BeautifulAnywhere

@@Flipflopfan  I disagree.
the point about Sam Smith is, he did EXACTLY THE SAME THING as Lana, just a few weeks later the point of his career), and critics raved. He being a he of course (and he had many of the critics on his side by his stunt of "coming out" just
at that moment in an obvious gambit to win hearts but more so, to make it impossible for someone to put him down, who he would then call a homophobe. (BTW, when was the last time he mentioned Lana?
Is he still a fan???)
 
as for stage fright- Carly Simon and John Lennon notorious for being scared to perform. Lennon would throw up before every concert or appearance.
 
and as for hands- ask Art Garfunkel of Simon & Garfunkel, who in 60 years, still has no idea what to do with his hands. Look at any video of the two of them singing, including the reunion concert in Central Park, and he has no idea what to do with his hands (pocket of his pants, bottom microphone, top microphone, flailing etc. Awkward as a teenager and he is in his 70s now. Very gawky.
Yet no one ever mentioned his hands in a critique.
(and the uniqueness of Simon/Garfunkel was that producer Roy Hallee famously actually had them sing all the vocals using the same microphone, something no duo ever did like that
(where they would have separate ones) and the harmonies were from that.
 
The other thing about SNL was, she was LIVE and SNL also is known for lousy sound (only the superbowl has worse sound.)
 
Live performances, I have seen her now, what 12 times? 13 times? (I am losing count). Her live performances are getting better and better.
 
Perhaps Video Games was not the perfect choice for first song, being that, well, it is notoriously SLOW.
Imagine if she had (but would have had no reason to do such- but if she sang Serial Killer first. Then did Video Games.
I think the critics/press were in for the kill PRIOR to her appearance and nothing she did would have gained their love (as proven by later remarks, which showed the sheer genius in going
with Dan Auerbach to produce Ultraviolence because that was one of the most genius moves in recording history- critics loved him, he himself bashed her, and it won her many points
(besides a great sounding album).
 
I disagree with you on her career.
She is now at a place unique
 
and it was the Billboard Trailblazer award which brought her out of her depression, IMHO, and made her see she had a purpose and focus and that the way she was doing it,
was a unique and novel way of doing things (Like Adele said about how she wished she could drop an album, do some concerts then just nothing at all instead of all the bullshit
an artist is made to do.
 
I would rather be Lana than Adele. Perhaps in 2020 Adele will release a new record. By then, we will have 5 more Lana records (figure about 75 new songs all of them great/greater/greatest)
 
She is doing things the biggest male superstars only have done before her, and of course, the powers that be, and the press don't like when a girl does that. They are suppose to
listen and do things they are told.
Lana is telling them in no uncertain terms- it is her way

You're passionate about Lana and I get that being there myself.
 
A lot of the criticism thrown at Lana was abject misogyny but SNL wasn't that. It was a collective blunder fueled by greed for money and quick fame: Interscope wanted to cash in big and quickly, Lana's mangers, who btw did a miracle by putting her on the map with one good song but who were inexperienced at this level and wanted themselves to cash in quickly, and Lana who just wasn't realistic about her strengths and I think that she fantasized at that point about being a popstar. Every show prior to SNL hinted to anyone with ears and eyes that she is struggling on stage. She was stiff, her movements were awkward and her voice was wavering many times. It was obvious that she is not a natural performer and she needs extensive coaching ranging from live singing to stage movement. She has this pathological stage fright which makes her ridiculously self-conscious on stage which makes her losing her focus affecting her singing. It was a huge gamble and they lost. Her music was slow, kind of awkward, her voice is so distinctive and because of these issues they would have had to rehearse her presentation in the smallest detail even regarding her hand movements (which were btw ridiculous). The turning Lana meme was inevitable and was a cynical criticism of how unprofessional was the whole preparation for that HUGE opportunity. That was the other factor of the backlash: she was a noname singer starting her career practically on SNL for that her presentation had to be near perfect to be accepted by the critics and the media because anyone knew how big a SNL slot is.
 
The mainstream media destroyed her and frankly the perfect storm was in the making because the indie press turned slowly against her before SNL questioning her authenticity and talent. It was just a huge PR blunder the whole late 2011 and early 2012 and all the parties above mentioned have their fault in it. They say that there is no bad publicity but we can see now how deeply she was affected by the backlash. I think that her sadness is mainly a result of those events and sometimes I have the feeling that they killed the joy of being an artist in her heart. She's plodding along in her career but she's clearly half the artist she could be.   
 
My only beef against Lana is that she didn't ambition herself after that moment doing everything possible to improve dramatically her live singing and presentation. She had many concerts since then and she sung fine in some of them but let's face it she still has huge problems when performing live and her career is in downward spiral mostly because of it.

