Gecko

UPDATE 2017:

 

iamamiwhoami is currently on a hiatus. Jonna Lee (the singer of iamamiwhoami) is currently releasing solo stuff under "ionnalee".  Her new album "Everone Afraid To Be Forgotten" is set to be released on Feb 14th 2018.

 

 

Album trailer:

 



 

 

 

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iamamiwhoami is the electronic music and multimedia project of Swedish musician and

singer-songwriter Jonna Lee in collaboration with her long-time music producer Claes Björklund.

 

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Some songs from their most recent album "Blue":

 



 



 



 

 

 

 

 

Previous albums:

 

bounty (2011):____ ___buy it here

kin (2012):___________buy it here

http://lanadelrey.com.br/galeria/thumbnails.php?album=lastup&cat=0&page=1
 
 
 godness <3 
 
credits to lana del rey brasil

"Love you more than them tricks before." On The voice UK at least, some others as well probably (and the Blue jeans demo).

Awww Danke! Cruel World & Flipside belong together. They're 2 of a kind.
 
Thx!
 
AWESOME! You won't regret it, I promise!
 

Her vibrato always puzzled me too.
 
Like on The Man I love she has this crazy broad vibrato:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqF9SsMi9Us
But it's not really present on other tracks from that era. 
 
It's like she's capable of a lot of technical feats but has very little control over it. She can't do it at will.
I'm no vocal coach but her breath control seem kinda off sometimes, maybe because of stress, sickness or nervousness, hence the performances like the recent "Rock an Seine" where she sounds much worse than usual.
 
I totally agree with those who said that her strength lies in the atmosphere and emotions she can create with her voice. In that regard her range is ridiculous. Just think of the span between "Pretty When You Cry" and "Off to the Races" in terms of emotional colouring. That magnificient woman   

I heard that after SNL, she had received coaching on the use on in-ear monitors, but I didn't know one way or the other about any vocal coaching.
 
True! The same could probably be said of just about anyone, though.
 
  
Good point.
 
I think it's how she wants to make it sound. Sometimes, when she gets into her mid-high register, she sounds more airy/breathy, and sometimes she sounds more deep/full. Using your name as an example, in the song "Blue Jeans," on the album, she sounds more airy in the upper register ("I will love you till the end of time..."), whereas in her SNL performance, that part of the song didn't have the same sound.
 
I can imagine!
 
Yeah, I don't either. I remember hearing about her being coached in the use of in-ear monitors, but I don't remember about vocal coaching.
 
 
That's especially true in her lower register. I've noticed that in live performances, she often doesn't dive deep into her really low register in songs like "Summertime Sadness" and even "Video Games." In SS, on the album, she hits a low C# below middle C. In live performances (which they often take up a half step), she doesn't go anywhere near that low C# (or really, it would be D when they take it up). I suppose despite being mic'd, with the band and crowd noise, her voice would get lost in that low register, and I'm sure she knows that.
 
Perhaps not, although have you heard her perform "Million Dollar Man" live? She really belts out some of those higher notes, and I've noticed her voice taking on an almost Bernadette Peters-like quality when she does that. I don't know if that's intentional, or if that's just the effect of her trying to sing that loudly and forcefully. It's an interesting sound coming from her... not my first choice, but not bad, either.
 
That's the beauty of studio recordings -- you can manipulate everything, including your voice volume. That's why she can sing those really low notes on the album and still project well.
 
Totally agree with you there.

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.

There would be less focus on her as an individual if she were part of a band, I suppose.  When I think of Guns 'n' Roses, I don't think of only Axl Rose.  When I think of The Doors, I don't think of just Jim Morrison.  Anyone who thinks of The Beatles wouldn't be thinking of only John Lennon or only Paul McCartney.  Perhaps if she hadn't been a solo artist, she would never have adopted the moniker Lana Del Rey, and would be known as Lizzy Grant, the lead singer of blah-blah-blah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap%26Skin
 
Soap&Skin is the experimental musical project of Austrian artist Anja Plaschg (born 5 April 1990).
 
Check out these songs:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBcu5TOu7Ss

Thanks for all the great feedback, guys! That really made my day!
 

