longtimeman

I enjoyed your comments, @ and generally agree. One aspect of Lana's voice is that she does not have a great deal of power, which hurts her at larger shows. Her best vocal performances (live) that I've seen are ones at small shows or live in the studio, even going back to her short blonde hair 'Lizzy' days, because she's not required to sing loudly. I don't consider her voice 'weedy', but she's never going to be a soul singer in line with an Adele or Joss Stone. Every part of her voice (pitch, tone, vibrato, control) suffers when she has to 'project', and she can either work on that, or if she doesn't want to, she can sing quieter. (She sings fairly softly on BTD, and her voice is mixed loudly, which produces a sound that I personally love).
 
Where I agree with @@BlueJeans is in the tremendous variation in emotion she can put into her singing, which to me is her number one strength as a performer. There are versions of 'Blue Jeans' where she sings the 'bitches before' phrase with such venom, it doesn't sound like a performance at all, but like an emotionally heightened moment in a private relationship. There are so few singers who let themselves get that emotionally vulnerable in songs - I can think of Antony Hegarty and Chan/Cat Power as a couple of examples, but most singers will value the consistency of performance above the emotional variations that make her live shows so compelling.  
 
Here's a nice example of her voice where she's singing not that much louder than the volume of a normal conversation.

I agree with this. I never skip DMD, and I think the programming of it between VG and NA works really well, unlike DP following NA, which kills the momentum of the album.

I agree with this. I never skip DMD, and I think the programming of it between VG and NA works really well, unlike DP following NA, which kills the momentum of the album.

She's not her grandmother, according to everybody (check out https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/beatrice-dautresme ), but there is a close enough similarity that I wonder if Lana saw the photos and used her as a model for the BTD era look.

She's not her grandmother, according to everybody (check out https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/beatrice-dautresme ), but there is a close enough similarity that I wonder if Lana saw the photos and used her as a model for the BTD era look.

I have had the secret fantasy that there should be a Disney Princess and Movie based on Lana and  they always sing a lot in Disney movies so Lana could do the voice for the character and sing 5-6 new songs in the movie and oh my gawd, it would slay so hard 

^ It's called "scatting". This kind. Not this kind.

While we're living in a fantasy world, how about a DVD with the tour documentary that Chuck was shooting.

While we're living in a fantasy world, how about a DVD with the tour documentary that Chuck was shooting.

@@Trinity - 12=Black Beauty; 13=Guns and Roses; 14=Florida Kilos
 
Thank you Moy, and to whoever put this together. Annoyingly, the Target edition does not give any credits for 'Flipside' - anybody with the French/Japanese versions want to check theirs? In any case, it seems to be just Blake and Lana, but I'd like to know who was behind the desk for it.
 
In case anyone's interested, here's a song by Floating Action, the band with the mysterious Seth Kauffman.
 
 

He makes up shit for a living - lying on twitter probably doesn't even phase him.
 
I really long for the days when it was just our parents and priests who tried to tell us that pop music was evil, and not illuminati hipsters.

I can't help you, but it sounds great.

I thought it was worth updating this thread to what will probably be close to the final score (I can't imagine too many other journals putting out reviews now, a month and a half after release). The Metascore is 75 (31 reviews), but more interesting is the breakdown: 22 positive, 8 mixed, and only 1 negative.
 
That's a pretty strong showing - I checked the highest scores this year, and aside from classic re-releases, the only records other than Roseanne Cash and St Vincent to get higher than 86, were only reviewed by very few (up to 10) reviewers. Combined with hitting #1 in so many countries, Lana can be proud of what she's achieved.

Actually, it's none of those mundane things. It's things like having photos where she shows only one eye, or just being a woman in the music industry.

He makes up shit for a living - lying on twitter probably doesn't even phase him.
 
I really long for the days when it was just our parents and priests who tried to tell us that pop music was evil, and not illuminati hipsters.

He makes up shit for a living - lying on twitter probably doesn't even phase him.
 
I really long for the days when it was just our parents and priests who tried to tell us that pop music was evil, and not illuminati hipsters.

Maybe it will feature someone that sounds like Lana, but in the credits it will be some random ass name

@@longtimeman YOU ARE ON POINT & now that I come to think of it, conspiracy theorists, (even if they have good logical reason to question authority) are like cliché hipsters. Whereas the stereotypical (if I can say that) hipster feeds off the unknown status or irony, the conspiracy theorist feeds off anger and misplaced rage against broken privileges. Hence his 'need' to attack Lana and Ke$ha of all people. What has Lana done for "the illuminati agenda"? Include Jesus in a movie? Be honest about her past & present feelings? Admit to sleeping around like any lost person would?

To be clear, I agree with you. The guy is a scumbag troll, but the difference between him and anonymous message board trolls is that he's making a living out of it. Why? Because people like to believe they've got secret knowledge that somebody else doesn't, and that by seeing through the worldwide conspiracy, they're able to feel superior to the rest of us who enjoy listening to music and watching movies.
 
Of course, it also allows them to never actually try to do anything that will improve the world, because they're 'fighting the good fight' against a vast invisible enemy, so you can't expect them to actually do anything productive. 
 
I've seen what people who have a slight public profile have to deal with on a daily basis - I can't even imagine how much bullshit somebody with Lana's profile would have to deal with every minute of the day if they followed social media (which makes it completely understandable why she doesn't spend much time on twitter/facebook/,...).

