Monicker

Finally. Thank god. Not having bangs is criminal.

Hey, i wasn't offended. I just think your line of reasoning was absurd and i explained why i think so. Believe it or not, that first post about coconut oil was me actually trying to offer a helpful tip to anyone who is so inclined to using lubrication.

You know...this stuff does happen. Sure, it's an egregious error, but not incredibly uncommon. It has nothing to do with an artist's manager. And it has about as much to do with Lana as it has to do with each and every one of us individually.

What? Way higher quality than lossless? 24 bit you mean? Erm... I called. Twice. The first time i got disconnected and the second time they transferred me to the wrong department. Both times they were a teensy bit curt.

I suspect that this is an issue with the copies in the US. They obviously pressed duplicates of the 12 track master rather than the 15 track one. Also, i have a feeling that the way they're going to rectify this is lame: by offering free lossless (or maybe even 256 kbps mp3) downloads of the 3 missing tracks. But everyone really should push to get a free copy of the correct pressing instead, which evidently is what Europeans have been getting?

You're not from the US, right? How did you get yours? Ordered it online? Bought it in a store?

Interscope is not going to be happy. They messed something up when pressing the CDs. I got mine from my local independent store in town and it's also missing tracks 13-15. There's gotta be some sort of recall campaign, although i don't know how they'll go about doing it, if we'll have to send it back directly to Interscope or go through the retailer from which we bought it. Oh man, they're going to lose a LOT of money.

Sure, a bunch. The audio quality of a file does not dictate my opinion of the song. Are you mocking me, Sitar? Is that what this is? :umad:

You just answered your question, SitarFace ( )--they aren't available in higher quality. So...i tolerate it because what other choice do i have in hearing them? But if i have the option, and i can either listen to a CD or mp3s (and people often do some weird, stupid-ass shit to mp3s, which i would like to never have to deal with ever again) why would i choose the latter?

Nope. I've only heard Blue Velvet and Ride a few times, maybe thrice, and haven't heard the rest. From what little i can tell so far it seems this batch of songs are engineered and produced much better than BTD and that alone has me excited. We'll see though, tomorrow morning. On my computer through headphones or i output my computer to my stereo and listen on my speakers. I'm not really sure what you're asking here. I meant the painting not the digipack. Is that what you meant? Is the painting nowhere to be found on the 2CD and single disc versions?

This is so nice. I really hope it isn't exclusive to the box set. I'm so excited to buy the CD tomorrow and listen to the album for the first time. I'm fairly certain i'm going to really like it.

The term Baroque Pop is mostly a joke. It irks me, not because it’s “pretentious” or anything like that, but because it’s simply inaccurate. The majority of the stuff that’s given that label exhibits no Baroque elements whatsoever, but it seems that as soon as a pop song has a chamber string arrangement and some woodwinds suddenly it’s Baroque Pop. I think Chamber Pop is a much more suitable name. I think this is one of the few songs that can actually fit Baroque Pop and make some sense:

^ Gosh, such an odd backing track. Parts of it sound like they were played entirely on some, like, weird, electronic Futurist-like machine, and recorded on a toy computer inside of the bathroom stall of a discotheque in 1978 whilst Freddie was summoning your brother.

I don’t know what that implies, really...i never read Billy Shakespeare, honestly. Jeez, that’s embarrassing. Haa but what do you know, Mendelssohn is the composer i dislike the most. Man, i can't stand that guy's music. Good thing ol' Rich Wagner tore him some new assholes. Anyway, Handel and Haydn follow after Mendelssohn. How can someone write over a hundred symphonies? I mean, you must be doing some real shit work if you're cranking out that many symphonies. That’s interesting that you prefer Baroque over Romantic. Very rare. You’re a special bird, Madrigal. I imagine you will probably hate most of the composers toward the end of that list. I knew this real stodgy guy who didn’t consider Shostakovich to even be music, SHOSTAKOVICH. As far as this guy was concerned, music ended after the early Romantics. I mean, what in the fuck? You're not that bad, are you? Give me some hope. Still, my brain is bleeding trying to figure out how someone can be indifferent toward Chopin.

Thank you so much. I am honored. I like all of you equally, i'm just happy to be here tonight. I love you all. You're all beautiful. This is a beautiful moment.

Wearing her diamonds on skid row, is that like a classist thing? Is she being a little braggart, strolling down the hood showing her ice lyke a troll? Or wait, is she talking about Skid Row?