Whether she still feels a BTD backlash is possible; however, she won that war (on BTD specifically) so definitively. All the critics ended up doing was proving that they couldn't (even vaguely) forsee that the GP would be interested in her, so who looks worse now? Also the Paradise era is one of her most uninhibited periods (Cola, GQ shoot, Ride Video, and Tropico). It could be said that she didn't worry much about what people thought of her, so why would she feel a BTD backlash right now? Maybe a backlash to "I wish I were dead already" and "feminism is boring", perhaps, at least in the sense of being more careful at interviews.   Her psychology is definitely interesting. Her main instagram still labels herself "Subversive", but what does that mean really? Maybe it relates to her attitude toward promo or maybe it doesn't, although I think if she did sell well, without the promo, that would be pretty subversive, imo. If she fails, which only means Interscope dumps her, she could still find a minor label and produce significant work. Or "subversive" might just mean she doesn't care what people think, but that she'll do it her way. In the case of HM she might have meant a modernized version of Frank Sinatra's "No One Cares" album. However, I'm still hoping, with everybody else, that she'll be the artist that can't stand still and keep surprising us stylistically, although she's got to do ultimately what she is comfortable doing too. 

The one song on HM where her indifferent lyrics are NOT out of place but actually quite fitting is HBTB though

I'd also love a mix of UV and BTD, leaning more towards the production of UV. What made UV was a pretty raw production and it sucks that she and Dan will probably never work again.
 
I'd love to see him back with some energetic songs like West Coast. What killed Hm for me was the vocal delivery (ok, she has gotten better at singing) but it is quite monotone and what was also quite boring was the production.
Rick Nowels is simply not a producer that adds some needed edge.
 
Basicaly, serve us more White Stripes and The Black Keys instead of Dido, dear Lana.
 
I posted it before, but when you listen to an album like Lemonade, you can hear all these different influences and styles and you hear how well balanced that album is sonically. And when the lyrics sometimes suck, Bey totally delivers great emotion is her vocal performance.
 
Saying this just on a random note since we had this one not-so-serious thread about Bey being inspired by Lana for Selftitled.

Not sure exactly where to post this, but I'll do it here since this seems to be the random discussion thread.
 
So I am super interested in Psychology, particularly personality psychology, and it all just hit me how Lana has been acting since BTD and as of late and how it relates to psychology. I feel like Lana has been suffering from the Freudian defence mechanism of the ego known as regression, which is basically when a person returns to an earlier level of development or to a less demanding habit or situation, particularly when faced with difficulties. Well, I feel like this difficulty was the criticism and the harsh responses she got during the BTD era, with screams of inauthenticity and fakeness. Lana didn't like the way people reacted and so she has been regressing back to her old ways, back when she was just Lizzy Grant, and she could make music peacefully in her bedroom without having to worry about what the world thought of it and thought of her. I feel like her lack of promotion and willingness to be in the public eye at all relates to her bad experiences during the BTD era, and now she's been regressing to her old ways by just making the music for herself again and not trying to please the public like she clearly was with BTD by using heavy hip-hop beats and fast-tempo songs, which we've seen, really isn't Lana's usual style. 

One thing to note that the psychologist Sigmund Freud stated is that once people become aware of the existence of their defence mechanism (in this case regression), it often ceases to exist. I feel as if Lana has finally come to a realisation that she's been hiding away as of late. I can't make a judgment in terms of her music and whether or not she'll go back to her more adventurous stuff, but the way she's changed quite recently is certainly interesting. It's almost like a double regression, she noticed she'd been regressing to a state of hiding like her Lizzy days, so now she's regressing back to her BTD self, hanging out with Emile Haynie, posting more on social media, making so many more appearances lately, being back in the public eye, and even changing her entire look again to be reminiscent of BTD. I'm not saying she'll go back to her entire BTD sound/persona, in fact, I really doubt she'd do that, but maybe she's at a stage where she's more open to doing something a bit more adventurous and fresh and new, like she used to. Honeymoon was a fantastic record in its own right, and I love it because it feels like such a Lana record, but I think she's ready to try something new again, ready to move on from this short phase of covert hiding and simple music that takes no risks and will be perceived well because it's safe.
 
Anyway, not sure if this made much sense, but I thought I'd post my ramblings regardless.

i hope lana makes an album that is a mix between BTD and UV. fast paced, beautiful, psychedelic, yet sad. i want her to dig into 70s disco but with a dark twist

For a moment I thought I was reading the post-release thread

I'm really wish she would put some more effort again in certain things like music/music videos and be more adventurous like she use to. Its one of the reasons why I partially don't like HM. Its a statement of how safe,samey and how much "non effort like" Lana has become in the last year. She's become complacent and boring as of late.
 