I've always loved "Been trying hard not to get into trouble but I've got a war in my mind" from Ride.
Also that whole bit in ITH "You're a hard man to love and I'm a hard woman to keep track of". 
 
 
BB is so lovely. What lyrics in particular were you thinking about choosing? 

Nicole Sia at Wondering Sound is yet another journalist that has come to the conclusion that our girl is not an act, but rather a real person telling her story through her music, and sometimes painfully honest interviews.
 
http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/lana-del-rey-ultraviolence-review/
 
 
On Ultraviolence, her second album since her Norma Jeane-style transformation from bottle-blond folk singer to pin-curled indie lightning rod, Lana Del Rey tells us a secret: She was once the Other Woman.
 
Self-identifying as a mistress may feel like a minor revelation, but it gives context for the self-destructive Lolita persona that’s become Del Rey’s trademark. On one hand, the role can be read as a metaphor — the artist fully embracing her identity as the music industry’s beautiful, dirty shame, derided and cast off by critics while her debut album quietly moved 7 million copies worldwide. Or we can read it as autobiography, the experiences of the woman born Elizabeth Grant bleeding into the Lana Del Rey mythology like a red bra through a translucent collared shirt. Each of her aesthetic choices — the girlish pout, the baby-doll register, the “It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you” pathology — are the lamentations of a woman forced to define herself through stolen moments and dark corners. It’s a dangerous line to take, to cop to being a home wrecker. No one pities the mistress, and Del Rey knows this. But the singer isn’t concerned with forgiveness. Half confession, half redemption and written from a safe remove, Ultraviolence is, instead, a medallion of recovery.
 
“I’m finally happy now that you’re gone,” she sings on opener “Cruel World,” flexing her muscular lower register over steady tom-tom rhythm. “I did what I had to do, I found another anyhow.” Album closer “The Other Woman” is even more on-the-nose: “The other woman will always cry herself to sleep/ The other woman will never have his love to keep.”
 
For a singer repeatedly taken to task for her lack of authenticity, on Ultraviolence Del Rey comes across both honest and unguarded. Produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach (that’s his indelible wah-wah on “West Coast”) the album strips out the sonic Webdings that plagued Born to Die (the incessant “Blue Jeans” “Shyah!” sample; the self-conscious boom-bap of “Diet Mtn Dew.”) Instead, the album evolves the full-band sound of her Rick Rubin-led 2012 Paradise EP into something raw and unadorned. It’s also steeped in pop history: The symphonic guitar work on “Cruel World” summons visions of Magical Mystery-era Beatles. The fuzzy saxophone drawl on “The Other Woman” recalls Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity.” And a more oblique reference to the classics appears on the title track, which cribs lyrics from the Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)” — the ’60s pop-progenitor of negative feedback loops in dysfunctional relationships.
 
And there are subtle nods to her own past: The strings on Ultraviolence‘s title track reuse the chord progression that opened “Born to Die.” The synth glide in the last minute of “West Coast” scans as a cute wink at Born to Die‘s hip-hop non-sequiturs. “Brooklyn Baby,” with its arch references to rare jazz records and hydroponic weed, and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top,” with its tongue-in-cheek title, come off like fuck-yous to the canon of think pieces written in her wake. Del Rey, as this writer was once assured, “reads everything.”
 
So, she’s most likely caught wind of the backlash to her recent open-for-interpretation sound bite about feminism. “For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept,” she told The Fader. “Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested.”
 
Indelicately put and poorly timed, the quote got her in hot water, critics’ hands already full with young Hollywood star Shailene Woodley distancing herself from the F-word. But let’s be fair: Del Rey’s personal indifference and Woodley’s feminist dodge — “I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance,” she told Time — are two different opinions. Perhaps Del Rey, who’s been held over the fire for perpetuating anti-feminist ideas is done with being forced into a conversation she never sought in the first place, just as she’s over her Million Dollar Man.
 
Or perhaps she’d prefer to let her music speak for her. Because taken as a whole, Ultraviolence is her most feminist work to date. It presents, without judgment, the ecstasy and agony of one woman’s choices — a bird’s-eye view of a woman suffocating, then escaping from under the weight of her man. She treats her former self tenderly: “The Other Woman is perfect where her rival fails,” she sings. But that was then. Now she’s got a cool boyfriend in her band, “but he’s not as cool as me.” And she’s out for money, power and glory. Hallelujah

I thought it was worth updating this thread to what will probably be close to the final score (I can't imagine too many other journals putting out reviews now, a month and a half after release). The Metascore is 75 (31 reviews), but more interesting is the breakdown: 22 positive, 8 mixed, and only 1 negative.
 
That's a pretty strong showing - I checked the highest scores this year, and aside from classic re-releases, the only records other than Roseanne Cash and St Vincent to get higher than 86, were only reviewed by very few (up to 10) reviewers. Combined with hitting #1 in so many countries, Lana can be proud of what she's achieved.

I thought it was worth updating this thread to what will probably be close to the final score (I can't imagine too many other journals putting out reviews now, a month and a half after release). The Metascore is 75 (31 reviews), but more interesting is the breakdown: 22 positive, 8 mixed, and only 1 negative.
 
That's a pretty strong showing - I checked the highest scores this year, and aside from classic re-releases, the only records other than Roseanne Cash and St Vincent to get higher than 86, were only reviewed by very few (up to 10) reviewers. Combined with hitting #1 in so many countries, Lana can be proud of what she's achieved.

im an embarrassment to my family

While we're living in a fantasy world, how about a DVD with the tour documentary that Chuck was shooting.