longtimeman

Sigh. The powers of clairvoyance that some people on this board possess is astounding sometimes. I would have thought we were past the point where sexual behaviour wasn't seen as conflicting with loving being around your family, but apparently we've still got a long way to go, baby. 
 
Here is an alternative explanation for some of the behaviour that doesn't require pretending to have some insight into the mental processes of somebody who you've never met. 
 
Singing, writing, performing, dancing, public relations, mixing with people, taking criticism and being optimistic are all different characteristics or skills. A person can have a few, or all, or none of these, but having one doesn't necessarily mean that you would be expected to have any of the others. To be a pop star, though, you're meant to have all of them, to an extreme degree. Each of us will decide which of them is more important - some people don't think a person should be considered a singer if they can't perform live, others don't care as long as they sound good on record. Some of us don't want to see a singer who can't dance at the same time, others of us don't care. Some of us don't care who a singer treats her fans, others of us really care about how the performer relates to people who like her. But you cannot ascribe a mental iilness to somebody because they are missing a few of these attributes. 
 
Even if Lizzy always wanted to be successful, the fact that there are parts of fame that make her miserable don't make her a hypocrite. They just mean that she couldn't see the future (like most of us can't), and the things that she was looking for in being famous came with a higher price than she expected. It's an age old story, and the only artists who manage to get through it are the ones who find a way to ignore all of the bullshit and focus entirely on the creative process. The rest either burn out or overdose or freak out. I'm hoping that the shift in tone in reporting on Lana - from beautiful puppet to worthwhile songwriter and singer - helps her to make the transition, but at this point, anything can happen. 
 
The Beatles stopped performing live because they couldn't hear themselves on stage, and because nobody cared about what they sounded like. Maybe Lana will decide that the chance to see the smiles on the people in the front row is not worth all of the bullshit, and she'll stop singing live as well. It's 100% true that some of her songs live are better than others, and some of her shows are better than others, and she has a few decisions to make about performing. But from her perspective, the things that she enjoyed doing - that were her way into the industry - had nothing to do with standing in front of 50,000 fans. They were writing, singing and putting together videos, and all of them could be done in a small room with only a few people around. That's an attitude I can relate to.
 
Finally, relationships fall apart for all sorts of reasons, and there is no such thing as the objective truth of why something fucks up. Everybody who has an opinion is either a biased participant, or someone who doesn't know what happened. So when it comes to her time with Barrie and what went wrong, the only reasonable response is to nod and move on, and accept what both of them say about it as their take on it.

Sigh. The powers of clairvoyance that some people on this board possess is astounding sometimes. I would have thought we were past the point where sexual behaviour wasn't seen as conflicting with loving being around your family, but apparently we've still got a long way to go, baby. 
 
Here is an alternative explanation for some of the behaviour that doesn't require pretending to have some insight into the mental processes of somebody who you've never met. 
 
Singing, writing, performing, dancing, public relations, mixing with people, taking criticism and being optimistic are all different characteristics or skills. A person can have a few, or all, or none of these, but having one doesn't necessarily mean that you would be expected to have any of the others. To be a pop star, though, you're meant to have all of them, to an extreme degree. Each of us will decide which of them is more important - some people don't think a person should be considered a singer if they can't perform live, others don't care as long as they sound good on record. Some of us don't want to see a singer who can't dance at the same time, others of us don't care. Some of us don't care who a singer treats her fans, others of us really care about how the performer relates to people who like her. But you cannot ascribe a mental iilness to somebody because they are missing a few of these attributes. 
 
Even if Lizzy always wanted to be successful, the fact that there are parts of fame that make her miserable don't make her a hypocrite. They just mean that she couldn't see the future (like most of us can't), and the things that she was looking for in being famous came with a higher price than she expected. It's an age old story, and the only artists who manage to get through it are the ones who find a way to ignore all of the bullshit and focus entirely on the creative process. The rest either burn out or overdose or freak out. I'm hoping that the shift in tone in reporting on Lana - from beautiful puppet to worthwhile songwriter and singer - helps her to make the transition, but at this point, anything can happen. 
 
The Beatles stopped performing live because they couldn't hear themselves on stage, and because nobody cared about what they sounded like. Maybe Lana will decide that the chance to see the smiles on the people in the front row is not worth all of the bullshit, and she'll stop singing live as well. It's 100% true that some of her songs live are better than others, and some of her shows are better than others, and she has a few decisions to make about performing. But from her perspective, the things that she enjoyed doing - that were her way into the industry - had nothing to do with standing in front of 50,000 fans. They were writing, singing and putting together videos, and all of them could be done in a small room with only a few people around. That's an attitude I can relate to.
 
