Unidentified Major Tom

Oh, the snow song. 
Nvm, i'm so happy there's some new content coming soon 

Sooooo, I just had to share these!! My vans for the festival date! Perfection! 

Rob Grant, Lana Del Rey’s Father, Loves Being a Nepo Daddy
by Gabriella Paiella
  At 69, Rob Grant is releasing his debut album, Lost at Sea. He’s also been an ad man, domain developer, father to international sensation Lana Del Rey—and a huge boat enthusiast. So we spent an afternoon cruising up the Hudson with him and his daughter. 
GQ Hype: It's the big story of right now.
Rob Grant is a big boat guy. We’re sailing up the Hudson river in a classic leisure yacht, the Full Moon. This isn’t his boat, but it sure is a nice one. He grew up in Rhode Island, adventuring on a beloved sloop called Erewhon. (Named after the 1872 utopian novel by Samuel Butler, not the Los Angeles grocery store with $20 smoothies.) Now he lives on Anna Maria Island, Florida, where he sails plenty in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a comically perfect late spring day, the kind of day invented by God precisely to cruise around on a boat and do fuck all. Grant has white hair, a tan, and the mellow aura of, well, a big boat guy.
At 69 years old, Grant is in the midst of promoting his debut album, Lost at Sea, which is out on June 9th. Whenever Grant would crash at his eldest daughter’s house in LA, he’d often find himself playing her old, out-of-tune piano. He wasn’t classically trained or anything, choosing instead to hit whatever notes instinctively flowed out of him. If his daughter heard a chord progression that clicked, she’d join him. Soon enough, they had a couple of songs between them. 
“She’ll start singing and the songs will come together magically, but in a very beautiful, organic, intuitive way,” Grant tells me. “There's no planning.” 
“It’s so cool to create music with my daughter,” he adds. “Because we really are very simpatico.” 
“Oh yeah,” his daughter chimes in, an ethereal sparkle in her voice. “I like what I like.” 
His daughter, I should mention, happens to be Lana Del Rey. As in: internationally famous singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. 
Yes: Lana. She’s next to her father, both of them sipping sugar free Red Bulls. In her white Los Angeles 1984 sweatshirt, black skirt, and white sneakers, the high priestess of mystery and melancholy appears disorientingly normal. On this four-hour boat tour, she could be any millennial daughter good-naturedly spending the afternoon with her boomer dad, were she not, you know, Lana Del Rey. 
Her presence is a slight surprise. A few days beforehand, Grant mentioned that his daughter might want to join. By the time we set sail, Lana, who flew in from LA to support her dad, is blasting Kodak Black on the speakers to set the mood. Later, she’ll step in to help stage daughter her father during the photo shoot, advising him on how to best angle his face. (“Maybe don’t smile, Dad.”) 
With all the cultural discussion around the prevalence of nepo babies—children of celebrities who have a leg up, especially in the arts—Grant occupies a unique, singular role. He may be the world’s first, and perhaps only, nepo daddy. Papa Del Rey. And, hey, he’ll take it. 
“The nepo daddy thing I love,” he says, having first encountered the concept in his Instagram comments. “I thought, My God, this would make really cool merch.”
“I mean, at that point, he was on his own, obviously,” Lana says with a laugh. 
“I'm happy to be the first nepo daddy,” Grant says. 
Lana points out that he’s not technically the first nepo daddy, what with Mitch Winehouse trying to make it as a jazz musician after daughter Amy’s untimely death. 
“Well see, back then, during Mitch's time they didn't have nepo babies. It's only because of the whole nepo baby thing. Who wrote that story?” Grant asks. 
“Someone without a brain…” Lana says, taking a puff of her cherry red vape. “It's just another way to rile simple folks up.”
As we make our way up the river, the silver skyscrapers on shore give way to dense, peaceful woodlands. An immaculate American flag flown from the boat’s stern snaps and sways in the breeze. It’s enough to make anyone a big boat guy.
“Nobody wants to give anyone any credit for doing anything,” Grant adds. “God forbid that you actually have talent. People don't want to acknowledge that. They will find a way to undermine you and to really make you feel bad about yourself. So the nepo daddy thing, I love that. Hell, I'll sell you hats, T-shirts, canvas bags, you name it.” 
“Fuckin’ Barnum & Bailey over here,” Lana jokes back.  
That said, you can now actually buy his “Nepo Daddy” branded t-shirts—in both full-length and crop tops.
 And credit where credit is due. Lost at Sea is a wholly intriguing, unexpected debut album, where transportative piano chords meet a trippy ambient soundscape. Lana lends her voice and lyrics, smokey and full, to the songs “Lost at Sea” and “Hollywood Bowl.” The first time he heard the title track, Grant was so overcome with emotion that he burst into tears.
The two first collaborated on “Sweet Carolina,” a song on Lana’s 2021 album Blue Bannisters. When they were recording, Lana would be about five hours late to the studio. Rob was early, as dads tend to be. Once, he asked the producers to record him while he played the piano for 75 minutes straight. 
They were taken aback. So was Lana’s manager, Ben Mawson, who liked what he heard so much that he started shopping it around, landing at Decca Records. Super producer Jack Antonoff and ambient master crafter Luke Howard stepped in to help Grant shape his songs, and the long stream of consciousness recordings were partitioned into individual tracks.   