I'm sorry if this has already been posted somewhere ... EVERY time I see Lana sing "Without You" she tears up at "can you picture it, that life we could have lived."  Any idea why? I can't figure out if this song is about alcohol or K. or something else entirely. 

that horrible habit of glamorized teenage self-destructiveness, the love of beautiful atmospheric visuals that maybe aren't obviously beautiful. actually the general obsession with glamorizing everything and making it seem beautiful. i'm a huge believer in beauty, not particularly in an image based/shallow way, but just a way make awful things seem worth while.
 
but tbh, beyond all that, Lana was the only artist i've ever been a massive fan of who i listened purely because her music made me feel good. i got BTD the day it came out, by chance after i started a rehab programme when i was 16. to me, born to die isn't a dark album at all. it made me wanna have fun & be young. so despite the negative ways i relate to her, i use(d) her as a reassurance that you CAN have been messed up but you can go on to be free and have fun, rather than stuck at home hurting yourself going crazy. that's why i fell in love w her.

I'm a bit late to the party on this thread, but I'll say pretty much what a lot of others have said: Lana hasn't been around long enough for us to be able to determine whether or not she is an icon. She certainly has a unique style and sound, but that in itself doesn't make her an icon.
 
Two of my other favorite singers, Kim Wilde and Laura Branigan, were around for a long time (Laura died in 2004, but Kim is still around and still making music). They both made music for a long time, but I wouldn't consider either of them icons. The Beatles? Jim Morrison? Those are icons.

I always wonder WHY the hell people use online banking... it's like they just WANT to be robbed.
I always wonder WHY the hell girls always wear short skirts... it's like they just WANT to be raped.
I always wonder WHY the hell Muslims go into airports... it's like they just WANT to be accused of being a terrorist.
 

 
Do you realise how stupid you sound now?

For the most part, she already does have the same people playing with her every time. She has the same pianist (Byron), guitarist (Blake), keyboardist and drummer pretty much all the time. I think she gets different string players, depending on where she is. For most of her European performances whose videos I've seen, it's been the same string group, but then there were different ones here in the US.

I don't really think she would have done well in a band (personally, not successfully). I think there's a reason it didn't work out for her before and she stopped trying, especially by the way Dan described working with her - that she had to be in complete control all of the time during the artistic process. I think she gets visions for how she wants things to be and if her hypothetical bandmates didn't agree or see her vision the way she did, she'd get frustrated and feel criticized (her ego is kind of fragile). She's just too independent and her music is too personal for her to tolerate anyone trying to tamper with it. I mean, could you image what would happen if she tried to make something like Tropico while being in a band? the Born to Die music video (any of her videos really)? If the bandmates have no say in the process then why would it be different than it is now since she said she still plays with the same paid musicians that she has from the start (at least live)?
 
She *did* collab with Blake on Flipside, Cruel World, and PWYC, so it could be possible. Obviously it would be great, too, since those songs were all amazing. But I still feel like, even though she did collab with him, it was still all about her and her vision and he just happened to produce something she deemed worthy. It still took years of him playing for her before she let him have those small influences on her album.
 
I agree that it would have helped her emotionally to have other people to take some of the focus off of her, but I think as her band would have amassed fame the attention would have turned to her anyways because of her personality, how intriguing she is, and the crazy things she says in interviews. It'd be toned down some though obviously. However, I think she values her artistic independence over having a few people to deal with the emotional stress because she can get that from other outlets and her connection with the music is what its all about to her. I do think it would help her stay inspired and creative to be around other people, because they would have ideas of their own that she could work with and they'd maybe draw her out of singing about the same thing over and over. She's just too independent for it though in reality.
 
IF she could have made it work, then yeah I think she'd be just as successful in terms of quality of music. I don't know if she'd be as famous. I think her band would have a cult following but not just her by herself though she'd be the central focus (but honestly that's typical of most singers in bands these days).

Led Zeppelin - Black Dog

R. Stevie Moore - I'm Only Sleeping (Beatles cover)
 

New art 

Full Album

Edit: Wont work , idk why.

 

So what's your favorite?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

ehhh sorry: (( I understand that some celebrities Indian-Cambodian enrolled in this contest ... that is absurd ... D:

Hey, thank you for taking your time to actually look at my fanmade covers. I really appreciate that. Comments, critique, and instructions on how to iprove my work are always welcome and WANTED!

Old stuff:

Sirens - Era



Lana Del Rey aka. Lizzy Grant - Era




Born to Die - Era




Paradise - Era




Ultraviolence - Era




Unreleased


 

You're right, but not always "teenager" is synonymous with "immature", at least on a musical level.
Oh God, how I love this face XD