annedauphine

Mods - wasn't sure where to put this, chose this for visibility, feel free to move! Hi baes, so here's a little update on the most-awaited Interviews section! Basically, @@WhiteHydrangea, @, @@Valentino, @@evilentity, @ and me are mashing work like crazy and have advanced A LOT on the section. I'm delighted to announce with confidence that if we go on like this it should be open pretty soon However, there are some things we need in order to progress that we aren't able to do, so this thread will be dedicated to requests from the team for things like translations and if needed more, just as the thread previously made by @. If you for example know the language required for a translation and have a bit of time to dedicate Lana, it would be extremely appreciated. We will indicate you how to post your translation so that it's YOU that posts it and you get proper credit for translation as we know how tedious it can be and you deserve recognition for your help and time! And of course, you will also get credit for any kind of help you provide as this is the beauty of the project and we're particularly aware of that This section is building up to be the most complete, the most anally organized, and by far the most beautiful Lana interviews archive ever created, and you can be part of the team! Requests will start from the post below, thank you in advance to everyone

Since I haven't saw the translation on the forum and I just checked and he did it, please let @@Valentino do the Grazia thread! Actually the question is being asked, because Valentino did such a humongous job, do we let him do the threads for all the transcriptions and translations of his?

Oh amazing thank you! Here's all the interviews I wanted to rip I think, not sure it's complete: http://www.thecurrent.org/listen/minnesota/the_current/features/2015/11/09/20151109_lana_del_rey_20151109 http://www.thecurrent.org/listen/minnesota/news/performances/2012/03/14/lana_del_rey_live_20120314 http://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2012/03/14/lanadelrey-live http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/media/s3556362.htm I had no idea about this pro-tip, I'm such a newbie This will be much easier thank you!!

@@evilentity also have a question, similar to what @@WhiteHydrangea asked, can we do a special Request thread visible by all where we put requests of translations or stuff? Because we need something better organized than status updates are chat box and I have so many requests!

Ok thank you, noted down for the translations! I see your point about classing, we need others opinions haha. The interviews I was mentioning here are from The Current, for example there's this one, plus others. YES the formatting looks right!!! I have no idea how you did it but it's right! And for the last thing, indeed it's more tedious than difficult, I used these methods already and it proved very useful. It's worth mentioning again that the Google Docs are editable by anyone too so this is definitely a community work. To be honest I lost track of what I was thinking but I think I was mentioning mod powers just about moving threads we found already existed.

Fashion September - Interviewer: Elio Iannacci Interview retyped by @annedauphine using @@Valentino's scans Spoiler As she leans against the ivy-covered walls of Casa Loma—Toronto's most famous gothic revival landmark—Lana Del Rey is a dead ringer for Caravaggio's "Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy". While the camera snaps picture after picture of her caressing the castle's walls during her photo shoot for FASHION's September issue, the 28-year-old singer-songwriter stares wistfully into the lens. Her presence seems to personify the Italian painter's chiaroscuro technique, much in the way the songs on her recent Billboard-topping album, Ultraviolence, offer low-key and high-contrast resonance all at once. "My job is to deal in extremes," Del Rey says once the last shot of the day is done and she rewards herself with a seat outside, facing a view of Casa Loma's budding gardens. With a Marlboro dangling from her mouth, she casually begins to open up on the difficulties she's faced as a very public figure who has — save for a handful of interviews — chosen to remain quiet and private. "I've seen so many ups and downs in my life already," she says before taking a long drag. "I do think I may have made peace with some of it," she says, glancing at a dry patch of wildflowers. "But hoping that people don't misunderstand the message of Ultraviolence is an impossible hope." Laden with provocative lines such as "He hit me and it felt like a kiss" (lyrics that quote a song released in 1962 by the Crystals), as well as references to two-timing men, sex, drugs and rock'n'rollers (there is a song said to be about her rumoured ex, Axl Rose, called "Guns and Roses"), Del Rey's latest record is charged in all ways possible: socially, sexually, politically and, most importantly, personally. The album has been a redeemer of sorts for those who didn't quite get Del Rey the first time around with her poppier 2012 major-label debut, Born To Die, or its follow-up, the jazz- and hip hop-influenced Paradise. Ultraviolence reflects a rock- and folk-spiked ascension in her art, something that The New York Times music critic Jon Pareles aptly described as a work that "reaches deeper into her slow-motion sense of time, her blend of retro sophistication and seemingly guileless candour." It makes her presence here among the castle's weathered sandstone and cracked marble all the more appro-priate. After all, these walls were built in 1911 by one of Canada's most infamous romantics, Sir Henry Pellatt, a multi-millionaire. Unlike Del Rey, Pellatt was a proven crook who often cooked his books and borrowed money from the unsuspecting just to make his life and home an epic reality. Like Del Rey, Pellatt was charged with being a dreamer and a fraud. Despite the fact that Born To Die has remained on tine Billboard 200 chart since its debut - and with minimal radio support - she is well aware of the anti-Lana critics who judge her music before it gets released (not to mention those who keep harping on her extremely green performance on Saturday Night Live two years ago). Unbeknownst to the vultures that pick at her, she used the wounds they caused to create a mighty cut called "Money Power Glory" - Ultraviolence's fascinating centrepiece. Rather than reading the song as an anthem of ambition - which is what some may still see it as - the Lake Placid-born artist offers "Money Power Glory" as a spirited reaction to her detractors. "It was mostly sarcastic," she says of the track's deeper meaning. "I had just gotten to a point where I felt like all I was allowed to have - rather than respect - was notoriety or fame." Instead of moping around and waiting for the industry to embrace her, Del Rey found comfort elsewhere, namely with a few friends in various surfer and biker cliques in and around her home in L.A. "The best lesson I've learned is that you can do what you love for as long as you want," she says, naming tattoo artist Mark Mahoney - who was responsible for inking Johnny Depp's and Rihanna's tattoos - as a type of life guru. Del Rey loved having the 57-year-old around so much that she cast him in the videos for two of her recent singles, 'West Coast" and "Shades ofCool." It was through people like Mahoney and her love of California's Hells Angels biker culture ("The main touchstone of their community is freedom," she says) that Del Rey began to awaken her inner rebel."Heavy criticism is freeing because it leaves no route other than to be entirely yourself," she says of the writing process for new songs such as "Cruel World" - a psychedelic-rock ode to living the wild life."There's actually less pressure [this way] because you're left to your own devices." With this newfound confidence, Del Rey managed to gather the courage to do what she'd always wanted to do: sing with a bona fide hero. She wrote a song called "Brooklyn Baby" and set off for New York to find her idol so he could lay down the vocals with her. "I was travelling to see Lou Reed to play him that song. I wanted him on the track, and I had been talking to his manager for months," she says, looking somewhat teary. "I finally took the red-eye and then, at 7 a.m., I was going to play him Brooklyn Baby. He actually died the morning I got there." In terms of other creative instigators, Del Rey has had mountains of dysfunction to mine during the recording process. Her strained relationship with Barrie-James O'Neill - ex-lead singer of Scottish alt-folk band Kassidy - gave her the kind of obsessive, tough love themes that Ultraviolence is filled with. "It's been a tenuous and tumultuous three years," she says of her romance with O'Neill. "It was very rewarding, but very difficult. Trying to get consistency and normality within the dynamic of that relationship has been impossible. He's unwell and I'm unwell in some ways, and psychologically we've been through a lot together. His poetic process is very deep. He may go months without saying things at all because he's thinking, so there was a lot of quietness there." Aside from old flames haunting her choruses, Del Rey is forthright about the way her own sensuality fuels her work. "There are heavy sexual undertones in the music," she says, dismissing the idea that the album name Ultraviolence was taken from A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess's 1962 novella about wayward youth. "I just love the luxe sound of the word 'ultra' juxtaposed with the mean sound ofthe word 'violence'," she says. "And I love the idea that two worlds can live within one sonic universe. I'm [also] attracted to people with a strong physicality. I feel liberated through my relationships with men I find interesting." The bad romances haven't quashed her desire for a conventional future with a husband and family. "I would love to find someone I could share my life with and be married to," she says. "I would love children, too. Hopefully they're not as bad as I am." As of late, the tabloids have been chasing Del Rey and what appears to be a stylish new man in her life, photographer and director Francesco Carrozzini, son of Franca Sozzani, Italian Vogue's editor-in-chief (he regularly shoots for the title). "Francesco's been a really big inspiration for me lately," Del Rey says, noting that she had just spent the previous day with him and long-time friend A$AP Rocky (Carrozzini directed the video for Rocky's "Phoenix"). Her deep connection to Italian Vogue doesn't end there. During our interview, she flips through her phone's images and reveals outtakes from Ultraviolence's cover shoot, a vivid painting of her by controversial L.A. artist Mr. Brainwash ("He made a portrait and gave it to me"), as well as a stash of past Italian Vogue shoots and covers. Images that inspire a few Del Rey coos and gasps are Steven Meisel's regal March 2007 cover with model Jenny Sweeney and a 1990 cover featuring Isabella Rossellini styled to look like a cross between Elizabeth Taylor and Gina Lollobrigida. Del Rey's own image has changed with her experimental new sound, which she describes as a musical cocktail "infused with the freedom ofthe early '70s with low-grade currents of underground jazz tones and a little bit of West Coast fusion." She's backed by a variety of guitars courtesy of Dan Auerbach, the album's producer and frontman of the rock duo The Black Keys, and her look reflects her rockier side. The beehives, Lana Turner homages and '50s Hollywood pin-up references have been swapped for a '60s and '70s mood board that embraces the badassery of Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull. "I love the idea of being able to get up on stage in my favourite denim shorts and my favourite linen shirt and pair them with gold bands and diamonds," she says. "When I first got on stage four years ago, I felt like I had to put a dress on and be presentable in some way," she continues, admitting that Ferragamo, Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren RRL are still staples. "I like the kind of organic-ness ofwomen who feel like they don't have to be flamboyant performance-wise." The aesthetics on her albums have been so potent that she has been explored with a scholarly gaze by professors such as J. Paul Halferty (who routinely screens and discusses Del Rey's video for "National Anthem" with his theatre students at York University) and mentioned in publications such as The Paris Review and Artforum. The latter magazine's essay on Del Rey questions whether she is hoodwinking us all, creating performance art or satire. "My work should be defined as personal," she says when asked about the theory. "It's never a parody. It's sometimes sarcastic. But if it isn't that, then it's all me." Del Rey's voice - which seems to have gotten stronger through the years - is just as enigmatic. It veers from whispers ("Pretty When You Cry") to baby talk ("Florida Kilos") and near-operatic heights ("Sad Girl"), and her delivery also seems to have reached another high. The breathy notes on Ultraviolence's raciest song, "Fucked My Way Up to the Top," sound like she's communicating with ghosts. Much has been made about the song's origins (namely whether Del Rey actually lived the song - i.e., slept her way to her success), but the artist smirks when she's asked about this new conspiracy. "You would never know," she offers. "I mean,you really wouldn't. The interesting things that have happened to me people will never really know about, because the real stuff got lost in the mix." Source

