Monicker

Don't see what the time of day has to do with it. Most studios are open until very late into the night, and some even 24 hours. And that has been the practice, to my knowledge, since at least the '60s. It's totally common to have sessions at night.
 
 
I wonder about something. It's been stated before that there was a little bit of tension and friction between Lizzy and Kahne while recording the record. I wonder if most of it centered around the vocals, if he demanded a lot of takes out of her and if she maybe wasn't used to that and didn't like doing a lot of takes. I feel like i remember reading that she usually records a vocal (or likes to) in one or two takes (this was before she mentioned cutting the new Yayo in one take) and if maybe it was taxing for her to have someone demand more and sort of be a slave driver about it. That tends to be tough on a lot of people and it tires them out (though the results are usually very rewarding and totally worth it). And so i wonder if maybe this might explain, also, why there seems to be a lot more work put into her vocals pre-BTD. I know i've mentioned this a lot on here before, but there's a lot of stuff on BTD and Paradise where i cannot comprehend how the producer didn't ask her to do another take. There also seems to be more complex layering on AKA. I don't know, maybe Kahne worked her hard and she sort of resented that. He's definitely more "old school" than other producers she's worked with, and this is a quality seen more with older producers.
 
 
The age old question, eh? These sort of alternate reality scenarios could obviously go so many ways, but i feel another smaller label would have eventually come along regardless. But there's also being in the right place at the right time, which is crucial. If anything, i think it just would have taken longer, but i think it was inevitable.

Oh, that all too familiar feeling of having big ideas, things that seem amazing in theory, all worked out nicely in the mind, only needing to be executed, and then...nothing happens. 
 
 

Yeah, they sound like they’re from roughly the same period, but no two recordings share such exact sonic characteristics as Axl Rose and Elvis do.
 
Question just to be absolutely sure here: Is the consensus that Sirens comprises her very first (known) recordings? Also, what’s the consensus on its year of "release"?
 
 
I don't know, i’ve been thinking about all of this more since my last post a few days ago, and now i’m just confused. I mainly got into this discussion because of the comment that ARH and Elvis are way advanced compared to Sirens, which got me thinking about the progression of her guitar playing. I am not infallible and am by no means any sort of music authority. I will keep listening and comparing this stuff with everyone’s considerations in mind. I concede that she sounds younger in her singing on Sirens than anywhere else. And PrettyBaby raises a good point about the studio environment/process, however, that could go either way, too: You’re on the clock in the studio, on someone else’s time, paying (a good amount of $) for that time. When you’re recording at home, even though you may not have the input that an outside producer could offer, you do have all the time in the world to do as many takes as you want (though i guess one could argue that it depends on the person’s self-discipline). When you’re in the studio though you have to come in with your material already pretty polished and tight.
 
Find My Own Way is the one song on Sirens that has a markedly different style of playing, one that is very characteristic of a beginning guitar student, probably even more so than any other of her acoustic songs, even down to the fact that the guitar is out of tune. It’s also notable that it’s the only song on Sirens with strummed chords. I guess there’s the possibility that someone else played guitar on Sirens while she maybe played on Find My Own Way? Has this possibility ever been mentioned? I doubt that’s the case though, simply because the playing is not adept enough to suggest that it’s someone who was called in (even if just a friend doing a favor for her). So, i don’t know, if Sirens predates the other songs and she did indeed play on it, maybe she purposely simplified her playing after Sirens? Even though the playing on those other acoustic songs sounds so much more rudimentary to me than the playing on Sirens, i have to be open to the possibility of being a stylistic choice.
 
Some more questions:
 
Are we using internet upload dates as a certain indicator of when a song was written/recorded? Ya’ll probably know what i think of that
 
What year did Lizzy first have a MySpace page?
 
 
 
I can accept all that, good points. And you’re right that i sometimes don’t pay enough attention to the lyrics as they relate to her life. I hope it’s evident that i’m not arguing for one particular hypothesis, but rather just throwing out an array of possibilities that i don’t really see being mentioned, all with the aim of getting closer to “the truth.” I guess my point was that just as we can’t really trust her when she gives a date/year, i feel we also shouldn’t automatically disqualify any date/year she gives. That’s fallacious reasoning, no?

Well then, here we have yet another thread that would make Elizabeth recoil in horror should she ever make it to these here parts.

You crazy, boy. Other way around, by a long shot. Sirens is the peak of her guitar playing, in terms of technical abilities.
 