BTD /UV controversies really have affected her deeply so much so that it has affected her very art and maybe she should just embrace the fact that she is a polarizing figure in the media and roll with it. By adapting a "fuck you this is me you can like it or not attitude" she can once again take more risks music/image wise. She just needs to find her confidence once again to do so.
 
Also I don't care how much promo Lana dose just as long as its great or interesting. UV was very messy in some parts but there were some highlights like SOC music video for instance that made up for it. HM was just so bloody disappointing from the start to the end. Three mediocre MV (One of which was from a scrapped MV from a previous era) and a handful of safe,uninteresting interviews/photo shoots.   What I'm trying to say is as long as the promo material is great it shouldn't matter how much of it we get just as long as its good.

I've searched in the topic but I don't think it has been speculated before - I rewatched Let's Get Lost (side note - I think it's becoming one of my favourite movies) and I'm really really starting to wonder if Jump isn't, purely and simply, about no one else but Chet Baker. 
 
_ First and foremost she used the documentary a lot in the video for it (not even to mention West Coast) and we know her love for him.
_ "Palm trees in black and white, last thing I saw before I died": there are a lot of occurrences in the documentary where you can see shots of palm trees in black and white, especially in the beginning, from where most of the references in the song as well as West Coast seem to point forward.
_ "Right mixture of cocaine and heroin": there is a memorable moment in the movie where he explains the mixture of cocaine and heroin and how you have to be careful not to put too much cocaine because the first blow is devastating.
_ "Hair thin and in the wind, Cadillac convertible with him": Lana was HEAVILY, not to say she copied, inspired by the scenes at the beginning of Let's Get Lost of Chet and others in the convertible where he is presented as already, "a very old man", and is laughing.
_ "You are a junkie on your window smiling wide": his death, if I understood correctly, was from falling from the window of the hotel he was staying in, at night, and he was found in the morning, with traces of drugs in his body. He, literally, may have jumped. "Last fight, fuck them, last words".
 
I don't know, it really makes sense to me. I would prefer this song to be about Chet than Mike!

Lana is actually stealing the souls of these artists using the spells outlined in her satanic witch book. That's why she's been looking so young recently.

I don't mean to be one of those annoying freaks obsessed with conspiracy theories, but I find it insane that Lana keeps having all these affiliations with dying celebrities.
 
Remember in 2014 when she was scheduled to collaborate with Lou Reed for a song on Ultraviolence, but on that exact day he died!
 
Then Lana goes and references David Bowie lyrics in 'Terrence Loves You' ("Ground control to Major Tom") and talks about him in an interview (how Lana Del Rey isn't a persona or an alter-ego like David Bowie)... then he dies a month or two after?
 
Now, Prince! Not that long ago on the Honeymoon account, do any of you remember this post which read:
"Living in the land of Honeymoons & Oil Tycoons. God Bless America, the land of pink champagne & purple rain. This is my favourite perspective / nothing but white sails above and blue waters rolling in front of me for miles and miles."
 
Take a close look, she references "PURPLE RAIN"... and now Prince is dead.
 
I know that it's quite possibly a coincidence, and I'm not saying that we should take any of this too seriously, but I just find it super weird that Lana keeps referencing someone, then not soon after they're dead. It could just be that she is influenced by a lot of older artists, but I just find it so strange regardless. 
 
 
 

Wow this is massive. Imagine if Prince's song ended up in the movie, Lana wouldn't have had another 'big break' (after SS ofc)

I don't know if this has already been posted but Wait For Life is (in my opinion) one of "her" best songs.

omg this is getting ridiculously funny. did yall catch that yayo reference?
 
 

 
i also know how and where they got the name ivy blue~
 
 
it was in front of us this entire time omg. so they really did get the name from the lyrics?! a quick search also reveals that @@evilentity was involved in all of this. according to urban dictionary 'ivy blue' means illuminati's very youngest born living under evil. isnt that proof enough this is all connected?   
 
#exposed beyoncé. or shall i say beyayoncé 
 

 

Everyone wants to be Queen

Let's not forget the fact he ripped off the title of the song he contributed to the soundtrack ("100$ Bill") from Lana.

Considering Jay-Z produced the soundtrack for "The Great Gatsby" where Lana's song "Young and Beautiful" appeared in countless amount of times. I'd like to imagine Bey and Jay went to the movie premiere or had a cosy movie night at home and watched it. I think she does though 

Chariots of gold, she ride w/ Jay-Z, Jared Leto
 
We need Jay-Z-Jared-Letonalysis

My vision is complete.