Fader June / July (Online June 4th) - Interviewer: Duncan Cooper Spoiler Cover Story: Lana Del Rey Is Anyone She Wants to Be The camera zooms in on Lana Del Rey as she turns away from the crowd, hiding all but the slightest silhouette of her face. In the background, a massive screen flickers deep purple and blue; beside her on stage sits a potted palm. For one full minute: riotous, embracing applause. Gently, she wipes a tear with the middle finger of her left hand, then wipes her nose, which from this angle appears as the bottom-half of a perfectly slender S curve that begins on her forehead, shimmies down her face and ramps off into the void. Finally, she turns to address the audience, smiles and says, “I think you’re going to have to sing it for me.” The piano starts, and everyone complies, very loudly and very clearly. She tries to sing too, of course, then pauses to cry and smile at the same time, seemingly overwhelmed by the audience’s affection. But no one else stops singing: It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you… Lana Del Rey, the singer whose entire self so often seems a carefully constructed display, didn’t conceive of this scene, like she has the many music videos that helped propel her to fame. First came the eerily star-foreshadowing montages of 2008, in which she stitched together found footage and vamped in front of an American flag under her given name, Lizzy Grant. Back then, sometimes she’d make four videos for the same song, but most times, nobody much saw them. Next came “Video Games,” which applied that same cut-up look to a slightly fuller sound, and thrust Grant, now singing as Lana Del Rey, from bedroom clips to blockbusters. Then the big budgets arrived: she sat on a throne backed by two tigers in the video for “Born to Die,” embodied both Jackie O and Marilyn in a span of minutes for “National Anthem” and, for "Tropico" lounged with Elvis and John Wayne in CGI heaven. Lana Del Rey’s filmography is a master class on how to build an icon, and yet, no footage feels like proof of her iconicity as much as the shaky clip of a teary 2013 performance, shot on a phone by a fan in Dublin. I ask her why she was crying. “I’d been sick on tour for about two years with this medical anomaly that doctors couldn’t figure out,” she says, to my surprise. “That’s a big part of my life: I just feel really sick a lot of the time and can’t figure out why. I’d gotten these shots in Russia, where we’d just been. It was just heavy. It’s just heavy performing for people who really care about you, and you don’t really care that much about yourself sometimes. I thought it was sad. I thought my position was sad. I thought it was sad to be in Ireland singing for people who really cared when I wasn’t sure if I did.” I’d expected self-congratulation, the triumph of finally making it. You never really know. We’re speaking in the Brooklyn backyard of this story’s photographer, and she’s wearing one of his shirts. It fits her poorly—probably a men’s XXL—and with her hair and makeup done up for the cover shoot, she gives the impression of a young lumberjack’s date the morning after prom. She must know this. They’d been taking the photos in the house earlier, in an attempt at a more laid-back glimpse of a star known for her Hollywood glamour, when she noticed a rack of his vintage clothes and asked to pull from it. More than raw beauty, hers is the gift of producing a precise effect; voilá, she looks like somebody’s girlfriend. It’s a few weeks before the release of her second major-label album, Ultraviolence, and like any artist with over a billion YouTube views, the 27-year-old Lana Del Rey is blessed and cursed with a punishing schedule. By the time I click off my recorder, after nearly 90 minutes, her publicist has twice come out to end the interview. In both cases, she rebuffs him. Barefoot, she carries a casualness with hardly a hint of the imperious pop star I’d expected; she’s excited, pensive, a little bit apprehensive. After, she tells me it’s the longest interview she’s ever done. From the backyard where we sit, through an old screen door with a frame rimmed in dried-out vines, I can always hear her entourage. Among the six or seven inside, there’s her bodyguard, formerly employed by Brad Pitt, and her British stylist, Johnny Blueeyes, who during the shoot was prone to bursting into the room and crying, “You’re a staaaar!” The whole team, she says, was hired in 2011, after “Video Games” attracted offers from Interscope and Polydor. “I met everyone the same week,” she says. “Because I was very shy, I just sort of stuck with them.” Later, she mentions the staff again, by way of self-analysis. “I’m never the star of my own show,” she says. “I have a very complicated family life. I have a complicated personal life. It’s not just my life, it’s everyone else’s in this extended family unit. It’s always about someone else, even with the people I work with. I’m the quietest person on the set, generally. I’m actually the one that’s trying to keep it all together. It’s pretty weird. It’s a weird, weird world.” She’s chain-smoking Parliaments. Everyone knows Lana Del Rey’s so-called true identity: she was born Elizabeth Grant, daughter to an entrepreneur who sold domain names. In the press, there’s been a perverse joy in labeling her a phony, whether that’s regarding her supposedly surgically enhanced lips (she has always denied this), or the rebranding that marked her early career. She was born in Lake Placid, in upstate New York, and went to boarding school in Connecticut. When she first started doing shows in 2006, while studying metaphysics at Fordham University in the Bronx, it was with a folky bent and a guitar that her uncle taught her how to play. The F chord was too hard, she later told the BBC’s Mark Savage—“Four fingers? Never going to happen”—but she recorded an acoustic album as May Jailer just the same. (That record, Sirens, was never released, though it eventually leaked online.) In 2008, while still in college, she signed a $10,000 record deal with an indie label called 5 Points and moved to a trailer park in North Bergen, New Jersey. index Magazine filmed a giddy interview with her there; she appears in a car mechanic’s windbreaker, her platinum blonde hair tied up with a baby blue scarf, and, when asked about the “very cohesive package” of her musical identity, says, “It has been a lifelong ambition and desire… to have a defined life and a defined world to live in.” During this period, she teamed with David Kahne, a producer for Paul McCartney and The Strokes, and developed a more idiosyncratic sound for her self-penned lyrics, with affected jazz vocals, synthesized orchestra sections and hip-hop drums—an uncanny mix of old and new. Under the name Lizzy Grant, she released an EP, Kill Kill, and recorded an album, Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant, which sat on 5 Points’ shelf for two years before it was digitally released in 2010. By then, she’d gone brunette with swooping Veronica Lake curls, and was spending time in London in search of another deal. With the help of a newly hired manager and lawyer, she bought back the album rights and pulled it from the market. Henceforth, she would be known as Lana Del Rey. But her past was still there in traces online, the story of a small-town girl with big dreams and the cunning to change herself to make them come true. It’d be an all-American tale, if only she seemed self-made; instead, there was a discomfiting sense of someone else behind the scenes, orchestrating a bait-and-switch with secretly funded videos that only slummed their DIY aesthetic. For an artist who broke online, her father’s background raised red flags—beside selling domain names, he’d worked in advertising and helped market her Lizzy Grant releases. And there was a suspiciously short time between “Video Games,” which was listed by many blogs as a self-release, and the announcement that she’d signed with two major labels. In any case, she was never especially embarrassed about her ambition; rather, she embraced it as a defining trait. On “Radio,” the pluckiest song on Lana Del Rey’s relentlessly downtrodden debut, Born to Die, she sings of success like a taunt: American dreams came true somehow/ I swore I’d chase em until I was dead/ I heard the streets were paved with gold/ That’s what my father said… Baby, love me cause I’m playing on the radio/ How do you like me now? She was a star who announced her own arrival, singing of fame with a wistfulness even as she was just beginning to taste it. Many critics were bristled by her supposed fraud. The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica pronounced Lana Del Rey D.O.A. in a scathing review, concluding with: “The only real option is to wash off that face paint, muss up that hair and try again in a few years. There are so many more names out there for the choosing.” Pitchfork’s Lindsay Zoladz called Born to Die “the album equivalent of a faked orgasm.” It was an unusual time for music, with major labels chasing the internet’s whims by poaching unproven newcomers off the strength of a viral track and a look. For skeptics, Lana Del Rey became a symbol of puffed-up online buzz itself. (Before Zoladz’s 5.5 review, Pitchfork had notably awarded “Video Games” Best New Track and granted her a Rising profile, ostensibly reserved for artists they recommend.) The Hipster Runoff blogger Carles, a one-man peanut gallery to the indie press, was Lana Del Rey’s most visceral and obsessive critic, but also one of the most insightful, because criticizing her always came hand-in-hand with criticizing himself and the music web’s ceaseless appetite for breaking artists to sell to brands (or take down in think pieces). He called it their “dark, abusive, co-dependent relationship on the content farm.” But as it turns out, a lot of music fans didn’t care. Today, Born to Die has sold over 7 million copies worldwide, more than Beyoncé’s last two albums combined. Ten months after the LP’s release, her Paradise EP debuted in Billboard’s top 10. Eight months later, Cedric Gervais’ EDM remix of “Summertime Sadness” went platinum; soon after, her song for The Great Gatsby soundtrack, “Young and Beautiful,” went platinum, too. On that last track, a haunting orchestral number, she directly addresses her own status and the position of many a woman, pop idol or not: Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful? Sometimes her songs drag long, and sometimes her self-seriousness can be grating, but in beautiful moments such as that, with her voice situated among an aptly hot-blooded score, Lana Del Rey’s confidence about her own vulnerability transcends melodrama into the realms of great art. In the period since her big authenticity reckoning, one thing has become clear: accusations of constructedness would not crush her. She says they came close, though. Shortly after the release of “Video Games,” she started dating another musician, Barrie-James O’Neill. According to a profile of her in Nylon, he first phoned her out of the blue after his manager sent him the video with the caption “Your future ex-wife.” I ask what he was like during the period of her most pronounced attacks. “He was worried,” she says. “I was, you know, a mess. I totally wanted to kill myself every day.” Over the years, four themes have come to define her lyrics, whichever the persona: indecisiveness, submissiveness, reverence for American icons and self-destructiveness, both within herself and the men she idolizes in song. It’s a lot of “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss),” and in fact, she quotes that infamous song unwinkingly on the title track of Ultraviolence, before continuing, You’re my cult leader, I love you forever, I love you forever. The consistency at which these four themes appear in her music suggests not quite a foxy con artist, but rather someone moving superficial pieces around themselves—a name, a look—until they find a comfortable identity, much like anybody navigating young adulthood. So I ask her what she was up to with those old Lizzy Grant videos, when she’d don a Marilyn Monroe wig, drape herself in the stars and stripes and blow the webcam a kiss. “Honestly, I feel like it’s more of a girl thing,” she says. “I was just kind of playing, and, literally, I’m still playing. For me, being this way and dressed like this isn’t different than being out in a wig. It’s all the same to me. It’s all nothing, it’s all everything. I could really go any way. I’ve lived a lot of different lives. I lived down in Alabama with my boyfriend, I lived here in Brooklyn and in Jersey. I’ve been a lot of different people, I guess.” There’s a monologue that opens her “Ride” video, which she tells me is autobiographical. Part of it goes like this: “I was always an unusual girl. My mother told me I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.” In the video, she has sex with a 40-something biker on a pinball machine. In “National Anthem,” she’s married to A$AP Rocky, who portrays a black president who likes to shoot dice. In “Tropico,” she runs with a Hispanic crowd. In a number of others, she’s with a scrawny white guy with tattoos. The men change but sex is constant; Lana Del Rey embodies searching for yourself in someone else. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she tells me at one point. “I’m trying to do what feels right. I tried a lot of different ways of life, you know, things I never really talk about, just because they are kind of different. I didn’t really have one fixed way that I could envision myself living. Going from a good relationship to a good relationship—I thought that was healthy.” Her portrayal of those relationships, though, has prompted mixed reviews among feminists. Some criticize the way she seems to idealize powerlessness and servitude, while others appreciate her fluid embodiment of different identities, as well as her candor about both her desire and her weakness. In any case, her comments on the subject will be disappointing for both camps: “For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept,” she says. “I’m more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities. Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested.” Fortunately, her ambivalence about politics doesn’t undo any subversiveness that may be embedded in her work (though, nor does it excuse any ill it may cause). When pressed, she adds, more illuminatingly, “My idea of a true feminist is a woman who feels free enough to do whatever she wants.” I ask her why she’s always being choked in her videos, and she gives a fitting answer: “I like a little hardcore love.” That raises an important point: she’s the one willing these scenarios into existence, romanticizing the very things that hurt her. She writes her own songs and music video treatments, and a similar self-mythologizing applies to her interviews, too. In a Lizzy Grant-era piece for the Huffington Post, she told a reporter, “Strangest performance: Alone in a basement for a handsome record executive. Strangest [song] ever written: Back at his office while I was making out with him.” When I ask her if she regrets joking like that, given how often people perceived her as a puppet of some executive team, she says, no, the story was true: “I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.” Rather than shying away from the snake pit that is sex and power, she walks right in. On Ultraviolence, there’s a song called “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” But is she happy now that she’s there? No matter what, her singing voice seems so sad. In an essay called “The Meaning of Lana Del Rey,” a French academic named Catherine Vigier offers one explanation: “She is representing and speaking to a contradiction facing thousands of young women today, women who have followed mainstream society’s prescriptions for success in what has been called a post-feminist world, but who find that real liberation and genuine satisfaction elude them.” Vigier goes on to argue that, for women living under capitalism, there can never be happiness—not through money, nor celebrity, nor even love—and she says the music makes this point clear. So there you have it: a post-feminist, socialist reading of Lana Del Rey. There’s a queer reading available, too, if you consider her identity-play synonymous with dressing in drag, as Christopher Glazek did in Artforum, calling her a “great queer performance artist.” With Lana Del Rey, everybody’s a critic, and any interpretation is possible. By the time of Ultraviolence’s release, those infinite opinions have long since canceled each other out, leaving room for listeners to take up a more subjective relationship with her music without the pressure of coming up with something clever. Compared to Born to Die, the new album sounds far more like straight-up rock music, recorded in live takes with a Nashville band assembled by producer Dan Auerbach. She’s withdrawing from contemporary pop, a space in which she says she never felt comfortable; gone are the genre-blurring samples that gave her debut the impression of trying too hard to be trendy. The album feels like a sprawling American desert, devastatingly huge, windswept by shrieking electric guitars. Lana Del Rey is surrounded by ghosts and completely alone, the last lines of her verses reverbed out and leading nowhere forever. We could go back to the start, she sings on the title track, but I don’t know where we are. Certainly the rock ballad suits her retro preoccupation; the lead single “West Coast” evokes the opening riff of The Beatles’ “And I Love Her” and the chord progression from The Stooges’ proto-punk “Dirt.” She seems to have found confidence in psych-rock and narcotized swing. One of the most telling lines from Born to Die was on the song “Off to the Races”: I’m not afraid to say that I’d die without him. Within the self-contained world of that album, this was both a low-point and a high-point, with Lana copping to utter reliance on men but also having the self-awareness to say so. On the Ultraviolence standout “Brooklyn Baby,” she exalts her band-leader boyfriend for a few verses, then lands on this uncharacteristically self-assured gem: Yeah, my boyfriend’s really cool/ But he’s not as cool as me. I ask her about the line, and she says, “That wasn’t even supposed to be there, and I kind of sang it with a smile, and Dan was looking at me and laughing. I’m just kind of fucking around.” She’s already convinced everyone else of her worth, but here she seems to have finally convinced herself. In that Lizzy Grant interview with Huffington Post, she spoke of her love of American icons: “All the good stuff is real but isn’t, myself included… Whatever you choose to be your reality is your reality.” You can be the president’s wife, as in “National Anthem,” and you can be his mistress; you can be a stripper and you can be Eve, as in “Tropico”; it doesn’t matter which version of yourself came first when you can be everything at once. That’s a powerful thought, and I’m not sure she even completely understands it. “My career isn’t about me,” she tells me at one point, lamenting the misunderstandings about her that she says have riddled her critics’ attacks. “My career is a reflection of journalism, current-day journalism. My public persona and career has nothing to do with my internal process or my personal life. It is actually just a reflection on writers’ creative processes and where they’re at in 2014. Literally has nothing to do with me. Most of anything you’ve ever read is not true.” We don’t know who she is, but you know what? Neither does she. As she moves from one character to another in her music videos, and from one type of man to another, from one recording alias to another, Lana Del Rey performs not just existential crisis but the power to blindly push through it. On Ultraviolence’s “Money Power Glory,” she sings, My life it comprises of losses and wins and fails and falls, a line immediately followed by more self-sacrifice: I can do it if you really, really like that. Even if she’s only adapting to curry favor, isn’t that what we all do? We perform identity every day, tweaking ourselves for a boyfriend and a boss. Using the very idea of malleability, Lana Del Rey has fashioned herself a superstar, setting to music the human drama of altering yourself to survive and rise. Still, she’s enamored with self-destruction, and perhaps shapeshifting is also about precisely that: you play so many characters that you lose any stable sense of yourself, so that when you’re standing in front of a crowd, for example, and they’re screaming your praises, your response is confusion and tears. At shows these days, she takes breaks between songs to sign things and take pictures with fans. A recent reviewer described the crowd’s reception as hitting “approximately jet-engine volume”; a music executive who saw her said it was like she was The Beatles. But talking to her, reality bends until only sadness seems like an appropriate response. That raincloud-eyed, tattooed guy who always appears in her videos, from “Blue Jeans” to “West Coast”—his name is Bradley Soileau. Toward the end of our talk, I ask her why she has used him so much. “I like Brad because I respect him that he’s free enough to use his body as a canvas,” she says. “He has a quote about war written across his forehead. I like that he knew that alienated him from society in a way that he couldn’t work regular jobs. He made a conscious decision and manifested it physically that he was going to be on the periphery. I like what that symbolizes.” That sounds a lot like what happens to someone when they become a famous musician, I tell her. There’s no going back for her either. “That’s true,” she says. “It’s pretty fucked up.” A stray cat tip-toes across the fence surrounding the backyard, and Lana Del Rey lights another cigarette. I ask her what she misses the most. “I miss everything.” Source