Mawson has known Rob, through Lana, for over a decade now. “Well, Rob’s the pop star,” he tells me, when I ask about the similarities between father and daughter. “No, I’m joking but… Rob probably enjoys the limelight maybe a bit more than Lana does. He’s more comfortable in the spotlight.” 
The ocean has been a constant, renewable source of inspiration for Grant. He has actually been lost at sea at times, stranded alone in heavy fog out in the Atlantic, which he recounts with excitement. Both father and daughter have a taste for storm chasing. He also seeks out his thrills by shark fishing—he regales me with a story about a 12-footer dragging his boat for two and a half hours—though he always throws them back.
Beyond the album title, most of the songs have nautical names, like “Moon Rise Over the Ocean,” “Setting Sail On a Distant Horizon,” and “The Poetry Of Wind and Waves.” A six-minute ambient looped track called “The Mermaids Lullaby” is what Ariel might hear if she did shrooms in Joshua Tree. 
Lana, who’s been watching her father deep-sea fish for years (and included a song titled “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he's deep-sea fishing” on her most recent album) was interested in seeing how he translated those experiences into music. “It’s fun that there's more of a tangible outcome from all of that time alone on the water,” she tells him. 
As an adult, Grant landed in New York City, working in advertising on Madison Avenue. He came up with the Playtex bra slogan “Thank Goodness It Fits,” which turned into a $500 million campaign. The job was demanding and its pressures unrelenting. It was the ‘80s version of Mad Men; trade in the three-martini lunch for a frazzled coworker doing deskside coke. Grant would often linger in a small bookstore near his office, where he would flip through guides about fly fishing and the outdoors, dreaming of a simpler life. 
When Lana was born (née Lizzy Grant), he and her mom found themselves dragging a stroller up a five-story walk-up. They realized they had to get out. The family moved up to Lake Placid, in the Adirondacks. (Mom and Rob are now both in Florida.) He was working as a real estate agent, though he kept an eye on a nascent thing called the internet. Grant realized that nobody would be searching his name when looking for a house. But something like, say, AdirondackRealEstate.com? That was gold. 
So he started buying up domain names. Bought all his kids’ names. Their stage names, too. And all these years later, he still knows a good domain name when he sees it. 
For instance, when all the nepo daddy stuff went down. “I went ‘Oh, shit. I've got to own that.’ I went out and registered the domain. So you type in ‘nepo daddy’,” he says, proudly, “and I pop up.” 
During Lana’s childhood, the two of them bonded musically over Paul Simon and the Beach Boys. He says he always knew she had musical talent, back from when she was a toddler and would serenade their next door neighbor. “Al, what a great guy he was,” he remembers. “She just sang all day.” Grant also tried his hand at trying to become a country star, around the time Lana was 11. He went down to Nashville with a song he had written called “Big Bubba.” Lana pulls up a video on her phone of a grainy old home movie where she and her siblings, sister Chuck and brother Charlie, dance along to it as children. 
Trouble was, the country producer was offended because he thought that the track was making a mockery of a typical country song. And he was doubly offended when Grant said something about how bad most country music was in those days, citing a specific song. Turns out the guy he was talking to had produced it. 
Thus was the end of Grant’s musical career—until Lost at Sea. 
“I do love that story,” Lana says, with a smile. “I also did a similar thing with an artist I won't say. I got kicked out of the office.” 
They are in tune in a lot of other ways: both are big on trusting their intuitions. They consider each other friends. They love to hang in Vegas. Lana may have an entire oeuvre that hints at daddy issues (she literally titled a song “Daddy Issues”) but the two seem to have a close, healthy relationship. 
And Rob, in his own way, has a keen instinct for fame and self-promotion. Take the cover shot of his album, which has him out at sea with seagulls surrounding him. It was unplanned, the result of his daughter Chuck taking a photo of him on a fishing boat. 
“That's because that was supposed to be a family trip,” Lana points out. 
“But everything becomes a photo shoot,” he says. 
“Well,” she answers. “It does if you bring 11 Hawaiian shirts and say, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’”
Even before this album, Rob has been a recognizable part of the Lana Del Rey Cinematic Universe. 
“He's the only fucking reason why we get stopped at TJ Maxx,” Lana says. “If I'm with you, then there is zero chance that we're having a calm day at Marshall's.” 
“I wouldn’t say that,” Rob says, smiling. 
“They love Rob because Rob loves them,” she says, about her fans. He reads all the letters they send in, and stands there for hours to chat after concerts. 
“Yeah, I do love them,” he agrees. “What's not to love? I mean, my God.” 
It’s yet to be seen if Rob will go on tour, but he is thinking of opening for Lana. Just him at the piano in a tropical shirt. Maybe. 
“This is all so new for me. The idea of going out and actually going on a big stage and playing, that's still intimidating to me. I'm willing to try it,” Rob says. “It’s really more if I'm with Lana, I don't want to screw her up.” 
“There is nothing to ruin here,” she says, with a glittering smile. “We have seen and done it all.” 