 
Yeah, by one year. Don't think there's a need to be so pedantic when it comes to the age thing. If she said she recorded something when she was 16 or 17, then okay, give or take a year, no big deal. It's not as if she is absurdly trying to pass for many years younger.
 
My educated guess, based on guitar playing and her voice, is that Axl Rose Husband and Elvis are among the earliest recordings. They were undoubtedly recorded during the same period and were recorded on the internal mic of her laptop whereas Money Hunny and Fordham Road weren't. Who knows what that means. Did she start off recording with the internal mic of her laptop and eventually upgrade her equipment as "logic" might dictate? Or did she have decent equipment at first and, say, she had to sell it, or she got rid of it for whatever reason and then started recording again but took a step down in equipment? Maybe she had to sell her microphone for drug money? Maybe she moved and got rid off all her possessions. Did she borrow equipment from friends at one point or another? Did one of her friends record her with their own equipment, as is a common thing to do? Who knows. I don't think there's anything we can really extract from this because anything could have happened in any chronological order. Sirens is a studio recording though, that much we know. She is likely to have amassed some home recordings prior to going into a studio for the first time, though that, of course, is not a set in stone rule. I believe, stylistically, Fordham Road is closer to the period of Sirens.
 
So my educated guess based on observation and the little that we do know is, chronologically:
 
Axl Rose Husband
Elvis
Money Hunny
Fordham Road
Sirens
 
I'm just using the songs that have been mentioned in this thread, i don't have the energy right now to recall other possible contenders.
 
EDIT: Then again, take the example of John Frusciante. If you didn't know any facts about him and only had his solo recordings to go by to try to piece together information, there was a time when his guitar playing actually worsened and became noticeably simpler because he was strung out on heroin while recording AND the equipment he was using at that point was a step down because he had either gotten rid of all his shit or lost it or it was stolen or he had sold it for drug money, etc. Again, "logic" would dictate that the less advanced playing and more primitive recording equipment would be an indicator of these recordings preceding the stuff that exhibits the more advanced playing and better sound quality, when that actually isn't the case.

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

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.

I was actually just wondering about this yesterday--if Emile Haynie already had your sounds prior to the recording of BTD or if he made them specifically for the record. I wonder if he even made them or if it's some stock shit that he manipulated. And did he show Lana and she liked it, or did he just add it to a song on his own and showed her later? Also, i wonder who is responsible for the repetitive use of it--did she hear it on one song and insist that he use it more because she liked it so much, or was it completely his own doing to slather the entire record with it? Is anyone familiar with his productions for other people? That might provide answers.

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.  
 
 
 

K-hole

Oh gosh, i always sense with this stuff that it's teetering on the verge of turning into a nationalist thing. Yeah, Lana luvs my country and that's why she cums here, and she just doesn't lyke yours, so get over it LOL.

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. 

Oh you guys. 
 
I never started this thread because...i don’t know, you know when you have too much to say that you’re just better off not saying anything at all? What would i even say here, Hey, i love The Beach Boys, they’re great? How much would i say? How could i ever keep it at a reasonable length? Would anyone even care? Where would i even start? (Don’t sweat it, Erik, you’ve written this out in your head a hundred times before). What would i say about the music that, even after the wealth of different stuff that i’ve been exposed to throughout my years, has changed my life more than any other, the recordings that have taught me more about music than anything else, the subject that i’ve, seriously, probably studied more than any other? 
 
 
 

I'm surprised that this hasn't been posted or even mentioned here yet.
 
Audio: http://soundcloud.com/triple_j/lana-del-rey-talks-pepsi
 
Found here: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/tomandalex/
 
I can't believe how much these hosts are fixated on the lyric. They're like twelve year old boys. I'll take this moment to say that the overwhelming majority of the reaction to Cola has been so juvenile and tiring. It reminds me of being in class, like in COLLEGE, and the professor says something, for example, about "the penal system" and people start giggling under their breath. Obviously she's more explicit in Cola than this example, but the reaction to it still feels like that same sort of shit. OH MY GOD, THIS WOMAN IS TALKING ABOUT HER VULVA...HA HA HA PEPSI REFERENCES...LET'S NEVER LET THIS GO.
 
So, whatever, now we know: it's something Barrie told her.
 
I suspect that the line "Everyone around me [...] just thought it was really weird" sums up a lot about reactions to her in general.
 