I've started to list links of these threads in the Google Docs (links are in the To Do threads iirc) but it's very, very tough as sometimes the translations aren't for example in the first post or something and there's a SHITLOAD of links to find. But I completely agree that it would be ideal. That would also require mod powers from us no? It's not impossible to know which ones have been made before, just long and tedious. But definitely doable and if this is what you prefer we can up the ante!

I'm as obsessively organised as you but *perhaps* in a much more messy/flamboyant way haha so I completely agree with your remarks on the form but this is personally the kind of things I check in last. Like for example I've made a list of everything I need to double check and the "transcription" thing is in it, I'm just waiting to make sure I first do all the threads to then review one by one. About the translations, I'm only able to do those in French but I actually had a question about this. I'm unfortunately a perfectionist and I've noticed that for some French interviews, some people have made translations but they're often cut short or somehow accurate. I'm torn up between redoing them entirely and definitely accurately myself or use the work of previous users to give them the credit they're definitely due. For example I've made the thread for Madame Figaro 2014 this way. I don't feel comfortable at all with the translation that's been posted and that doesn't reflect the interview / article entirely but I respect the user's work too. Thoughts? Oh and I haven't forgot what you said too, that's why I was wondering if it was perhaps possible to get just the powers required to move threads because I too feel uncomfortable with getting credit instead of them. And this isn't the place, but after the Allie Eggs fiasco, if there's a need for a new mod, I would gladly love to contribute anyway. The articles/interviews you're talking about is a big bummer for me, especially when planning the directories, my instinct would be to add them but it's a difficult choice, I think this is the kind of decision that has to be taken as community. I HIGHLY suggest more thought to be given in the thread naming method. I class all my Lana albums by years and I instinctively class everything by year so I naturally am a big supporter of the year naming method. It's extremely useful to see the progression of her mentality and evolution. I would be more than happy to rename all the threads to fit myself but it requires mod powers that I don't have. This is obviously subject to discussion but I'm a firm believer of the year method. It's one of the reasons why I find the Early Shows to be so well organized, too. @@Valentino if you're around here, there's a bunch of 2012 interviews that have been uncovered recently and I would rip them with Audacity but my connection bugs and crashes everytime and the interviews are 45m long, and I've heard that you could rip in original quality so if you have free time hmu! Also, can a mod please help me format the 2014 directory cause it's making me want to kill myself

Can we see what we posted because I think I forgot WC and put something else and if I did my ass needs to be dragged. Also go team Pete Ibsen!