Hey, way to go me, i've actually heard two people on this list, not just Lana (Nicki Minaj if you're curious; Whitney doesn't count, that's not an award for current music). Awesome. Someone give me an award, like, right now. Quick.

Hey now, come on. Guys, a sincere question: What is best PUSH? What does that mean?

^ I don't know, i'm not inside the head of cats.

Quality. Tee hee. What is and isn’t quality? What criteria do we use to measure this? And why that criteria? Says who? Toward the end of his life Bach, considered today to be the most important composer in all of music history, was pretty much cast aside because his style of composing was falling out of favor with the general public. Quality ultimately amounts to nothing more than “good” and “bad,” and no one can conclusively make that determination in any meaningful way other than stating their opinion. Is the goal of music to, say, perfectly reproduce objective reality, like Realism aimed to do with painting? Does it have a concrete objective like that? Or is it simply to move someone, whether emotionally or physically? Unlike, say, architecture, which, amongst other things, aims to be functionally and structurally sound, or literature whose goal is to translate a narrative to its reader, music (with some exceptions) doesn’t have a goal beyond simply being “good” (and sometimes purposely bad!) If “good” = “quality,” again, how do we measure this? What, how unique a chord progression is? How “memorable” a melody is? How many notes the melody has? How complex the structure is? Whether it has key changes? What scale it's in? A particular instrumentation, key, or time signature? How “good” of a performance it is? How “catchy” the end result is? Why? What if we say (totally arbitrarily) that a criterion is that the melody should have "a lot" of notes? Well, what if they're all shitty notes? What then? As much as i spout off my opinions on the quality of music, sometimes in an overzealous manner, i will go to my grave arguing that no one can prove to the kid hanging out at the mall food court drinking a giant sized coke and stuffing greasy pizza in their face that Bach is better than Avril Lavigne. Do i think it’s insane that some people may not recognize a difference in “quality” between the two? Absolutely. But nothing that i or anybody uses to arrive at this conclusion is substantial or meaningful. Music resonates with everyone differently, and for totally different (and mysterious!) reasons. This is one of the beautiful things about music--with its unique, unprecedented language and its inexplicable power, so long as the LYRICS aren’t blatantly espousing a certain ideology, music can transcend the ugly side of its creator, of human beings--the racism, the misogyny, the homophobia, bigotry, hate, greed, etc. Wagner did what no one before him had done, completely changing the face of music forever--even today people are still trying to take the next logical step--and he was a raging anti-semite. Does that take away from his musical accomplishments? Does that change a single bar, even a single note, of Tristan and Isolde? But maybe Maru was just talking about one's obviously subjective view of what quality means.

What about the fact that it's listed as Born to Die The Paradise Edition, not Paradise? That implies that it's the double album that they're selling, and Without You and Lolita are already on the BTD portion of the Paradise Edition, so they're not going to be on there twice. Also, to anyone who is familiar with exclusive editions from Target/Walmart/Barnes & Noble, etc., they don't master differently for these releases, do they? And is there anything printed anywhere on the packaging that denotes it's an exclusive edition, like the name/logo of the store or anything? I've never purchased a special edition of an album exclusive to a particular store. This shit is new to me. Hold my hand, tell me that everything is going to be okay.

:o Wait, do you think this means it will be a "clean" version of the album? Does Target sell "explicit" records? I just looked on their site and it's not even listed yet as an item. Oh, see, good things do cum 2 those who wait. Suckers. EDIT: Also, $8.99? Really? That cheap for a double album? It does say Born to Die Paradise Ed. rather than just Paradise, so...That's so cheap! AND it has two exclusive tracks?! EDIT #2: Ugh, it's probably remixes.

Wow. I stared blankly at that ^ in utter confusion for, like, seven seconds, thinking it was one of CIK's absurd picture responses before i got it... I need to sleep. Good day, fine people. Stay warm and remember to eat.

Handel sux, dude. Listen to some real shit like JS Bach, late Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, Rachmoninoff, Scriabin, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Ives, Bartok, Messiaen, Varese, Webern, Shostaknovich, Schnittke, Ligeti, Penderecki and then come into this thread and say that. Go play baseball with Handel's dead skull, Madrigal.

I have found that, generally, i tend to like the music of people i don't really like as people, and i end up liking people whose music i don't like.