Jon Batiste will be there too, although not the same day :
https://instagram.com/stories/jonbatiste/3106242176057134221?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==
 
I would be pleased to see them performing Candy Necklace together 

Jon Batiste will be there too, although not the same day :
https://instagram.com/stories/jonbatiste/3106242176057134221?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==
 
I would be pleased to see them performing Candy Necklace together 

The cover image immediately reminded me of this photo when I saw it earlier this morning. Lizzie/y Grant is truly alive and breathing xx

Why some people here are being so negative??? 
 
We got a beautiful heavenly song finally released and a beautiful selfie too, i’m so happy 

Yes exactly but it's even more than years. People need to realize she's had control from the beginning 😭 She's had to fight for it, REALLY really hard for it actually (which is why I think she has such resistance to things that aren't her decision - because she wants her life to be like a work of art - and she doesn't want anybody to paint the work of art that is her life but her - like how she always says she's "writing her own narrative", I think that's what that means) but it's always been her vision. Period. Since May Jailer to whatever she wants to be next week it's been her vision 

Lana can't be forced to do anything. She can be swayed, but this was her decision 
 

Duh

Well done.
The way i like it more than the genuine "artist inspired by music" collection...
 
The flowers, and the warm colors remind me of honeymoon. It's more than just decent for me, it's narrative and gorgeous.

Well, my boyfriend's in a band
He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed
I've got feathers in my hair
I get down to Beat poetry
And my jazz collection's rare
I can play most anything
I'm a Brooklyn baby
 
And i can't miss these lines (not quite part of the chorus, but so iconic) :
 
Yeah, my boyfriend's pretty cool
But he's not as cool as me
'Cause I'm a Brooklyn baby
I'm a Brooklyn baby

Parallels of the Candy Necklace video and her other videos from her past 9 records  What a beautiful 15 years x
 

100%. I feel like it's a very Lynchian video, along the lines of Mulholland Drive, where personas are not as simple as 'real vs fake', and dream and reality are not at all clearly different. For example, the difference in meaning between if we just saw the Hollywood Walk of Fame scene as a MV scene, against what it means for us to be watching it being filmed as a movie, is massive.

Lana is definitely referencing Marilyn's death and comparing it to her own life, so I did some research.
Stay with me, sorry it's a bit lengthy
 
First, we have to look at some theories about Marilyn's death for context.
 
In a recent Netflix documentary, Marilyn's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, stated Robert Kennedy was at Monroe's home in the afternoon on the day she died. In the days leading up to her death, Marilyn told a friend that she was "very much in love and was going to marry Bobby Kennedy." The housekeeper also stated that Bobby and Marilyn had a terrible fight on the day of her death. The documentary confirms that Bobby flew to the airport in a helicopter to catch a flight around 2 or 3 am on the night of her death.
(https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a39840131/marilyn-monroe-death-true-story-netflix/)
 
According to an article discussing Marilyn's death, an LA District Attorney "believed that Monroe was given just enough chloral hydrate to make her unconscious. Someone then dissolved about 30 Nembutal capsules in water, which was given to Monroe via an enema bag. The drugs were absorbed by the large intestine, and that was how she died from an overdose. Based on his theory, Miner said that someone else killed Monroe."
When the pills are taken normally, orally and undissolved, they leave a yellow stain on the small intestine. Marilyn's did not have a stain.
 