Can't see it either

Complex August / September - Interviewer: Dana Droppo Spoiler AGAINST THE GRAIN LANA DEL REY KNOWS WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HER. AND SHE’S LEARNED TO LIVE WITH IT. Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey. On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour. Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name. In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase. Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.” For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be. When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music? Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me. What do you mean? Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel. What defines being in a good place? Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved. Did you miss Brooklyn? missed Brooklyn. I missed the people. How are the people here different? They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well. Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers. I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise. You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well? Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity. You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked. When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you? That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one. What’s the relationship between violence and love? I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day. Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that? Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse. Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing? Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life. Do tell. Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written. Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence? [sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference. Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus? When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.] How did you meet Dan? I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks. Wow. It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.] You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot. Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it. Is it an addiction? Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker. How long have you been smoking? Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke. That’s a long time to be standing in front of people. t’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years. There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed? A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story. There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top? It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying. What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received? That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun. That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.” She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want. What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life? In terms of money? It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things. What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you? Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability. Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up. And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up. Fucked you up how? I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious. Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world? That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka. What were you listening to when you were writing? I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks. Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist? No, they’re all pretty good. You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up. Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making? If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think? It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart. It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care. Do you feel vindicated? I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated. How come? I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great. You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones. Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out. Source

Madame Figaro June 27th - Interviewer: Félicien Cassan Translation courtesy of @ Spoiler Madame Figaro - Do you have the feeling that the image is always as important as the music? Lana Del Rey. - with the first record, I didn't have the feeling that I interested people musically. The project was dictated thus more by the images. This time, I hope that the public won't focus on appearances. I felt controlled by the blurred perception that people had of me, but I don't feel dependent from it now. Your voice appears to be less fragile, as if you were fighting against elements, in particular against the guitars which Dan Auerbach (singer and guitarist of the Black Keys) raised against you. I feel like a warrior. A tired warrior, but a warrior. The difference was that I was singing live, in the same room as the band, and recording everything in a single take. It sounded more natural. We kept numerous imperfections. I worked with the same team, began to produce in Electric Lady Studios, in New York, where I met Dan. Then I went to Nashville during six weeks to restructure the songs. Does the record's name, "Ultraviolence", mean that you were not prepared for the success of the previous album? Are you ready now ? Being rather a solitary kind of person, I don't feel more prepared, but at least I'm fighting. The last three years were very hard, they changed me. Even writing became difficult to me, because I was too much surrounded. When everything around you works as the same speed as you and bores you, suddenly the energy of a meeting an unknown can be rather powerful to give you back the desire and the idea of a melody. These moments became rare, I don't live that many fantastic experiences. For that, I need to take my old car, drive to the beach, and wait. It seems obvious that you belong to the west coast and to all its myths, with your very cinematographic writting style for example. Is it a source of inspiration? Yes, undoubtedly, I see images when I write. Visions of future, colors. And I hope to have numerous facets. There is always a dichotomy in me. Concerning the cinema, Some people already proposed me roles in some independent movies shot in Laurel Canyon, set in the 1960s and 1970, but they weren't released. But acting, playing are natural extensions of my work. I would like to shoot with Darren Aronofsky. Or Hitchcock if he was still alive. My inspiration's also very linked to the history and the energy of Los Angeles, the characters I met, like my tattooer, Mark Mahoney. I like the "early 90s" feeling of the city, which evokes a kind of lost cinematography. Just like the spectacular landscapes of L.A. like Pacific Coast Highway, the shoreline. Your albums abound in very melancholic contrasts. You seem to hide a secret under skin... I try to remain reasonable and healthy, but, inside, I carry many contradictions. I have peaceful moments and a great deal of torments. It is tempestuous. As I adore the color of the words, I chose "Ultraviolence" as a title for the sound that it creates under the tongue, but also for the juxtaposition of a luxurious tone with the hardness of "violence". It pleases me. When we listened to your album for the first time, we thought of rock, but is it more complex than that? I am delighted to hear that, even if the main influence is rock, in its most classic shape, in the style of The Eagles or Bob Seger. In fact, I wonder if it is not the ideal music to drive. (Laughter). There's an undisciplined and wild mood in this record. Besides, some were not very happy to discover that there was also a kind of a jazz tone in "Shades of Cool" (EDITOR'S NOTE : for us, the most beautiful song on the album). According to me, everything comes from the alchemy created between me and Dan Auerbach and the group. When I hear really fat and gritty electric guitars, it reminds me of music festivals, I picture an outside stage. Weren't you afraid that this indie side made the record unsaleable? A little bit, yes. And you seem to be proud of it Yes. (she laughs). I shouldn't, but it means that my work conveys exactly what I wanted to transmit. We took care and polished all the songs so that they really sound like me, to respect my philosophy, which is to compose songs which speak to me at first. So, what could be seen as diva poses is in fact perfectionism. What pleases you so much in the act of creation? I care a lot about my songs. When I was in Nashville, I rented a farm and, every day, I sat down for hours and listened to the band : I was in my place. When it's over, I feel empty and I wait for new signs. I've always looked for signs in everything. I think ceaselessly of death, the concept of mortality is a vagueness that is constantly threatening. I find it to be heavy, crushing, really. What is the purpose? And what if there's nothing after? I believe in a power bigger than us, who can guide us and help us to find the answers. But it is difficult to perceive it when you are constantly in movement. Are you happy? Not really. It is difficult to be happy, I always feel a kind of malaise, and I'm stuck, always expecting something.I am a little disorientated. When I finish something, I am very annoyed… Behind The Scenes video Source

