Why has this dropped so randomly? Does it mean we're getting the represses back? Where are Honeymoon/NFR! UO represses? Are they selling by scalper prices now? So many questions...
I think it's time to talk about the iconic trio of UV outtakes - Yes to Heaven, Fine China & Your Girl. It's a twisted web and I'm not really good with phrasing and explaining such things so it might be difficult for you to understand everything (especially if you have no technical background on how songs are being produced), but I'll try to walk you through it all step by step and if something remains unclear I will try to explain it further!
These 3 songs were originally written and produced alongside Rick Nowels and his engineers back in late 2013. We first found out about their existence in 2016 when Eclipse obtained the demos and revealed the titles/snippets. They later happened to spread and leak becoming mysterious fan favorites and sadly as beloved and iconic in the community they are, all 3 are fake...
well, technically.
To understand why they are fake I need to give you a full breakdown of what happened.
It must have started with Eclipse getting his hands on an invoice from Patrick Warren who was responsible for recording and engineering Keys/Strings on some of the songs at that time. That listing apart from tracks that were released included Say Yes To Heaven, Fine China and Your Girl which have been fully unknown to the public. He contacts Patrick and using that info tries to get the demos from him, I assume under the suggestion that Lana is considering re-using the songs and tries to get the tracks/parts back. The thing is, Patrick is just someone who records his small part for the mix, he isn't actively working on the song as a producer so he doesn't really have access to all the material. Still though, he had some loose stems/sessions parts I assume, without properly bounced mix, he challenged himself to create mixes of all 3 that would be serviceable for that moment.
If you check the original files of all 3 leaked tracks, you'll find in the metadata that those demos were exported in Logic 10.2.2. That version of Logic Pro was released on March 8th, 2016 so any mix could not be older than that and of course the original ones were made in 2013. Not to mention the fact that Rick and his engineers work with Pro Tools, not Logic, unlike Patrick. But this goes even further. Patrick's available stems of the tracks were seemingly so incomplete he decided to create new production and structure for the songs making complete new versions that were unlike what Lana and Rick originally curated. He sent those back to Eclipse alongside the very incomplete stems.
This mess doesn't end here. You see Patrick Warren's job is to deliver the stems containing the new parts he was issued to arrange and engineer. Since he is often doing it independently of the rest, he adds a little bit of the song's intro at the beginning of every stem file he bounces so that when Rick receives it he knows how to place it in the mix alongside his parts. It's usually like 20/30 seconds and you can see what I'm talking about, because Eclipse shared some stems snippets from the files he received:
https://onlyfiles.io/f/e0236e30cb224f9e8618fe09ab0b9bc3
https://onlyfiles.io/f/ce703d3a5a204566bd31278eb667e6f7
Thank you @TheBoss for providing these to me
The first seconds here are the intros of real Rick reference demos, the latter parts however are already stems/mixes of what Patrick attempted to make in 2016. If you want some more closure, there is something @Say Yes to Heaven mentioned already - Eclipse must have received another pack of the same fashion later in 2016 of upcoming LFL track, Something Real (aka 13 Beaches). If you remember those times well, his exact teaser said "You took the.. #SR". This was most probably, because the singular stems he received as Something Real ALSO contained a few seconds of actual song at the beginning that happened to cut right after Lana saying "You took t..". In the full official credits you can see that Patrick is credited on 13 Beaches for "Waterphone", "Harmonium" and "Synthesizer".
Now circling back, while Fine China and Your Girl only had one mix leaked, Yes to Heaven also had this:
And this one is also fake, but it's technically closer to being a real thing than the Patrick mix. I don't know if this one was made by Eclipse or someone who got the stems from him, but this must have been made with filtered acapella of the Patrick Warren version, mixed with additional stems he provided and then layered with the looped guitar/drum pattern from the intro that I mentioned previously. But that guitar loop was literally a fundament of very first version of Yes to Heaven (unlike the Patrick mix that begins with strings) so you can imagine how it sounded based on this.
The first real version of Yes to Heaven that you have is the one leaked by Music Mafia which is a James Ford demo from late March/early April 2014. At that stage UV was shaping as an album, Rob Orton started properly mixing it and Lana decided to take last attempts to find the right production for the song by asking James Ford to give it a try. Sadly it also got discarded and at that point they just let go of the song (at least for that era).
The second real version of Yes to Heaven that you have is from latter part of 2014, 3:31 in length with leading production by STINT. Keep in mind though that while I refer to those versions as James Ford produced / STINT produced demos, they are all based on Rick's demos they got presented to work with. I think it's just easier to name them as such for clear sorting purposes. Even though the song was being worked on in both 2014 and 2015 they still failed to include it on HM as well.
It's fortunate for you that those happened to leak, cause Patrick's SYTH was the most different to the real demos from UV. Fine China is also pretty different, while Your Girl early demos (not the final though) are fairly similar to Patrick's mix. I mentioned earlier that both Fine China and Your Girl got mixed by Rob Orton alongside UV so they've been scrapped from the release on very last minute and unlike Yes to Heaven - ditched for good right after.
The weirdest thing in all this is that those quick Patrick Warren mixes are great... even though the mixing is clearly rushed and poor. The harmonica break in Yes to Heaven, the organs in Your Girl chorus, that stuff was never meant to be there, but hell it works. This sadly also means that if Patrick only sent those 160kbps mp3 files, the better ones don't exist.
That is all for now, unless @111 would like to now come forward and add something that I missed/got wrong. I also do not really believe that you didn't know the truth about all of this back then so I don't understand why you never revealed that the mixes aren't real. I think die hard fans deserve that kind of closure about some of the most iconic unreleased songs.
This took me years to figure out with massive help of someone who is also present on this very forum and I have mad respect for, thank you again!
I wasn't going to put it there at first but Pink Champagne was recorded after Madly, on October 23, so i'm assuming she scrapped Tropico and started working on Ultraviolence at least after Oct 23 2013
Wait so who said it's for Quavo? Yeah I know that he's made all the promo and the preorder link is his but what if they're just lying to us and surprise us with the song being Lana's + Lasso announcement?
Crazy For You (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
Blue Suade Shoes (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
If I Die Young (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
Come With Me (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
Dead To Me (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
Cry Kill Die (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
Dark City (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
Paradise (Lana’s Version) (From The Vault)
This is terrible sorry. I’m not a big Nicki fan but I was percheddddd for this album. Big let down. The intro track alone is so embarrassing. A few cute moments but nothing special nor memorable. Pink print & pink Friday outsold. She needed a FEW big female collaborators on here to make it work. The features are bad and yet they still carry their songs dkdjfjsksk
i don’t know if anyone here watched the Swiftologist but he’s pretty much my-go-to person on Taylor Swift opinions, lore, and knowledge. he understands her and critiques her better than anyone i’ve ever seen, all whilst having a deep understanding of pop culture. you should check him out. he’s done a pretty comprehensive series of videos on the joever breakup:
They just added back a couple old products without any discounts. The new items can be seen by selecting a specific album in the menu: https://shoplanadelrey.com
The fact that it's one from the ultraviolence shoot + the Black Beauty BSide is so special and confirms that she always placed it to that era, even though she tried to make it work for others.
I really hope she's thinking a lot about it and hopes to release Fine China + other Ultraviolence unreleased tracks. Maybe she will actually give a shit and do something for its 2024 10 year anniversary. Maybe an Ultraviolence expanded re-release. Now THAT will steal my money.
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