Obviously I was just being facetious with this whole thing, and didn't notice a lot of the similarities until I went looking for them, but some of them struck me watching "Beyoncé" the first time through: The general theme of the dark side of beauty queens in "Pretty Hurts", the faux-Lynchian style of "Haunted", and the plot of "Heaven", though not any specific images from those videos. Some specific images that I did notice the first time through were Beyoncé at the gas station in "No Angel", Jay-Z smoking and the sequined flapper headdress thing in "Partition", and some of the Rosalita-esque scenes. But the black & white close-up underwater face shots in "Rocket", the Pieta pose in "Mine", and the Coney Island setting of "XO"-- strong Lana parallels in three consecutive videos-- started feeling downright eerie. 
Anyway, go watch all these videos if you haven't. They're really good. I highly recommend them.

Definitely something that needs to be covered by major media outlets. I hope national television in all countries reports about it! 

Not to mention she straight up sang "National Anthem" in front of a whole nation without ever crediting the real artist. I mean look at the dates:
 

Plot Twist: Beyoncé is the greatest Lana/Lizzy/Lizzi/Lizzie/May fan of us all... @@evilentity, consider your days numbered 

Loved it.
 
Never understood Beyonce's fame.

PARTITION
In "Partition", the camera takes us inside a palatial estate that almost looks like it could have been the setting for the "Born to Die" video. See the exterior and interior below:

 
In the first of several scenes curiously similar to ones out of "National Anthem", we find Mrs. Carter seated at an immaculately set table, barely noticed by her rapper husband peering over his newspaper:

 
In her mind, she embarks on a sexual fantasy. Again she channels Rosalita:

 
Her rapper husband feels up her leg in a vehicle:

 
She puts on a show for him, donning a sequined flapper headdress like Lizzy wears in this photo:

 
Silhouette techniques like something out of "Summertime Sadness" are employed:

 
Beyoncé pole dances like Lana in Tropico over a sexy French spoken interlude like in "Carmen":

 
Like A$AP Rocky in "National Anthem", her rapper husband watches her performance voyeuristically, smoking a cigar:

 
 
JEALOUS
Beyoncé is a jealous, jealous, jealous gurrrrrl. This video begins in the same estate reminiscent of "Born to Die" as in "Partition". In one scene, the former Miss Knowles is draped over a pinball machine like Lana in "Ride":

 
In another we see a "tunnel lined with yellow lights":

 
 
ROCKET
Like "Blue Jeans", "Rocket" opens on a black & white close-up of a reflection of the artist's face in a ripple of water:

 
Later in each video we watch the artist submerge her face in water in slow motion:

 
 
MINE
Like Lana in the poster for Tropico, we find Beyoncé re-enacting Mary in the Pieta:

 
Also, is that another Shaun Ross cameo?
 
 
XO
In "XO", Beyoncé orchestrates perhaps the largest NYC land grab since Dutch settlers bought Manhattan Island from Native Americans for 24 bucks, stealing the famed amusement destination from the Queen of Coney Island herself:

 

 

 

 
 
***FLAWLESS & SUPERPOWER
Since I can't find any Lana plagiarism in either of these videos, I'm just gonna go ahead and assume they must be borrowed from the "Dark Paradise" and "Cola" videos that never materialized. @@Ultraviolence Watch these. One of them may be the closest thing you'll ever get to your precious "Cola" video.
 
 
HEAVEN
Here we have the biggest plot heist since Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds ripped off Gremlins. In "Heaven", Beyoncé portrays a woman mourning her deceased female bff in a series of flashbacks. Sound familiar? Of course it does. It's the plot of Lana's "Summertime Sadness" video. Not content to copycat one Lana video, "Heaven" filches from a few. A shot in a church mirrors the chapel in "Born to Die":

 
In a flashback, Beyoncé's girlfriend sprays alcohol at a campfire party echoing scenes in "Ride":

 
And we see her and her gal pal riding in a car like Lana & Jaime King:

 
She only barely tries to disguise her copying Lana's recitation of the Lord's Prayer in Tropico by saying it in Spanish. Oh, and speaking of Spanish, here's Rosalita yet again:

 
 
BLUE
Sure, there's another "tunnel lined with yellow lights":

 
The sequined bra is back:

 
And she evokes Lizzy's showgirl style:

 
But most saliently, this song is about Beyoncé's, uh, baby Blue love, the black baby daughter she had with a rapper. What a blatant "National Anthem" ripoff!

 
 
GROWN WOMAN
Last but not least, the video for "Grown Woman" consists of home footage of Beyoncé's childhood performances, a clear homage to Lana's DIY videos.