Clash June 16th - Interviewer: Joe Zadeh Spoiler American Dreamer: Lana Del Rey Interviewed Fear and luxury on the 'Ultraviolence' trail… California has a very direct and unforgiving steam beer called Anchor. But in Hollywood nobody drinks Anchor, because they prefer fresh peach Bellinis. Since arriving here three days ago, every part-time actor I’ve met drinking these Bellinis, alone in the Chateau Marmont, says this feeling of dreamy detachment I’m experiencing is a spell well known to marinate your mind’s eye after a few days on the West Coast. I suppose you could call it ‘Californication’. All around, I see the smoked glass freeze-frame of a film I once caught. The sidewalks of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, Johnny Utah punching surfers on Leo Carrillo State Beach, or Billy Hoyle in White Men Can’t Jump arriving to play basketball on Windward Avenue in a ’60s Cutlass Convertible. This must be what turned David Hockney of ballsy British portraiture into David Hockney of paradise poolsides and burnt sienna buildings. It’s like the very geography of Los Angeles strokes you into a coma of ignorant bliss and subdued optimism, where the future always looks good because you’ve stopped paying any attention to the past. Anchor tastes like the world you’ve got, and those Bellinis like the world you want. But you can’t drink Bellinis forever. Lana Del Rey isn’t from LA – she was born Elizabeth Grant in New York in the summer of 1986 – but her new album, ‘Ultraviolence’, is what she calls “California driven”. “I like the idea of talking about it more and more and living here more and more, and falling into a real life here by the ocean. There is definitely an over-arching theme of finding a home and being on the West Coast.” She’s on her backyard patio when I arrive, and as I take a seat she slopes on a recliner, bathed under the sun’s first blush. I tell her about the theme of our forthcoming magazine, the American Dream, and she laughs: “I am definitely chasing my own little American Dream.” She’s still carrying the glow of a heavenly Coachella performance just 48 hours earlier. Standing in the crowd for that show, I saw things I didn’t expect. In a tangerine dress patterned with night-fire hibiscus, she pattered barefoot around the stage – resembling a real-life Holly Golightly – delivering tracks like ‘Body Electric’, ‘Blue Jeans’ and ‘Ride’ at a trance-inducing pace. But, around me, people weren’t simply soaking it in. They were really letting it out: cathartically embracing the angelic poet for every line she had, responding with tears, disbelief, weird expressions of joy, and frantic attempts to touch her as she passed by. “She didn’t really tour America for the last album,” explains Lana’s father, who I strike up a conversation with after we realise our shared affinity for tasteless (by which I mean killer) Hawaiian shirts. “This is the first time they’ve seen her live. They want to touch her. It’s like they didn’t believe she really existed.” I’d hazard a guess that the stateside critical reception Lana received after her breakthrough (second) album, 2012’s ‘Born To Die’, played a role in her choice not to tour America until now. While Europe generally embraced the record, a less-favourable gust blew from many publications across the Atlantic. It was a strange and personal one that often eschewed musical assessment in favour of troll-ish, chauvinistic rambles that boiled quite redundantly down to the size of her lips, how she’d changed her hair, and that she used to call herself Lizzy Grant. I’ll admit, while observing this backlash with disdain, there was a small and shameful slither of excitement and curiosity within me, which relished the fracas. I wanted to know how someone could garner so much hate and praise in equal measure. A split-second of reticence diminishes, before Lana willingly reflects. “It was never about the music for them. My public story is more a story about journalism; like a commentary on how modern-day journalism works. None of the stuff is ever really about me, because I didn’t even give that many interviews. Most of the stuff written was unsolicited or creative writing, and a lot of it was just wrong. I mean, there were pictures that had been f*cked with to look different. It was very weird.” I can tell pretty quickly that though she may have risen above such clawing, some scars still remain. “When nobody has ever written about you before, you are interested in what they have to say. You hope it’s good. When it isn’t and you keep going anyway, you have to not care. You can’t.” It’s no surprise that, through all this, Lana has become a darling of American culture. After all if you’re loved, then your lovers will celebrate you, but only when you’re loved and hated in equal measure will you get the whole world talking. The question is: at what cost? I ask her if she ever considered giving up on music. “Every day,” she admits. “I didn’t want to do it, ever. You can make music just for making music. You don’t have to put it on YouTube, and that was definitely a viable option for me. I have a lot of passions and making music was always something I would do for fun. However, from what happened, it wasn’t worth it most of the time.” It is interesting to consider the symbolism of Lana’s new album title, ‘Ultraviolence’, which is taken from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. In the Stanley Kubrick screen adaptation of that film, music is salvation for the deeply troubled protagonist Alex. In spite of the pain, horror and “ultraviolence” around him, music is the only true passion that can relieve him and guide him to euphoria. However, it is music that ultimately leads to his demise. “It’s still not really worth all the bullshit,” continues Lana. “Being able to tell my story through music is totally amazing, but that is where it begins and ends.” She flashes a smile, and if there was any bitterness in there, she’s smothered it with a dominant expression of dignity. “I don’t care now, because I can’t. I already know what’s coming. It’s gonna be disastrous on some level, in some way.” Lana might feel like she stares down a barrel of inevitable adversity, but her new album carries no sign of apprehension. ‘Born To Die’, and its eight-track ‘Paradise’ extension, was a luxurious and impressive record, a real fresh peach Bellini, enriched in ’50s and ’60s Americana, with the grandiose string sections, the beehive hairdo, and the fallen angel narrative. But it was clearly a record that had been through the tinkering mills. Shaken, stirred and thoroughly mixed. Conversely, ‘Ultraviolence’ – released on June 16th – is a rugged beast, an unforgiving and direct steam beer, made with a band, in a room. The earnest, lo-fi approach smacks of Lana’s almost-eponymous 2010 debut album, (swapping vowels to be titled ‘Lana Del Ray’) but with a much beefier mass of modified guitars and irregular harmonic collisions. Pop, jazz, rock and a lineage of classic records colour its influences: Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’, The Turtles’ ‘Happy Together’, The Byrds’ ‘Young Than Yesterday’. It’s clear that her producer, The Black Keys’ blues-rock maverick Dan Auerbach, was the boiling water on this psychedelic souchong. “I didn’t know a lot about Dan or his records when I first met him,” divulges Lana. “For instance, I didn’t know that the word he loved to use was ‘fuzz’. For an age, I had been saying that I needed the fuzz and the fire. When we met, he was like, ‘Well, I’m pretty known for the fuzz.’ So I knew: ‘Cool! You’re my man!’” Before Dan, there was December (New York, 2013, cold). Lana decided she was ready to take what she’d been working on into a studio. That decision eventually resulted in a twist of fate that would ultimately ignite ‘Ultraviolence’. “I went to Electric Lady Studios down in the East Village for a while,” she explains. “My friend runs it now, so he let me have the whole place to myself for five weeks. I produced everything myself with my guitar player and then we hired a session drummer. We had made this kind of classic rock-inspired record – 11 tracks. So, I thought I was done.” She laughs. “And then, on the last night, I met Dan. We went out to a club, we looked at each other and we were like, ‘Maybe we should do this together?’ It was rare for me, because it was really spontaneous. Five days later, I flew to Nashville and played all our tracks to Dan. We had been talking about this ‘tropiCali’ vibe, about how I loved LA, and that it was grounding me. I felt like the energy in LA was really sexy. But being there also enhanced my love for the East Coast, in being away from it. We really had this West Coast sound in mind, but with an East Coast flavour. And then we recorded it in the middle of the country. It was an American amalgamation.” With an album inspired by the East and West, and made in the middle, would it be fair to assume that America is Lana Del Rey’s ultimate creative muse? “It definitely was. I was trying to get my loving feeling back for New York, because a lot of shit went wrong there. I had a real aromatic inclination there, alone for years, wandering the streets, feeling free and unhinged. I didn’t feel free once things got bigger. I lost that feeling. So, coming back West and working with a stranger like Dan made me feel more alive and more in touch with America.” I ask Lana about her choice of John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis as heavenly spirits in the Garden of Eden for her short film, Tropico. “I wrote a little monologue for everyone who came to the premiere of Tropico. When I was studying philosophy my teacher told me that it’s okay to feel like the people you’re closest to aren’t alive anymore. Sometimes that is the best company to keep. It’s about the people that pondered the same questions as you did, and had the same sort of life mentality as you. I was upset and inspired by that premise. “I knew then, really, that my closest friends would be people I have never really met before. I was different and I didn’t know many people who felt about mortality how I did. As a result, I do feel a personal connection with the icons: John Wayne, Elvis. I loved how nice Marilyn was, I related to her. Finding girls who were as loving and warm as her is hard.” Like Lana, Marilyn Monroe wasn’t one without her detractors. “Success makes so many people hate you,” she once said, “I wish it wasn’t that way.” Similarly, some still see Del Rey’s femme fatale aura as a commercial angle aimed purely to incite lust and sell, sell and sell again. “Forget about singing,” begins a recent live review in The Chicago Tribune, “Lana Del Rey could’ve passed for a swimsuit model posing for paparazzi cameras on Friday at a sold-out Aragon”, epitomising how, to many, her enchantment will always be superficial. But for more avid fans, her allure is artistically cavernous. Just like Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly, Charles Vidor’s Gilda, or even the original Carmen, yes, there is a surface of seduction – but beyond that image, there is deep play in action. Lana personifies a struggle between stability and freedom; she conveys expressions of escapism, a scramble for courage in the face of fatalism, a subconscious need to confess, a desire for power. This is no swimsuit competition. This expressive storyteller springs from the darkness for the new album track ‘Money Power Glory’. It might have textured guitars and a rock soundscape, but – with a trudging beat, and bass so deep even Adele wouldn’t roll in it – this track is essentially gold-digger dub. Lana opens with her trademark rap drawl, before peaking with some soaring vocals, a good octave higher than the smoky and languorous alto depths she’s known for. “I want money and all your power and all your glory,” chimes the lyrical Medusa, “I’m going to take you for all you’ve got.” This mood continues into ‘Sad Girl’, which might not be her most explosive or infectious song, but these lyrics are expertly vivid, and a disturbing and sadistic love song is spun into a cinematic plot. “Being a mistress might not appeal to fools like you,” she derides, “but you haven’t seen my man.” The line typifies this track’s motif: that despite the best intentions of the onlooker, sometimes people don’t want to be saved. All this Mary Gaitskill-like debased romance is sugar coated with ghostly production and racy Spanish guitar. ‘Shades Of Cool’ rises like a deathly waltz for depressive lovers, and it illustrates this turmoil with a jazz air, slow drums, a stargazing chorus and a helter-skelter middle-eight. I begin to ask Lana what her favourite track is. “(Album opener) ‘Cruel World’,” she decides, before I’ve even finished. “I went down to the beach and I was thinking about everything, personally. The verse is thoughtful and laid back, but then the chorus falls into this world of chaotic and heavy sub-bass. The juxtaposition of those two worlds, the peaceful beginning and the chaotic chorus, it summed up my personal circumstances of everything going easily and then everything being f*cked up. It felt like me.” On this West Coast she so fervently draws from, the one I’m sitting beside right now, even the weather is in on it. In some pact of pathetic fallacy, it stubbornly refuses to rain, ever, and instead bakes the city in a constant beam of delusional ‘everything’s fine’ sunshine. One time, in the throes of jet lag, I did catch it lightly sprinkling at 5.30am, and as I looked down from the 10th floor of my hotel, it felt like the glamorous districts of Bel Air, Beverly Hills and Westwood were recoiling from me like a girl with no make-up on yet, yelling: ‘You weren’t supposed to see me like this!’ Even now, as the idiotic sun burns down onto the patio, I swear I can hear each stone cracking in surrender. Sensing the heat, Lana asks if I want to take a walk, and for some corporeal reason that first movement in an hour – sending chemicals fizzing, blood flow rising and muscles warming – sparks a shift to deeper conversation. “When I was 15, I had this teacher called Gene Campbell, who is still my good friend,” begins Lana. “In boarding school, to become a teacher you don’t have to have a Masters. I was 15 and he was 22, out of Georgetown. He was young, and at school you were allowed to take trips out at the weekends. On our driving trips around the Connecticut counties, he introduced me to Nabokov, (Allen) Ginsberg, (Walt) Whitman, and even Tupac and Biggie. He was my gateway to inspirational culture. Those inspirations I got when I was 15 are still my only inspirations. I draw from that same well. It’s one world I dip into to create other worlds. Like this philosopher Josiah Royce once said: ‘Without the roots, you can’t have any fruits.’” The idea of “sculpting your own world to live in” is a priority to Lana, and it is from this inherited inspiration that she irrigates Planet Del Rey. We find an exaggerated form of this world in the visual art that accompanies her music, just as much as the tracks themselves. She raises a finger that beams to me ‘hold that thought’, and scurries into the house only to return with a large hardback photography book under arm. The cover reads Pulp Art Book, and carries the image of a naked woman wearing a Native Indian warbonnet while lighting a cigarette. “A friend gave this to me as a present, but for some reason they thought the photographer (Neil Krug) was dead,” explains Lana. Krug’s work is bold, and comes across like that of a spaghetti Western surrealist with an eye for finding the artistic merit in ’70s American schlock. This book in particular is a collection of sublime moments captured through ancient Polaroids, which portray kaleidoscopic acid fantasies, B-movie sexploitation/violence, and Middle American subculture. “I was so heavily influenced by it, always thinking he was dead,” says Lana. Fortunately, the information was duff: Neil wasn’t dead. He was alive, well, and managing both very nearby in Los Angeles. It didn’t take too long for the pair to hook up some long-term plans, and his visual impact on ‘Ultraviolence’ has been prominent. “For some reason, he has been really life changing for me,” admits Lana. “He loves painting Polaroids and making little 8x10s. I saw one of the shots he took of me, and I felt it had to be the album cover. That photo influenced me to change the track listing.” Only yesterday, I watched Neil shoot Lana on a beach location in Malibu for Clash. When the camera stopped, and nobody was adjusting a fringe, summoning a pose or straightening a collar, she paused alone in the ocean, splashing lightly, seizing a tranquil moment while throwing an endless gaze at the Pacific horizon. It reminded me of a line by the Californian writer Joan Didion: “Here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.” I ask Lana if she remembers it. “I’m like a little fish,” she proudly declares. “When you get to that water, and you’re not from here, it feels like you’re as far as you can go. You have your feet in the ocean and you’re at the edge of the world.” I ask if her spirituality resides purely with sublime nature, or is there some religion in there? “I got to a point 10 years ago where everything was so wrong in my personal life that I let go and stopped willing my way into life. When I let go of everything and stopped trying to become a singer and write good songs and be happy, things then fell into place. I was surrendering to life on life’s terms. It was this very real experience with a life science that nobody had taught me. You let go of everything you think you want, and focus on everything you love, so it’s the only vibration you’re putting out there.” So, when you cease focusing on your desires, the things you’ve always wanted come naturally to you? “No. It’s feeling like you’re already there; that you are where you wanted to be the whole time. You just have to imaginatively let it already be so.” It’s that idea of decorating reality with elements of fantasy that lines ‘Ultraviolence’: this marriage of an orange-blossomed West Coast dream with bleak and difficult East Coast realism; the idea of seeing the blue pill and the red pill, and choosing to double dunt both. It’s ordering a fresh peach Bellini, and pouring in a can of Anchor. Source

