LDR Album Process Discussion

[BlackoutZone 4,701]

Just now, Just Cherry said:

@BlackoutZone Do you know which project Lana’s cover of “Cactus” by Pixies was intended for?  

Never heard of this

[Cherry Blossom 21,537]

2 minutes ago, SoftwareUpgrade said:

 

Wait then why was the V Mag outtakes/test shoot being touted as "Bird World" material?! Or was it "Bird World """"ERA""""" and never concluded to be an album cover/booklet image/promotional image. I'm not crazy, didn't HM say it was for Bird World  maybe I just misunderstood their OG post about it, oops

I think, after the last 24 hours, it would be safe to conclude they lied or were misinformed x

[IanadeIrey 62,021]

2 minutes ago, SoftwareUpgrade said:

 

Wait then why was the V Mag outtakes/test shoot being touted as "Bird World" material?! Or was it "Bird World """"ERA""""" and never concluded to be an album cover/booklet image/promotional image. I'm not crazy, didn't HM say it was for Bird World  maybe I just misunderstood their OG post about it, oops

LOL I’m not sure what that was, but it was probably some elaborate inside joke since that test shoot was being touted as “scrapped NFR promo material” when it hardly was. Plus, I think “Bird World” was  only the title of the NFR title track for a minute back when it was being conceptualized in February/March 2018 - she settled on “Norman Fucking Rockwell” in March 2018 - so any claim that states Bird World was a title for the entire album once that song was finished is very likely to be untrue!

[SoftwareUpgrade 19,349]

3 minutes ago, Cherry Blossom said:

I think, after the last 24 hours, it would be safe to conclude they lied or were misinformed x

 

I always wondered "how does this Steven Klein mess translate to an album shoot", maybe they were mislead, but yay, that ugly outfit was never intended for a cover (especially for the lead up for the NFR era or Bird World or whatever that was, I can sleep peacefully 

1 minute ago, IanadeIrey said:

LOL I’m not sure what that was, but it was probably some elaborate inside joke since that test shoot was being touted as “scrapped NFR promo material” when it hardly was. Plus, I think “Bird World” was  only the title of the NFR title track for a minute back when it was being conceptualized in February/March 2018 - she settled on “Norman Fucking Rockwell” in March 2018 - so any claim that states Bird World was a title for the entire album once that song was finished is very likely to be untrue!

Thank u! I might have mixed up the title track being called that and the whole album as that due to them both being named NFR, an accident on my end , I could totally see it being an inside joke of "NFR ERA SCRAPS" even though that's a nothingburger

[PatentLeatherDoOver 25,782]

Cactus cover potentially getting debunked after all of this time

[lanasbottom 23,694]

1 hour ago, BartenderDeco said:

didn’t eclipse say he’ll spill some lore later, we need to ask him about lfl since he kinda changed the whole album!

oh yes we should since he ruined changed the whole album 

[Cherry Blossom 21,537]

IM FEELIN ALL MY FUCKIN FEELINGSSSS 

 

sorry lust for life is incredible you guys are liars and we need those outtakes NOW 

[The Siren 30,521]

did we ever get any additional info on Earthquakes?

 

 

23 hours ago, lanaismamom said:

This might be shocking to you, but Lust for Life title track was recorded before Honeymoon came out

also, which version(s) were recorded in 2014/2015?

[cranekiss 9,728]

2 minutes ago, The Siren said:

did we ever get any additional info on Earthquakes?

nope, all bz said was that it existed

[lanaismamom 11,544]

@BlackoutZone was wait for life released version ever intended to be featured on Ultraviolence or there is another unlekaed "uv" version?

[IanadeIrey 62,021]

2 minutes ago, The Siren said:

also, which version(s) were recorded in 2014/2015?

I’m obviously just speculating here, but I’m assuming versions 1 and 2 were recorded in early summer (June/July) 2015? Not sure about version 3 (the one with the “love me or love me not” lyrics), but version 4 and therefore, at least the vocals for the final version–once The Weeknd was onboard—must have been done in late August/early September 2016 because Lana said they did it right after he got his haircut for the Starboy era to KROQ on July 31, 2017 lol. 

[YourGirl666 13,251]

@BlackoutZone so we had the HM version of Wild One all this time? Is mix 2 the final one?

[Elias943 401]

Hey @BlackoutZone and thank you for all the info!

 

One question, do you happen to know if there were more scrapped music videos like TNBAR? 

 

Either early concepts or fully worked on? 

 

I remember she announced a music video for Dark Paradise but we never saw anything. 

 

Thank you! 

[bonniewinterbottom 3,163]

Spill about the alt. lyrics demo of Dark Paradise...

 

[The Siren 30,521]

3 hours ago, BlackoutZone said:

No, all HM songs first begun as Rick x Lana sessions, everything that has any involvement from other people is them joining as the song progresses in production

 

Also keep in mind that certain titles are not really attached to any particular versions. Throughout Lana's career most "demo" titles are used interchangeably till the very last minute when she decides on one.

is it fine to assume that if one title was thought of after another title while making a different demo/version of the same song could count as that version's title (but Lana and her producers use the full pool of titles attached to that song's entire lifetime)

if i made any sense?

[YourGirl666 13,251]

So what's the most updated tracker/list we have rn?

[templeoflana 378]

5 hours ago, BlackoutZone said:

I think it's time to talk about the iconic trio of UV outtakes - Yes to Heaven, Fine China & Your Girl. It's a twisted web and I'm not really good with phrasing and explaining such things so it might be difficult for you to understand everything (especially if you have no technical background on how songs are being produced), but I'll try to walk you through it all step by step and if something remains unclear I will try to explain it further!

