely naïve and charitable reading of the situation that extends the benefit of the doubt above and beyond), the decision to continue perpetuating the falsehood was very deliberate. And very short-sighted and self-defeating in the long run.