Galore November 25th - Interviewer: Chuck Grant Spoiler LANA DEL REY – “AT HOME” EXCLUSIVE COVER SHOOT & INTERVIEW WITH LANA This cover marks the second anniversary of Galore. We are celebrating with a very special collectors issue staring our favorite songstress Lana Del Rey​, who we feel embodies all the charisma and sex appeal that we love at Galore. Photographed by her beau Francesco Carrozzini on the beach in Malibu, and in her home in Los Angeles, California. The classic shoot radiates Lana’s timeless glamour and the poetic and mysterious beauty of her music, we also teamed up with the cool artist collective Faile as they did all the amazing graphics and art for this special issue we hope you enjoy. Love, Prince + Jacob Are you working on anything new? Yeah, I just wrote two songs for Tim Burton and Harvey Weinstein’s film called Big Eyes and I’m working on a new record. I’m also always writing small pieces for independent films etc. Dan Heath and Rick Nowels are two of my dearest friends and producers and we are always up to something. Where do you live and how many cars do you have? I live in Koreatown, in east LA and I have two Jags. Who do you listen to? I stream KJazz wherever I am on my phone. That is the only thing I listen to. Who do you f*** with in the music business? I f*** with Azealia Banks because I have the same artistic inclinations as her and the same taste in men. Who do you feel you are connected to in music on a psychic and psychological level? Cat Power and Father John Misty. Who do you most relate to in terms of your career right now? Lil Kim What do you love? I love the beach. I love when I have those rare moments where I just turn off and don’t worry about anything- maybe put the radio on, drive from LA to Santa Barbara. Maybe take a boat along the coast. I also like to write, late at night near Wilshire Boulevard. I know when you lived in New York for 8 years you said you’d never leave, What happened? I loved New York. When I was there it was almost my sole source of inspiration, more than any other man, writer or rapper, but it’s harder for me to get around now. I used to take late night walks over the Williamsburg Bridge, go to all the 24 hour diners with $5 and beg the waiters to let me stay all night in exchange for the purchase of one giant slice of chocolate cake. I would sit for hours and read about interesting people like Karl Lagerfeld and listen to books on tape by Tony Robins to keep me company. I would take the D train to Coney Island, take the D train back to the Bronx where I lived on Hughes Avenue. I wonder how many notebooks you filled on those subway rides… So many. I remember for the short time we lived together in NYC, I used to come home from work and see the entire wall of our studio apartment covered in weird tropical backdrops from the Party City store. There would be tinsel everywhere and streamers taped to the walls and I was furious because it looked like the most bizarre amateur movie set, plus I was worried for your sanity because I couldn’t see where you were going with all of it. Looking back though, your obsession with strange nick knacks and Hawaiian embellishments were like little hints of colors to come for future sounds and videos. Yeah, of course I remember those days. You hated my electric fishtank which gave me endless amusement. (She winks!) For the record, I loved that fish tank, you gave it to me for my 19th birthday. I believe the inadvertant theme was ‘Chinatown.’ Now, I know you don’t love to talk about this because journalists have sort of mythologized your past but let’s talk about the trailer park you lived in for a few years- I shot you there when you were 22 and continued to shoot you there for a couple years while you were writing and entertaining and wrapping up your album with David Kahne. You were so sweet and happy that you had your very own place to write and reside in, and extra money from that $10,000 indie contract. It was also a sad time for you because you separated from Steven Mertens who had originally produced that record and who was your boyfriend at the time. I don’t really have to ask you this because as your sister, I think I already know, but would you say this was your most enriching time as an artist and happiest time in New York (despite the split from Steven.) [smile] Yes. Do you remember decorating David Kahne’s studio? I remember sitting next to a decorative Urn during one of your recording sessions. Even now, you’ll bring ribbons or bows or specific iconography to recording sessions. How important is it that your space reflects your personal style or headspace? I honestly haven’t thought about that in so long. I used to have to have some sort of talisman with me if I was writing. Something connected to the lyrics like a sparkle jumprope or a golden compact mirror- at the time it was really important. Now I have internalized so much of what I’ve come to love that I don’t think about it as much any more. Why do some people give you a hard time in general? I choose to write about what I know. I choose not to discuss those stories any further than my music. It doesn’t make things easy for me publicly or in interviews and I do interviews because I believe the music is good enough for me to support it as best I can. Sometimes when the things you say and the way you look don’t add up- people are quick to label you as an impersonator or feel like you’re not entitled to the life experiences you’ve really lived. They’re not deep enough to intuit. I know you told me in person that you were grateful for your time spent with Jon Parales from the New York Times, what made that experience better than the rest? For one, he had manners. He was articulate and insightful and aware that I hadn’t done interviews for a year. He did what so many people can’t do which is gauge who a person is through intuition and feeling. Also known as reading between the lines. He has his own internal moral compass and had nothing to gain by telling lies. Despite the difficulties you’ve had and the tumultuous relationship with the media, it seems like the people who really listened to your record unanimously agree that Ultraviolence is rich with beautiful melodies and uncompromisingly true to your innate aesthetic, describe your process writing this last album…was it significantly different from writing your first? Not really. When you have a true natural aesthetic, everything comes from the same place and feels the same way as it bubbles up. For me it’s the timing of when I will be inspired that’s unpredictable. The muse I guess you would call it. I could have a lucky run of a flawless string of melancholic melodies that come to me. Or I could wait for years and hear nothing. Of course I always write regardless- but that’s different from being in the flow and effortlessly channeling rhymes and rhythms etc. What do you do when inspiration is hard to come by? Talking about inspiration only makes sense when you’re talking to someone whose truly been inspired and created from that place. It’s difficult when I don’t feel inspired and it’s usually a sign that I’m not living right. We’ve talked a lot this year about our personal connections to a higher power, what kind of role does prayer or meditation have in your artistic process? I guess I would say that the beautiful thing about feeling connected to something greater is that even at my lowest point I always have a feeling that I’m being taken care of. I came with you to Nashville this year along with our longtime friend and Electric Lady owner, Lee Foster. Did you enjoy your time there? I know for me it was a dream, us three living in those little cabins in Mount Juliette, that hot tub in the bedroom, trying to get the truck out of the mud, lots of flannel, driving into Nashville each day.. Did you feel like it gave you what you needed environmentally? Yes, first of all it was away from home so that was influential in its own way. Having you and Lee there and of course the excitement of working with Dan created a good environment. He gave me that fuzz and that buzz. I also met some girls I loved, namely Nikki Lane, who you shot for Rolling Stone I think? She was an amazing girl. I loved her spirit and her voice and all of us going to a couple of house parties together during my time there gave me a good warm feeling. Dope, so to wrap up, any plans for the future? Not really. [Laughs] Ok, well we should probably focus on the road now, our 250 miles on I-97 is almost up. What episode of Snapped do you want to watch? I’m looking now, it’s between an ex-stripper with three fiancees and a life insurance policy, OR a mother daughter duo whose murder case is probably in the works for a lifetime movie. We’ve got time for both. (Car Audio) **It started as an unusual romance between one young woman and three older men…** Source

Maxim November 25th - Interviewer: Ian Daly Spoiler SEX, LIES, AND LANA DEL REY Lana Del Rey is America’s sultriest and edgiest pop-music sensation. But who is she really? Lana Del Rey, America’s most enigmatic, controversial, and seductive rock star, spent the morning in Los Angeles traffic, anxious, wearing one of her favorite minidresses—the navy blue cotton one—on the prowl for some fake palm trees she wanted as onstage props for tomorrow night’s show in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It’s the famed resting place of Rudolph Valentino and Fay Wray, and she felt certain some faux tropical flora would add the perfect finishing touch for these surreal final shows of her long 2014 tour. But she is home now and calm, at ease on the little deck just off her bedroom, hidden behind the tall hedges encircling her 1920s Tudor, freshly painted but stylishly in need of repair—Hollywood golden-age glamour gone slightly to seed—like a scene from Sunset Boulevard or, perhaps intentionally, one of her videos. “I never saw myself in California,” she tells me. Del Rey is as much provocateur as pop star, known for moody and lush songs about the intersection of sex and violence and money. The videos with which she made her name traffic in the faded imagery of American nostalgia and decline. She combines a classic, sultry beauty with a heavy dose of all-American alienation—the head cheerleader gone desperately wrong. A few years ago, she changed her name, changed her hair, discarded an entire album, left behind a world-beating partying habit, and started anew. For someone like that, California seems an inevitable landing point. “I had such a love affair with New York,” she says of her days as a struggling chanteuse. “I loved all the history that came with it, the early ’60s, Bob Dylan, and the Beat poetry era. I was always kind of looking for this big artist revival, but I never really tapped into anything.” She feels closer to that in Los Angeles, where she’s found a few kindred spirits who share her fascination with “that early Laurel Canyon scene. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young…I tuned in to something here and never really wanted to leave.” Her two shows at Hollywood forever mark the end of a year of nonstop touring in support of Ultraviolence, a follow-up to 2012’s Born to Die. Ultraviolence, recorded in Nashville with a seven-piece backing band, is rock-tinged and guitar-heavy but still replete with Del Rey’s trademark hope-she’s-joking songs like “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Most weirdly: Critics raved about the thing. It’s a stunning turnaround for an artist who spent the nascent portion of her career inspiring more confusion—and sometimes pure vitriol—than adoration. She emerged from the American pop-cultural slipstream, goes the story, fully formed, with the gorgeous Super 8–inflected video for “Video Games” and a two-song EP. Accompanying these was an impressionistic (some would say too impressionistic) backstory with wild chapters on alcoholism, a stint in a New Jersey trailer park, and a litany of destructive relationships with older and at times awful men. Then came the backlash. It started with her admittedly strange Saturday Night Live performance in 2012, in which she seemed to be channeling a heavily medicated Marlene Dietrich. Music bloggers went on the attack, calling her “talent-starved,” an “unconvincing work of fiction,” and an “annoyingly faux minx.” But here’s the thing: People became entranced. Her debut album sold seven million copies worldwide, and Ultraviolence debuted on iTunes at number one in 80 countries around the world. Her concerts became frenzied pop-culture events. These days Lana tends to shrug off criticism about her altered appearance or the veracity of her persona. She concedes that “when I went darker with my hair, I don’t know why, but people took my music more seriously.” The same thing happened when she changed her name from plain Lizzy Grant to Lana Del Rey. It opened things up for her, freed her. “There’s a lot to be said for pretending,” she says. “You know?” Lana Del Rey once described herself as a “gangsta Nancy Sinatra,” and it’s a fairly apt description of her music. Her songs, steeped in ’90s trip-hop and rounded out with lush ’60s strings, are like dioramas: tiny, insular worlds where the atmosphere is more important than the facts. Much like her life. Del Rey’s parents dropped out of the New York City advertising game when she was a baby and raised her and her two younger siblings in rural Lake Placid. She was purportedly a wildly rebellious kid who partied hard as a teen until her parents sent her away to boarding school to straighten up. She didn’t start writing songs until she was 18. “I was in college in the Bronx [at Fordham], and I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she says. “Everyone was going out drinking, so I had to try to find something else.” She started hitting the open-mike nights in Brooklyn, and her mostly traditional girl-pop was compelling enough that in 2007, while still a senior, she signed a record deal with an indie label. Then, a complete reboot: She bought herself out of that contract, trashed the album she had cut, destroyed all traces of the woman she had been, and tried again. So she wasn’t exactly an overnight sensation, not really, and Del Rey doesn’t like the idea of it much anyway. “For me, there really wasn’t reinvention. That is more of other people’s reinterpretation. I feel so much continuity between all my music and all the videos.” She describes her frustration at her first label and the need to break out. “I really wanted to keep making music, but my label had shelved my records for two years. And I…I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to incorporate cinematic strings with a heavier, nastier sound and lyrics.” That nastiness pervaded her new identity as well. Lizzy Grant was all about blond sweetness, but Lana Del Rey flaunted her obsessions with fatalism, death, seediness, and danger. In her 2013 short film Tropico—a swirling dreamscape suffused with Latino gangsters and strippers—Del Rey cast herself as an erotic dancer with a double-teardrop tattoo. Some criticized her for reinforcing stereotypes of Latinos as thugs and criminals. But Del Rey sees it as a version of herself. “I live in East L.A., and I speak Spanish,” she says. “The girls who work in the club in the video are my friends, people I knew before I became a little more well known. Like, I’ve always spoken Spanish in all my songs the past few years. So for me, personally, it’s not a far-out-there reference.” That’s all fine, except that, well, she doesn’t live in East Los Angeles or anywhere near it. Not all of her songs have Spanish in them. And saying that some of your best friends are Latino…Let’s just leave that one alone. Del Rey isn’t about to apologize for anything, but it’s clear that she feels misunderstood. “I’m missing the mark in terms of having comrades and being aligned with a musical movement,” she says. “But I definitely feel like what I come up with musically is on the pulse of what is relevant.” And that, after all the speculation about her nature, background, and intentions, is what matters. It’s beyond the point if she really meant it when she said, “I wish I was dead already” or “Feminism is just not an interesting concept” or, if one of her most notorious songs is to be believed, her reproductive organs taste like a certain well-known soda (look it up). Everything has been asked and answered, by the critics and the online trolls and the endless writers of endless knee-jerk think pieces. The music and the images are too good to get trapped by such considerations. And if her trajectory as an anti-pop pop star proves anything, it is that her art, sincere or otherwise, is hers and hers alone. Source