Anyway, on to more important things...what about that Cola a cappella demo she did on GarageBand?? When's THAT gonna leak?

WHAT THIS THREAD IS FOR:
 
General and fact-based Lana-related questions that are easily answered and not intended for their own discussion.
 
Examples:
 
“Which interview was it where Lana mentioned being a fan of David Lynch?"
"What performance was it where Lizzy did the cover of The Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A.?"
“What’s Lana’s brother’s name?”
“What was the name of that boarding school that Lana attended?”
 
You know, stuff like that.
 
 
 
WHAT THIS THREAD IS NOT FOR:
 
--Any questions about specific discussion topics that already have a home somewhere on the forum, such as individual songs in the Lyrics section, past photo shoots in the Gallery, unreleased/demo songs in the Audio section. Questions pertaining to specific subjects such as these can still be directed to those existing threads.
 
--Discussion type of questions that are a matter of opinion. Eg: “Who do you prefer, Lana or Lizzy?" or “What do you think would happen if Lana went on SNL again?” Those are opinion-based topics for on-going discussion that are not appropriate for this thread, and are better suited for their own thread.
 
***Before you ask your question, have a look here at the thread dedicated to rumors and debunked myths about Lana Del Rey, as the answer to your question might very well already be there.

Always an interesting perspective from you, PrettyBaby I find the stuff you said about your relationship with beauty to be really interesting. Also, i really agree with the idea of giving people some breathing room so to speak, and allowing each to embrace what they embrace, to value what they value, for is that not what sets cultures apart from each other and what makes the human experience so diverse?
 
This is all off-topic at this point, but so be it...
 
Music, essentially, is math. Though, of course, it’s so much more than that. But if you wanted to examine it from its fundamental core and a theoretical stance, it’s strictly math. It's no wonder that in ancient Greece, music, math, and philosophy were considered inseparable and, really, part of the same larger field of study. The magic and transcendence of just being pure math comes from that ineffable, unique quality that results from the creative combination and ordering of sounds, that which moves people emotionally. It's near impossible to determine why exactly you like something and dislike something else, and therein lies a lot of music's power.
 
"Math Rock" is kind of a misnomer and a bit of a silly term, i think. Why is it that playing in “odd” time signatures and shifting quickly between different time signatures is considered mathematical as opposed to music that stays in 4/4 the whole time? It’s like “Emo”--what music isn’t emotional? Instead of singling out a style of music for its heightened emotion, maybe there should be another term for denoting the few exceptions where emotion is deliberately avoided. Anyway, i digress from the digression.
 
I simultaneously believe that all music is experimental and that no music is experimental. It’s all experimental because isn’t that what anyone is doing when they sit down to write music--trying out ideas to see how they work? Some hired gun who comes on board to compose a song for Britney Spears--isn’t that person experimenting with different ways to construct something within a desired mold with a set goal, just as much as, say, Krzysztof Penderecki is experimenting when he sits down to write a crazy symphony with his own compositional goals in mind? They just have different functions and end points. But, on the other hand, isn’t everyone also following some general guide and pre-established framework when writing music? Experimental as a term to define music i think is hokey anyway, it’s more often than not (as is the case with Math Rock), more about having a certain sound and style than it is a general approach to constructing music. The great 20th century French composer Varese once said, “I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards, it is the listener who must experiment.” I love that quote. As you may imagine, the consensus considers his music to be wildly “experimental.”

Backing track is correct when referring to the entirety of the music portion of the recording of a song, but instrumental would kind of make sense in that sentence too, although it's a bit awkward. But when did i say that "instrumental" is wrong? I think you're thinking of when i pointed out my annoyance when people say "instrumentals" when they mean to say instrumentation? Also, maybe the thing about calling the vocal track in a song "the acapella."
 
Let's put it this way: if you had a mix of a song sans vocals you could say that you're listening to the instrumental version. If you're talking about a song (with the vocals) and you wanted to make a comment specifically on the music (as you were doing above with Burning Desire) backing track would be the most appropriate. Just don't say i love the instrumentals of that song. Or, i love Lana's acapella in that song. And, for the love of all the dead dinosaurs that ever roamed this beautiful planet, do not pluralize vinyl. You don't collect vinyls, you collect goddamn motherfucking vinyl.
 