Finally, relationships fall apart for all sorts of reasons, and there is no such thing as the objective truth of why something fucks up. Everybody who has an opinion is either a biased participant, or someone who doesn't know what happened. So when it comes to her time with Barrie and what went wrong, the only reasonable response is to nod and move on, and accept what both of them say about it as their take on it.

Stay High - Hippie Sabotage

I used to sit and watch the sea and write shitty poetry. Now I am trying to write my novel... But my emotional/health problems gave me writer's block.
I'll make it someday, my own books (not short story or poem collections as before).
 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

Maybe you are the delusional one... Ultraviolence is a work of art. In point of fact, every album is a work of art. These people are artists and what they do is create art. Some may not have the taste to appreciate some--like myself with techno music, I can come up with one hundred reasons why I do not like it but it is my own opinion and my own taste. I have been told not to criticise it for it is my opinion and I just do not like it. The fact that I am tone deaf to it does not mean that it is not music.
Many people do not like Lolita; they believe it to be a wrong, inappropriate and repulsive novel. But to me, I adore Vladimir Nabokov's posh and proper prose and I do, in fact, enjoy the story itself.
What I am trying to say is that just because you believe it to be bad, it does not necessarily mean it is bad. It is to you and some others (I guarrantee you are not the only one - and I bet some other users on here, too) but not to everyone.
 
I understand you were only voicing your opinion, but "And you will realise this in few months...You won't play it anymore..." is rather personal. How are you to know this? Have you had a premonition? Have you foreseen such? I highly doubt it. As I have said before, we are unique, thus our opinions also being unique. Everyone will have different thoughts on Ultraviolence. That is the way art is concieved, unless, of course, every single human being on this planet is brainwashed and is forced to think a certain way. But then we will no longer be ourselves and the world would be as boring as hell. Of course, I want everyone to like Ultraviolence just like I want everyone to like me, but unfortunately, that is impossible.
 
But returning to my point, I am sure there are many users on here that will still be listening to Ultraviolence for years to come, and I am certain that I am one of them,
 
To me, Ultraviolence is a work of art and a brilliant one at that!

Firstly, thank you for posting the song - it's fantastic. I find it so fascinating that Lana was my big break from all of the music that I had spent so long listening to (I'm talking about BTD), and since I've dug deeper, and particularly with UV, she brings me right back to so many of those things I've loved for so long - country/spaghetti western music, Lou Reed, Serge, Leonard Cohen. Serge is also the guy who recorded a duet with his daughter called Lemon Incest - something that even Lana might think is beyond the pale ... or maybe not 

 
(Side note: Charlotte Gainsbourg is now an actor, and recently appeared in the movie ... Melacholia. Circles inside circles ...)

How the hell can some of you not like The Other Woman?... It's flawless!!

She uses death in her songs in a particular, romantic way. It's not as though her videos are full of scenes of genocide - most of the time death is seen as a barrier to love, which can sometimes be overcome (Dark Paradise) and sometimes defeats you (Blue Jeans). I'd argue that the deliberately movie like quality of so many of her clips, particularly Summertime Sadness, mean that they're not showing death, they're showing a dream world where death doesn't have any repercussions. Her jumping off the bridge isn't going to end with her in a bloody heap at the bottom, but with her waking up.
 
The problem is that pop music is seen as music for children, and one of the jobs that the media has given themselves is to protect children from the idea of death and suicide. But they're hot button issues, which excite and scare people (and sell) so if you can put those words on the front page of your newspaper or magazine, while taking the 'moral stand' of condemning anybody who seems to be 'promoting' them, you get the double win. Protect the children, scare the parents, and use the name of a celebrity to sell the story - the holy trinity of publication, and Lana fits in perfectly.

It's one of her best songs ever, if you ask me. 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

It's one of her best songs ever, if you ask me. 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

It's one of her best songs ever, if you ask me. 

I was hoping someone would tell me what music I'll be listening to in the future. If someone can tell me what I should have for lunch, I'll be set 

I really wonder if you've ever seen any other performers, to make a comment like that. I've seen performers do all sorts of things to deal with their insecurities (which every performer has, and tries to mask in one way or another) - I've seen them get drunk and abuse the audience; I've seen them ignore the audience completely; I've seen them turn up the 'rock star' act to 100% in a tiny club where they looked ridiculous; I've had artists pull me up on stage so that I could dance around [note: I'm a not particularly good looking guy who clearly wasn't being brought up for the eye candy value], and distract everyone's attention from what was going on.
 
