Monicker

I need to tell you guys something. I think i often will things into being. Two days ago i was thinking how frustrating it is that given how many pictures exist of Lana, there are never any of her recording, and how i much i wish that there were. And now here we are. This has happened with a bunch of other things before too. So...i’m now taking requests to will something else into being. Based on the room itself, the equipment, and the set-up, i'd say this is just a project studio and that she’s probably just recording some demo stuff (i pray this is not what a real session for a major label artist looks like these days), despite the fact that she’s singing into a $5,000 mic, ha. Also, remember when i made a joke that she probably doesn't use headphones when recording vocals? I guess it’s true! I fully endorse the headphones pictured hanging on that mic stand though, as i'm wearing those right now Or a collaboration with the band Trans Am

Gee, when you lay them all out like this and i read them all together, it really makes me pause and wonder how/why i got so heavily into this artist in the first place.

You might be surprised to know then that the US media really doesn't give a shit about issues like a white person wearing a Native war bonnet.

It's not. There are considerable differences. When people first started talking about hearing it on the radio a few days ago, my suspicion was that, like the Summertime Sadness radio mix, it would be based on the demo with a few changes (a reworking of it, not a rerecording). But i think this is actually a different recording altogether, though it's hard to tell because the quality is so low.

Second Arrest in Lana del Ray Fan Community (Associated Press) -- A user on an internet forum dedicated to pop sensation Lana del Ray has been arrested for bootlegging concerts. The user, who goes by the alias "Evil Entity" [sic], was reported to have uploaded a post to the forum, detailing his elaborate plan to start up a bootleg business of del Ray's concerts, encouraging other forum members to join his enterprise. The arrest marks the second within the singer's nascent fan community, coming just months after the FBI's involvement in putting an end to another fan's hacking of the personal computers of both del Ray and another popular, female vocalist. At this moment nothing is known about the user "Evil Entity" aside from being very, very old and heterosexual--a rarity amongst the singer's primarily young, homosexual fanbase. The web forum, www.LanasBored.com, despite often being erroneously indexed as a pornography website, is a place where fans from all over the world have been known to gather to dissect the controversial singer's enigmatic past. The 25 year old del Ray is currently preparing her next single, the explicit track, Coca Cola, from her latest release Born to Die in Paradise.

Lanalysis? I haven't even read that It's a lot simpler than that--what i meant was that everything else she's done (all the unreleased produced tracks, AKA, BTD, Paradise) carries the influence of other writers and producers, so what we're hearing has undoubtedly been, to a certain extent, filtered through and shaped by other people--it is the result of a collaboration. Sirens is simply her with an acoustic guitar, no production and, presumably, no co-writers, written and recorded at a time when she was creating with significantly less eyes and expectations on her; she, for all intents and purposes, didn't really have an audience, so it's more akin to creating in a vacuum. The a cappella demos, i would say, fit this description even more so because it's her at home on her computer, using nothing but her voice, being not only responsible for every single note of music and the way it's arranged, but also entirely dictating the direction of the recording, consulting no one, absent of anyone else's input (okay, maybe she asked Mike, "Hey, what do you think of this? ) and recording it not with the intention of showcasing it publicly. Lyrically, i don't see why any one project would be any more or less her than any of her other projects.

Sirens is probably the most "her" out of everything she's ever done, except maybe the a cappella laptop demos.

That's how i've always heard it labeled. It seems accurate for two reasons: Her singing on the 4:00 one is in the style that she's been moving toward since BTD (generally singing in a lower register and in a more, i don't know, "somber" and "sultry" manner), and the pre-chorus ("I wear my red lipstick...") in the 4:00 one is chopped in half--likely to be an edit from the longer, preceding version.

They're both the same, she only rerecorded her vocals. Same exact backing track. Supposedly the rerecorded vocals are the ones she sings low the whole way through, but, you know, that's probably hearsay. I thought we were all calling the pre-chorus one "demo 2"? And demo 3 is the really minimalist one (which i really doubt was the one that was on the sampler--that was probably, in actuality, the first demo recorded). Yes.

Whoa, i just awoke from a deep slumber in which an alien spirit contacted me and, with complete certainty, assured me that every single song on Born to Die (including the bonus tracks) and Paradise is going to be released as a single in various markets around the world over the next three years!

? 2/3 ain't bad Oh, i thought your whole thing was to mix TPE songs in with BtD to make TPE more "listenable," but i just went back and checked, and i see that it was non-BtD songs you were mixing in. Well, i think, besides AKA, everything of Lana's has the potential to be hit-or-miss. I gave her AKA first not only because i think it's the best stuff and what she would probably like the most, but also because it's such a solid album straight through. I thought she'd appreciate some of the BtD demos more than the album versions, and that she'd appreciate Paradise songs mixed in with different sounding stuff rather than as a straight-through album, so i thought this approach made sense. Basically, i wanted to showcase Lana's wide range of styles.

Dangerous combo.