Continuing with this theory, Marilyn was crossed by her lover, Bobby, who decided to kill her after their argument earlier that day. He gave her chloral hydrate and injected dissolved Nembutal into her large intestine and she died.
 
I think this is highly convincing, especially because her organs conveniently disappeared after the short investigation concluded.
 
The video as it relates to Marilyn:
Looking at the video, it's clear the old man is Bobby and Marilyn is playing the role of his sugar baby, "dancin like the young and reckless". The necklaces represent the gifts he gave her and how the dangerous nature of their relationship, and the thrill she got from being involved with someone as notorious as "Rockefeller," kept her holding on. The same could be said about her relationship with fame. She eventually lost her sense of self after "playing" Marilyn for so long, and it led to her death. The candy necklaces can also be seen as metaphors for his, or fame's, materialistic/romantic/sexual possession over her, and you can see her uncomfortably pulling at the necklaces later in the video wanting to be free.
 
Later, the bloody car and trunk heighten the gruesome truth of the paparazzi and media publicizing photos of Marilyn's gruesome fate.
 
Over-all Message: 
At 4:07, Lana says, “The whole thing about the video–why it’s all supposed to be behind the scenes–is because all these women who change their names, change their hair–like me–it’s like they all fell into these different snake holes. The whole point is: how do you learn from that and not fall into a thing?”
 
These women fell into "snake holes" while playing their celebrity personas, like actresses, and got hurt searching for fame and its benefits. The downside of entertaining a celebrity persona is your persona begins to split between your character and your true identity. Eventually, you lose your grounding, and someone takes advantage.
 
Down the thread, @wildheart noted the similarities between Lana's and Veronica Lake's outfit in "I Married A Witch" promotions.
"Veronica Lake was born Constance Ockelman and changed her name when she came to Hollywood. She was known for blonde wavy hair and her style became very popular in the 40s. She struggled with alcoholism and while she didn’t die, her addiction did have to do with her leaving Hollywood to find recovery."
 
Lana is paying homage to Veronica, and pointing out similarities between her, Veronica's, and Marilyn's stories. They all created Hollywood personas with new hair, names, and personalities.
 

 
 
The last shot with her sitting on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is a reference to this pic of Marilyn, I think. Pretty sure it's edited using pics of Norma Jean on the beach but conceptually, it's strikingly similar.
 

 

Lana also isn't wearing a necklace in this shot which shows she is free from him and her desire for the thrill
She's reclaiming herself and her accomplishments, free of anyone's control.
(She's referencing the Love music video with the hair, makeup, and outfit - I LOVE)
 
In the video, Lana explores the dangerous power dynamics and situations that can be forged when someone creates and maintains a Hollywood persona.
She questions how you can learn from these situations, and how you keep from falling into similar ones. Additionally, how can you regain your stolen safety, stability, and sense of self after playing a Hollywood persona/splitting your personality for so long?
 
Lana is referencing the Born to Die era in multiple shots throughout the video. Going by my theory with the Marilyn and Bobby parallel, I'm guessing she was in a similar situation with someone around the BTD era (my guess is Harvey but who knows). Ultimately, she was haunted and thrilled by her relationship with Rockefeller/fame because of how dangerous it could be for her. She was so caught up in playing the part, she lost herself.
 
SUCH an incredible music video 100000/10

if this ain't rob screaming "you're doing amazing sweetie" to her... 
 

Another detail that I loved:
when at the end they show all of them wearing the necklaces except the last Lana (the one with the Priscilla hair), I think it could mean that she’s finally free? From the media?
 
so many interesting clues 

Ma’am, she’s an actress!
Loved the concept of it being BTS, her look w/ the blonde wig and the hood… then when she takes the blonde wig off and there’s another wig underneath… homegirl has been watching drag race.
This eerie song deserved an eerie music video and that’s exactly what we got!

2000 X 2000
 

The first post is clearly from a fnac store, so I thought one minute that she was somewhere in France, before I saw the next post...
What a shame.
Lana if u read this we miss u. We have tasty macaroons and luxury jewelry with lots of diamonds.

Well done.
The way i like it more than the genuine "artist inspired by music" collection...
 
The flowers, and the warm colors remind me of honeymoon. It's more than just decent for me, it's narrative and gorgeous.

Cause it's a great cover  the real question should be why isn't Chelsea Hotel there too?

Well done.
The way i like it more than the genuine "artist inspired by music" collection...
 
The flowers, and the warm colors remind me of honeymoon. It's more than just decent for me, it's narrative and gorgeous.