Lana, in those times she's directly with her fans, seems so embarrassingly, ridiculously real that it almost hurts to watch her. If she acted any differently outside of shows, I'd wonder, but she's the same in every video I've ever seen of her meeting fans in the street, outside shows, at random encounters, and so on. She actually doesn't owe anybody anything in these meetings, but she has always seemed to me (as someone who's only seen videos) to be as genuine as is possible. If you want to experience a singer who introduces every song and sings every line to the back row, you can check out pretty much every other pop artist in the world at the moment. Lana is one of the very few singers around who is actually unpredictable and exciting enough to make watching videos worthwhile - you never know how she's going to sing something, or what she's going to do. Almost nothing is scripted, and the things that she repeats are so awkward and charming that she never looks like she's just crossing them off her list.
 
The end of relationships in real life is almost never like it is in the movies - it's messy and ugly and heartbreaking, and it never makes any of the parties involved look good. Lana herself puts it beautifully in 'Cruel World' by singing 'I'm finally happy, now that you're gone', and sounding like she's about to break down.
 
I find the easiest way of making sense of all of her contradictions and strange statements is to consider her a regular person, unschooled in how to act correctly, but trying to do the right thing. Sort of like the rest of us, when we're at our best.

Scans (by https://twitter.com/TROPICOCUNT):
 

 

 

 

 

CONTINUED
 

Someone's been reading Lanalysis.   Actually, between this and the age thing and the FMWUTTT/Lorde thing I think this guy's been reading a fair amount on LanaBoards.  

This is really interesting. It explains why her high school yearbook photo said she was college bound for SUNY Geneseo even though she ended up at Fordham and the apparent gap between high school and her starting college. But it makes when she might have lived in Alabama all the more mysterious. 

Ha! Me and my momma we don't get along, indeed. Though I can just see her being the kind of waitress that tries to make up for shitty service by flirting with her male patrons. 

She still remembers these lovely early songs.   

Say hi to your Bond girl sister Pussy for me, will you? 

Ha, look at get all defensive about his cardinal error as her manager. 

I guess you guys weren't the only ones that noticed this.  

I'll be posting more about this soon. 
This is too long to type up. Read from the paragraph beginning "Then, really without warning" to the end:

   
"Maybe I'm sensitive. Do you think?"
"You're asking all the right questions. I just really don't want to answer them."
"I'm just uncomfortable, and it has nothing to do with you."
 
I think these quotes really highlight what's going on here. Interviewers ask her perfectly reasonable questions to ask, nevertheless she still feels uncomfortable being asked them. What I don't understand, given that so many of her interviews have turned out this way, why she still does them or why she doesn't just say "No comment" or "I'd rather not answer that" and move on rather than throwing a hissy fit at interviewers who are just doing their job.
 

Why should it be out of bounds to ask about something she has consistently volunteered detailed information about unprompted in multiple interviews and may be referenced in several of her songs?

This is bound to be a controversial opinion, but I think this is a fantastically well-done profile, perhaps one of the best. I don't believe it's the job of a journalist, even in the fluffy realm of music journalism, to humor the people they cover. The job of a journalist is to portray their subjects accurately and in-depth. This article accomplished that in spades. It goes into great depth about her history and provides new details about unanswered questions, it demonstrates the author did his homework, confirms the recent NYT profile's angle that she's been misunderstood and the backlash was premised on bullshit, but pulls the curtain back on what it's like to interview Lana Del Rey and her mercurial nature.
 
That said, the one quibble I have is that I felt they removed all context from her comment about not wanting people to hear and think about her music when promoting this profile online.
 
Some specific thoughts:
 

Like lemonade.  
What'll really make me happy is if those fuckers on Wikipedia will change it permanently now without me having to make a case for it on BLPN.
 

I can't say I am anywhere near as familiar with other pop stars to say if this is true, but it's nice to see even music journalists that aren't as fawning as the NYT's John Pareles say this. I also like that this article describes her name change as merely "showbiz-as-usual" and said this:
 

Get it girl   

 

Let's see. She started breaking up with Barrie "starting in December or so", right around the same time she previously said she stopped having writer's block and her concept for the album started to come together and she began recording stuff for it at Electric Lady Studios. And then there are those lyrics. Hmm...  

Give us the demos Dan!  

Fucking labels, man.  

The irony of this has always struck me. Her parents moved away from the city to the countryside because they had Lizzy who of course was powerfully drawn to the city when she grew up. 
TO BE CONTINUED... Fucking quote limits.

It's one of her best songs ever, if you ask me. 

It's one of her best songs ever, if you ask me. 

It's one of her best songs ever, if you ask me.