 
I have had this same thought before but in regards to The Beach Boys, given how many times she mentioned them as an influence/inspiration during her Lizzy dayz. I swear to God if i ever met Lana i would probably just talk to her about the BB the whole time. I want to know every single last thought she has on them. I want to know her favorite songs and albums of theirs. I want to hear her explain why she likes them. I want to know how much she knows about them. But let's be real, she'd probably be like, "Oh yeah, the Beach Boys, I love them, California Girls is so great!" and the conversation would come to a crashing halt right there.
 
 
I don't know about grunge bands per se, but i can start with two that were close to home in the Nirvana universe:
 
1. The Melvins
2. Hole--on the strength alone of their first record, Pretty On The Inside. That album is better than anything Nirvana ever did, i reckon. Nirvana is regarded as highly as they are today because of great timing--timing in two cases: their rise and their fall (and it, of course, helps greatly that their fall came about from a suicide). They are way high up there in the list of most overrated. But if we want to talk overrated, The Beatles undoubtedly hold that #1 spot. And i'm sure they will never be dethroned. Oy, don't get me started on the overrated Beatles. I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store today and they were selling this big, thick magazine entirely on the Beatles. It's a huge, global cult.
 
I need to go to bed.

You are welcome into my home anytime.
 
 
This is probably one of the more popular opinions on the forum.
 
 
This is not even close to being true. I think you would have quite a laugh if you heard what the song, or any song, would sound like with a one note melody.
 
 
I think this is a good point to raise in general because there is a tendency to take every single word of every single song of hers as (factual) autobiography.

Funny this thread should pop up because just today i was thinking about how the line in Go Go Dancer, “I never have to work cause my daddy is rich," could so easily be about a sugar daddy/lover/boyfriend rather than her actual father. Yeah, take that Lanalysis and Lanalyzers.
 
I had a girlfriend once that called her dad daddy. It was weird. It made me a little uncomfortable. One time she and i watched that Oprah episode about the guy who had a secret sex dungeon in his basement with sex slaves. Oh, Oprah.
 
Also weird that just this weekend i was talking about this exact thing:
 
 
As well as this, with the same person:
 

I cannot believe that music like this exists. Is this song a comment on people not being "original" while sounding like music for a Doritos commercial made in five minutes on GarageBand by an in-house jingle writer at Disney?   
 
What is SMASH? Why does this exist? 
 
 
 
 
Let me see if the magikarp flops around this time 

The internet is not destroying the element of surprise enough, we need more. Where’s the video treatment and the storyboards? Fuck it, can we get some of the dailies? This guessing game is not going to cut it. I need to put my Google glasses on and activate the internet chip underneath my skin.   

 

Also, just a heads up here. If you want to make some extra cash, listen up, i’m feeling philanthropic. I will be giving out $100 to each and every forum member who, upon this video being released in its final form, refrains from making a post about how:

 

-The video is flawless.

-The video is epic. 

-The video is the most (anything) you’ve ever seen in your entire life. 

-You are dying.

-You are are crying. 

-You can’t breathe. 

-You have been slayed.

-You need someone to hold you. 

-Lana looks flawless.

-Lana looks perfect.

-Lana looks fat. 

-Lana needs to lose weight.

-Lana needs to tone her abs. 

-Stripping represents the loss of innocence. 

I cannot believe that music like this exists. Is this song a comment on people not being "original" while sounding like music for a Doritos commercial made in five minutes on GarageBand by an in-house jingle writer at Disney?   
 
What is SMASH? Why does this exist? 
 
 
 
 
Let me see if the magikarp flops around this time 

I'm sorry. That's very bleak. But not too long before things change, so hang tight.

Naw, you guys, DON'T U GET IT, DUDE? Eve is Lana -- the beautiful, flawless, classy Lana in white that we all know and love!!! And stripping = THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE, HELLO? Because stripping is BAD. It is a desecration of our earthly vessels. FUCK STRIPPERS AND FUCK LOWER INCOME LATINOS. I am totally ready to swallow transparent morality from Lana Del Rey. This is her soft resurrection. Elvis is her daddy. TROPICO, MAN!!! 

Nice. I learned how to sing from a decade+ of obsessively listening to/studying The Beach Boys (though i still can't pick apart their harmonies). This is such a great way to learn, singing along, in a mindful and kind of analytical way, to an artist with whom you're really familiar. It may be a slower process than traditional methods, but it's a great, indispensable teacher. It goes for music in general too--nothing is a better music educator, i think, than just obsessively listening (critically) to records.