I recently made my girlfriend 3 playlists and i thought i’d share them in this thread, though i don’t think they would be particularly well-liked (what does this emoticon mean?) I’m a big fan of playing really disparate things right next to each other but still following some sort of “logic,” and she likes that too, so that’s how i approached at least part of these. I had already given her a copy of AKA, and she eventually asked me for more stuff, but, rather than giving her the rest of the albums + a selection of unreleased stuff, i wanted to give her a collection that was all-encompassing (excluding AKA), dictated by which songs i thought she would like. I spent a good amount of time with the flow from song to song, as well as the overall arc of each playlist. I also had to play with the space in between tracks so that songs would flow from one another as i wanted them to--some songs sound great going right into the next, whereas others benefit from varying amounts of silence in between.

I have the distinct feeling that we're all a little bit sick and tired of each other lately. Or am i just projecting?

Will you please just treat me really niceys? There is no need for your venom. After i offered up my dick in the dark to you and everything. I thought we had something...

Aw, baby's first mod initiative. U GO GURL. But where is Neal to celebrate this most momentous event?! EDIT: Oh wait, i just realized he liked the post, duh.

Essay! Four short paragraphs? Lawd Look, i was feeling things while making my sandwich last night, alright?

'splain yoself, PB. What does this mean? Why?

I was just listening to this song while making a sandwich. Gosh, it’s such a good song. It’s so tender and heartbreaking. It’s an especially great song for nighttime. I love the loose quality it has, how it sounds like it was just a quick and spontaneous thing, recorded one night in a sudden flash of inspiration, like it just needed to come out. I love how understated but unique the backing track is with that incongruous drum machine and the little weird noises. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. These lyrics, i think, are some of her most heartfelt. It’s just chock-full of such simple yet powerful and poignant lines that i think a lot of people can relate to. I especially love the line “the panic and the fear.” Anyone who suffers from panic attacks knows that it’s one of the worst feelings in the world. Doesn’t the chorus sound like something you’ve heard before in another life? That melody seems to perfectly capture the song’s sentiments, that sense of feeling trapped and that realization that you have to do something, make some sort of change in your life. Your dead-end relationship has sort of become your comfort zone. You think you can change the relationship or even the other person, but you know you’re just lying to yourself. Her falsetto in this song has a strange quality to it, it’s almost hysterical. And at the end when she abruptly comes out of it back into her lower register (as she’s repeating that she’s done being afraid), it makes me think of, like, when you’ve been crying for hours and you just suddenly snap out of it because you just physically cannot cry anymore. What a fucking song.

Surely i can't be the only one who thinks this is all really excessive, right? Do we really need this many little animated pixel faces, and from such a wide range of sources? Doesn't it become counterproductive and unwieldy at a point? We'll have to do an extensive search just to find the desired stock expression every time we want to express a ready-made emotional response... ENOUGH ALREADY! :airplease: :brit: :pressed:

Write the great American novel, Chance.

I can't believe i didn't realize sooner that the guy's count-in at the beginning of the demo is also on the record. Which is weird because the guitar from the demo is not on the record and neither is her vocal take. I'm guessing the demo was used as a scratch track to program the beat or something, but she liked his voice/counting enough to keep it in? I wonder who the guy is.

Wow, i hadn’t read this before and it’s one of the best pieces written on her, and from SPIN no less, who would’ve thought. Lots of good things said here, really pointing out a lot of the sexism which i think is at the root of a lot of the flak that she was receiving in late 2011/early 2012. The idea that someone as idiosyncratic and (truly) eccentric (not Gaga brand of theatrical, contrived “weirdness”) as her was constructed by a team of record label executives is totally absurd and beyond the realm of believability. How did that half-baked theory even get off the ground? I love this quote: "She has many different qualities that women in our culture aren't allowed to be, all at once, so people are trying to find the inauthentic one." Also, "Bruce Springsteen in Miami"! Ha, i had never heard that one before. Oh, Lizzy.

You know what, asshole? I hope evilentity shoots you again, but i hope next time he doesn’t miss. You know, i hear it's like the Wizard of Oz around here and frankee suddenly got a brain. Maybe you’ll be next in line, loon. Or would you rather get a heart?

The obvious occurred to me: Her harshest critics are us, her biggest fans. We’re honest, often brutally so. Our opinions come from a place of actually giving a shit, not a ploy to increase readership. We have her under an intense magnifying glass, scrutinizing her more thoroughly and more often than any publication ever will. Websites, blogs, and the rest of the peanut gallery take more of a cursory glance at her, remotely commenting on the music--while remarkably managing to not actually say anything about music!--just to work in the sensationalist angle, but we examine and pass our judgement on everything: production and arrangement details, vocal performances, setlists, stage presence, touring schedule, her outfits, her shoes, her hair and makeup, her lips and nose, her age, her friends, her family, her past, her relationships, her drug and alcohol use...i don’t have the energy to keep enumerating them all. And, finally, we’re consistent--we do this day in, day out, whereas most everyone else chimes in only when she releases new music or a new video. We’re a scary, intense bunch, let’s face it