L'Uomo Vogue October 7th - Interviewer: Roberto Croci Spoiler A Bohemian Soul The names Nabokov and Whitman appear tattooed on her right forearm, in honor of the two writers, who, together with Allen Ginsberg and the other Beat Generation poets are not only her source of inspiration, but the reason why she is a professional singer. "Poets like Ginsberg can tell a story through kind of painting pictures with words, mixing them in order to create very elaborate works of art. And why when I found out that you (I) could have had a profession doing that, it was extremely thrilling to me, music just became my passion immediately, imagine that, playing with words & poetry, in order to finish my painting". Ladies & Gents ,Lana Del Rey – nom de plume for Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, born 1985, auburn hair, beautiful pouty red lips, elegance and genetic traits of the LA-Mexican vintage styled beauty queen pageant – on the terrace of the infamous Chateau Marmont, in a revealing portrait, with humour, a surprising sharp vocabulary and unexpected intellect. "Love the Chateau. The Chateau is the true epicenter of Hollywood if there is one. For me it is a very important place to be and to be seen. I love it so much that it did visually influenced a lot of my music videos. Destruction, hope, dreams, luxuriousness… everything you wish for is right there". Lana keeps on talking about her latest album “Ultraviolence”, a title borrowed from the famous Anthony Burgess-Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange novel-film. "I knew I wanted to write a record called Ultraviolence before I even had the record, just because I liked the sound of it, I liked the concept of ultraviolence, a subject really current in our times. Meeting Dan Auerbach (also producer of her album) from The Black Keys was kind of a catalyst for me and I don’t know, I found confidence in the fact that he was interested in me and I just felt like it was a more exciting time to make the record, so I actually thought I was done making it. At that point I called on my friend Lee Foster – owner of the Electric Lady Studios in New York – and asked to rent his studios four weeks. Here I was, producing it myself, with a session drummer and the guitarist from my band. Later on, just by chance, I met Dan at a club and he convinced me to follow him to Nashville where we record with a seven piece band from Brooklyn... it was an incredible experience, he (Dan) had this energy about him and we had a natural chemistry...both of which helped me tremendously in my creative process. And for the first time I sang live with the band, and so it felt organic in that way. It was different from all my past experiences". Ultraviolence is a collection of autobiographical songs where Lana Del Rey explores unhealthy, toxic couple relationships, where, more often then none, the woman is way too much romantically involved to properly understand the physical and emotional abuse inflicted by her partner. "For me, every record is different and sometimes the narrative is lyrical story wise, but sometimes there’s an atmospheric narrative and that’s what happened this time. All my albums have their specific genesis and own path, connected maybe by a link: driving through the streets of Los Angeles, by night, when there is less traffic. One of my favorite street is Sunset Boulevard – route originally taken by cowboys & livestock in the 1700th – starting from El Pueblo in Downtown, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, smelling pines, oleanders, eucalyptus, laurels & hibiscus. Gotta tell you, there is something magical to it. In Ultraviolence I wanted to concentrate more on the technical musical aspect, I wanted to explore my passion for musical composition. And so with the track listing, it begins with a song called Cruel World, where there’s a twenty-five second guitar intro/interlude which sets the tone, both musically and geographically. It’s the beginning of our trip, kind of making our way back through memories that take us from the West to the East Coast. As a matter of fact, track four is “Brooklyn Baby”, while the last one is a jazz cover of Nina Simone’s, which tells a story in itself. The track listing of this album is very important, and for me, ending with a song by Nina Simone, “The Other Woman”, gives me the possibility to tell my story in my own way, the way I want to, especially considering the connections with other tracks, mixing them with the sole purpose of experementing with images and different feelings". Amongst her musical passions: film soundtracks and Nirvana. "I am such a fan of Nino Rota, Samuel Barber and Thomas Newman, and let’s not forget my dear friend Giorgio Moroder, whom I’d love to work with on my next album. And as far as Nirvana, the first time I heard Kurt Cobain I was 11, and I thought he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Even at a young age, I did related to his sadness. As the philosopher Josiah Royce once said: “Without the roots, you can’t have any fruits”... and for me Kurt was the one who planted the seed in my heart". Lana and her work are a constant source of reflection for new generations to come. "I would love to be able to convey a positive message. During these last years of my life, trying to follow my dreams, and realize my passions, I learnt two things: never give up, never surrender; when we do what we love best, even if we fail, we are happier and more sure of ourselves". Source

Les Inrockuptibles June 18h - Interviewer: JD Beauvallet Translation courtesy of @annedauphine Spoiler Lana Del Rey: "I look for the company of the spirits" The fear of not being able to write anymore, the permanent doubt, the chaos in her life: after "Born to Die", things weren't going too good for Lana Del Rey. But here she is again with the luxurious and casual "Ultraviolence", always haunted by the misfortune and the spectres. Meeting. After your last album, you had announced your retirement from music. But you are back with Ultraviolence. I was not sure to find one day the inspiration back. And I can start working on an album only if I already have an idea of the story, the concept. But in December and January, everything unravelled after my meeting in a party with Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys. Something physical happened between us, something chemical. When we recorded the song Brooklyn Baby, we were looking at each other, we felt that there was something happening. The album was created in a very casual atmosphere. Which was surprising for me, who had always worked with my personal guard: here, I found myself working with a total unknown! How do you feel in front of a white sheet? These last years, I knew long periods when I was incapable to write. I was constantly on tour and, naively, I thought I could write on the road, but that proved impossible. Finally, in December, 2013, I spent a few weeks in New York in Electric Lady Studios, during which I recorded alone all the album, with my guitarist Blake Stranathan and a session drummer. My model of sound, it was the Eagles! That is when I met Dan, he told me that what I had made rang too "classic-rock" and as a result, we redid everything together to Nashville, in six weeks, most of the time live… The influence of Eagles remains obvious on Pretty When You Cry. You're going to put back slows in fashion! Nobody does slows anymore, I would like to try again, it's been so long. I adore dancing. During the sessions in Nashville, at the end of the day, we listened to the work again and we danced like crazy. Dan had made his buddies from Brooklyn come for the recording, we invited people that we had just met to the corner store, Juliette Lewis or Harmony Korine were hanging around too: I had never worked like that. It was the first time I met in studio people this creative, first time I opened doors. I now manage to isolate myself, to experiment freely even when there is a lot of people in the studio: there is a vast universe where to take refuge in inside my head. I may not be fortunate in my daily life, but in my studio life, I am lucky: I'm always surrounded with good people. The simple fact that a guy like Dan Auerbach is interested in me did a lot for my confidence and my good mood. How went your relation in studio? He is rather quick-tempered: he can be very silent one day and overexcited the next day. But between us, the current passed very naturally, we had good fun. He's really passionate, with very pronounced dogmas: he categorically refuses to do certain things. That brought us closer. At first, my album and that of the Black Keys had to go out the same day, on May 1st. But at the end of four weeks of recording of my album, he was so much involved that he ended up imagining that it was his record, it even began to influence his work with the Black Keys - he redid things on his own record because he didn't found them worthy enough! He adores my album, he was calling me late in the evening, after the studio, to tell me: "I don't know if I'm crazy but I have the feeling that we're making a superrecord." Had you listed words which summarised your desires even before recording? Here, it was "fire". Dan is rather technical, concrete, while I, I'm in the imagination. With him, I used a whole vocabulary of mine so that he understood where I wished to go. I told him for example that I wanted that the album evokes flames but the blue ones, the warmest ones... I was telling him about electric blue with red reflections. What did he changed to your songs? Me, in a track, I only like guitars and drums - and he came down with a double bassist, a saxophonist, old pros from Nashville playing steel-guitar… He loves the musicians, he's a real dude, surrounded with seven guys who are his best buddies, an alpha male (laughter)… But I don't mind: I love men, I spent damn good moments. Since I'm in music, I only hang with people who play in bands and they're mostly men. I can become very tomboy in these conditions. And when you find yourself in studio, you behave as a geek? Yes, especially during the mixing. I spent four weeks on it in a studio of Santa Monica, accompanied with producer Robert Orton. As we had recorded live in Nashville, on an old Neve console, we had to digitize everything - and that rang really shambolic, all the instruments overlapped. We had to restructure everything, retreat, we passed from spontaneity to meticulousness. In studio, I know exactly what I want. Even if that can take weeks, I always end up hearing in the speakers the music which I had in my head. Same thing for videos: everything is already there in my story-boards. As a result, I can really make the executive producer go crazy, as I had to do with Dan. In your work, which is the part of pleasure, which is the part of pain? The pleasure starts with the conception of the album and ends with its recording. I don't leave the mixing desk until the delivery of the strips, a great moment of sadness. Then begin the touring, painful, or the promotion, uncomfortable… I feel forced to justify myself, to defend myself, while I don't even feel the necessity: my music is good enough not to need that. I would prefer to keep silent. Your songs offer a strange mixture of luxury and sadness. A bit like Roy Orbison… It's true! [she sings Only the Lonely]… I have the impression to make joyful songs but when I make them listen to, people tell me how sad they are… I can't escape from my life, which was rather tempestuous. I remain eaten away by the doubt, by the sadness. I only have blur, void, in front of me. And I don't like not to know where I'm going. In my sentimental life, my family life. I have now a house in California, where I take care of my brother and my sister, but I can't really say it's home… When I come home, it's impossible for me to readjust to real life… This is why I hate not managing to write because during ten years, writing was the only stable and reassuring element in my life. What set the tone of Ultraviolence? The first song of the album, Cruel World, determined everything. Geographically, it sets the album: Dan's guitar straightaway speaks of California. There is in the beginning of the text a certain purity, a simplicity. And then comes the chorus with its big drums, its electric disorder… This cohabitation between the normality and the chaos is rather symbolic of what I had just went through in my life. The album recalls of the casual atmosphere of sixties and seventies in Los Angeles - in particular musicians' community settled on Laurel Canyon… I'm completely into this mythology, Joni Mitchell especially, which my mother adored. When I lived in New York, I looked for this community spirit: a bit what Jeff Buckley had managed to federate around him in the 90s, or Dylan in the 60s… But I never found my gang, my family. As soon as I arrived in Los Angeles, I finally met people with whom to speak, play, musicians who re-actualised Laurel Canyon, as Father John Misty or Jonathan Wilson, with whom I had begun to make the album… All that I had looked for in New York, I was suddenly finding it on the West Coast. I drove from a house to another in my old Mercedes, I had the feeling of being back to high school. You grew up in the countryside. Were you solitary already? I had a real group of girl friends, inseparable, we were very similar. It was the first time of my life - and the last one - that I felt such a camaraderie. But at 14 years old, I was sent to boarding school because we were doing messy things - like going out with older boys or running away to go to parties… And there, I found myself going to the mass three times a week. Fortunately, there were stained-glass windows, I could daydream by looking at them. In this school, I got on with one of the teachers - he was 22 years old, I was 15 - who made me discover as well Jeff Buckley as 2Pac or Allen Ginsberg, he became my best friend. When I arrived in New York, at 19 years old, I tried to find back this lost friendship with people my age. But it was too late, they were all obsessed with their careers, their social success… I then wondered where were the musicians ready to sacrifice everything for their songs, ready to die for them. You, were you never attracted by this success? I read a book which spoke exactly about that: of the necessity for an artist to burn bridges with any possibility of career. For years, my life happened in my brain, nobody knew anything. It was almost as a double life. For a long time, except for my roommate, nobody heard my songs. I played very badly the guitar, in picking [she sings]…The first time I heard Catpower, that really reassured me because her too played a little bit like that at the beginning, very simply. But there was a real delight: music literally came to me. Whole, already formulated, arranged songs, rushed in my pen, on my pad. At 20 years old, while there was nothing happening, I made the decision to continue at all costs, to answer this call. That rings strangely but I was a big fan of my music. I never told my parents that I skipped school, they knew I was singing only later. I tried to fight against the music, I was terrified by other people's opinion: "Who does she think she is?" I was certain that people would think that I didn't deserved it. Numerous musicians admitted to me that they had felt the same embarrassment. Music is something so personal that we are inevitably frightened by rejection… Moreover, I could have just be a choir singer. At what moment did you feel that you had been right to hang on? During the recording of Born to Die. I will never forget the visit of my father in the studio. He had no idea of what I had been doing for six years and couldn't believe his eyes to see me so safe, so directive, so blossomed, asking the producer to play a beat or a symphony… He was in shock: he felt that music was really my passion and admitted to me that it was one of the most beautiful days of his life. My parents had insisted for me not to quit studies for music - I finished my philosophy studies because I knew that that could feed my songs. I had told them very early that I wanted to become a singer but they did not know to what extent I was inhabited, serious. My mother wondered what I did of my days in New York. When my father saw me, he understood! That validated six years of work. Do you believe in gift, in inspiration? More than for any other thing in my life, I feel a gift for the music. But these last years, with these long periods during which I didn't wrote a word that I liked, I prayed so that my muse returned… And suddenly, this winter, a song as Old Money arrived in one block… Carmen had came to me like this, in the middle of the street, I had synchronised the rhymes on the rhythm of my steps [she sings]… At that time, I was walking a lot, that helped me to write… Today, I drive, I swim in the Pacific. The inspiration is reborn from these new rites, I record myself in the car while driving, I sing loudly… Your music is often haunted by spectres, ghosts… If I spoke about it myself, people would take me for a madwoman. But it's true... Life was so hard with me these last four years that I enormously looked for comfort and for advice in the great beyond… Before recording or coming on stage, I was asking the ghosts to come help me, to come along. I had to face the analytical spirit of people so much that I took refuge in the spiritual. I feel profoundly bound to a kind of mysticism, I look for the company of spirits. I always thought of death, that obsesses me since childhood. When I understood what it was, that my parents wouldn't be there forever, I threw a fit of hysteria, we had to make a doctor come. I remember that one day, my father took me to go shopping for the start of school year and I told him: "What's the use of buying new clothes because we're all going to die?" I chose philosophy studies and got passionate about metaphysics to try to answer these questions, to question myself about my presence on earth, to incorporate the science into this reflection. Ten months ago, I went through a very difficult period and I visited Fleur, one of the most known mediums of the United States. She confirmed quite a lot of things obsessing me. Her assistant had made me write, secretly, questions which I would like to ask Fleur. The first one was: "Am I made for this world? Am I supposed to be down here?" I would have been too embarrassed to ask this question to anyone, but on the other hand, I felt totally disconnected from my music, from my peers. She immediately answered: "Why are you trying to escape? Plant your feet firmly to the ground and say to yourself that you were born here and today for a good reason. Look rather for comfort in the earth, the sand, the water…" That's when I began to reconnect with the fundamentals of this planet, to walk on the beach, to swim in the Pacific. She knew many things about me, about my grandmother, about the jewels which she bequeathed me, on my brother of whom I take care of since three years, evoking his setbacks, his passage in a specialized institute… That really shook me because I had never spoken about it to anybody. That reassured me as for the presence of a great beyond. Many of your icons are ghosts too: Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain… People whom I admire seem intended to die young… Fortunately, Leonard Cohen proves the opposite. I do not like the romanticism around these premature deaths. Artists are more useful alive than dead. You cite Lou Reed in Brooklyn Baby... I was dreaming of sharing the track with him, I thought that the lyrics could amuse him ("My boyfriend's in the band / He plays guitar and I sing Lou Reed"). The day I landed in New York to make him listen to the song, he was dead. Can you explain the lyrics of Fucked My Way Up To The Top? Here's already a song which will not play on the radio… It came from a two minutes long orchestral piece sent to me by Dan Heath [young author of BO for Hollywood - Editor's note], that inspired me and I began singing these words on it… When it became more serious, I called him to tell him that I adored his melody, that it had became a song and that I hoped that he forgave me for the words [laughter]… In a general way, the orchestral side is less present than on Born to Die, there are strings only on a few songs - and still, synthetic. I even intended to get rid of it completely… Everybody asked me why I was so determined to end Ultraviolence with a cover of Nina Simone, The Other Woman. Because it says everything, because I adore jazz, because it's maybe even a door opened towards what will be the next album. I could have wrote those words… I listened thousands of times another Nina Simone cover - Lilac Wine, by Jeff Buckley [she sings]… That reminds me when I was learning life in New York. Source

Done! Super excited about the results. Last one was so hard

I've always loved her but I agree she was particularly good this season. I think the latinas are my favourite squad in this show they're all so beautiful and funny and sassy

Ok kill my weeping ass, this was very honestly my favourite season, for real, for sooooooo many reasons, I'm SO. HAPPY. I know everyone's fav season is the 2 but Vee's character was too strong for me and this season was absolutely entertaining and well balanced and I saw everything I wanted to saw, it was so much funnier too, god DAMNIT I love this showwwwwww. It's like S3 never happened. The episode 12 might be my favourite ep of the entire show, I adore these kinds of eps with perfect balance of roaring laughter moments and really heavy drama and references to previous eps. I'm extremely happy for some characters and I really adored discovering the others even though I """regret""" that it's not as focused on backstory as in say season 1. Like you have hints of what their crime was but you don't see them get caught :/ And I still wish to know why the HELL DeMarco is here haha I love her so much, she's so underrated she looks so normal. Jones is adorable but I assume the lady who plays Judy acted really well because I couldn't stand her ass. And the guards were a special kind of fucked up but the Pornstache was much scarier imho! And contrary to basically everyone I fucking love Piper and I'm so happy with the outcome of her character, I think she's extremely well played, she's hilarious and I'm white trash enough to relate. Also really pleased with the outcome of precious Penn. And last thing, Laura Prepon is the hottest non-Lana human being that ever walked this earth

I've had this problem too and I registered in like November so I think it's definitely dead

These sexy looks and smiles wearing this outfit will be the death of me I'm just so happy to see her so confident and happy

So is this rumour or? I'm confused

Her figure is so perfect and the hair doesn't looks black and her glasses and tshirt are perfect together and I love her shoes