 

These 3 songs were originally written and produced alongside Rick Nowels and his engineers back in late 2013. We first found out about their existence in 2016 when Eclipse obtained the demos and revealed the titles/snippets. They later happened to spread and leak becoming mysterious fan favorites and sadly as beloved and iconic in the community they are, all 3 are fake...
well, technically.

 

To understand why they are fake I need to give you a full breakdown of what happened.
It must have started with Eclipse getting his hands on an invoice from Patrick Warren who was responsible for recording and engineering Keys/Strings on some of the songs at that time. That listing apart from tracks that were released included Say Yes To Heaven, Fine China and Your Girl which have been fully unknown to the public. He contacts Patrick and using that info tries to get the demos from him, I assume under the suggestion that Lana is considering re-using the songs and tries to get the tracks/parts back. The thing is, Patrick is just someone who records his small part for the mix, he isn't actively working on the song as a producer so he doesn't really have access to all the material. Still though, he had some loose stems/sessions parts I assume, without properly bounced mix, he challenged himself to create mixes of all 3 that would be serviceable for that moment.

 

If you check the original files of all 3 leaked tracks, you'll find in the metadata that those demos were exported in Logic 10.2.2. That version of Logic Pro was released on March 8th, 2016 so any mix could not be older than that and of course the original ones were made in 2013. Not to mention the fact that Rick and his engineers work with Pro Tools, not Logic, unlike Patrick. But this goes even further. Patrick's available stems of the tracks were seemingly so incomplete he decided to create new production and structure for the songs making complete new versions that were unlike what Lana and Rick originally curated. He sent those back to Eclipse alongside the very incomplete stems.

 

This mess doesn't end here. You see Patrick Warren's job is to deliver the stems containing the new parts he was issued to arrange and engineer. Since he is often doing it independently of the rest, he adds a little bit of the song's intro at the beginning of every stem file he bounces so that when Rick receives it he knows how to place it in the mix alongside his parts. It's usually like 20/30 seconds and you can see what I'm talking about, because Eclipse shared some stems snippets from the files he received:
https://onlyfiles.io/f/e0236e30cb224f9e8618fe09ab0b9bc3
https://onlyfiles.io/f/ce703d3a5a204566bd31278eb667e6f7
Thank you @TheBoss for providing these to me

 

The first seconds here are the intros of real Rick reference demos, the latter parts however are already stems/mixes of what Patrick attempted to make in 2016. If you want some more closure, there is something @Say Yes to Heaven mentioned already - Eclipse must have received another pack of the same fashion later in 2016 of upcoming LFL track, Something Real (aka 13 Beaches). If you remember those times well, his exact teaser said "You took the.. #SR". This was most probably, because the singular stems he received as Something Real ALSO contained a few seconds of actual song at the beginning that happened to cut right after Lana saying "You took t..". In the full official credits you can see that Patrick is credited on 13 Beaches for "Waterphone", "Harmonium" and "Synthesizer".

 

Now circling back, while Fine China and Your Girl only had one mix leaked, Yes to Heaven also had this:

 

And this one is also fake, but it's technically closer to being a real thing than the Patrick mix. I don't know if this one was made by Eclipse or someone who got the stems from him, but this must have been made with filtered acapella of the Patrick Warren version, mixed with additional stems he provided and then layered with the looped guitar/drum pattern from the intro that I mentioned previously. But that guitar loop was literally a fundament of very first version of Yes to Heaven (unlike the Patrick mix that begins with strings) so you can imagine how it sounded based on this.

 

The first real version of Yes to Heaven that you have is the one leaked by Music Mafia which is a James Ford demo from late March/early April 2014. At that stage UV was shaping as an album, Rob Orton started properly mixing it and Lana decided to take last attempts to find the right production for the song by asking James Ford to give it a try. Sadly it also got discarded and at that point they just let go of the song (at least for that era).

 

The second real version of Yes to Heaven that you have is from latter part of 2014, 3:31 in length with leading production by STINT. Keep in mind though that while I refer to those versions as James Ford produced / STINT produced demos, they are all based on Rick's demos they got presented to work with. I think it's just easier to name them as such for clear sorting purposes. Even though the song was being worked on in both 2014 and 2015 they still failed to include it on HM as well.

 

It's fortunate for you that those happened to leak, cause Patrick's SYTH was the most different to the real demos from UV. Fine China is also pretty different, while Your Girl early demos (not the final though) are fairly similar to Patrick's mix. I mentioned earlier that both Fine China and Your Girl got mixed by Rob Orton alongside UV so they've been scrapped from the release on very last minute and unlike Yes to Heaven - ditched for good right after.

 

The weirdest thing in all this is that those quick Patrick Warren mixes are great... even though the mixing is clearly rushed and poor. The harmonica break in Yes to Heaven, the organs in Your Girl chorus, that stuff was never meant to be there, but hell it works. This sadly also means that if Patrick only sent those 160kbps mp3 files, the better ones don't exist.

 

That is all for now, unless @111 would like to now come forward and add something that I missed/got wrong. I also do not really believe that you didn't know the truth about all of this back then so I don't understand why you never revealed that the mixes aren't real. I think die hard fans deserve that kind of closure about some of the most iconic unreleased songs.

 

This took me years to figure out with massive help of someone who is also present on this very forum and I have mad respect for, thank you again!

So you mean to tell me I shared fake stem edits on my channel as "demos" ? Oh baby no...  Time to clean up my content I guess... 

 

Thank you for letting us all know about this bc... so many ppl are shook right now, including me 

[BlackoutZone 4,701]

10 minutes ago, The Siren said:

is it fine to assume that if one title was thought of after another title while making a different demo/version of the same song could count as that version's title (but Lana and her producers use the full pool of titles attached to that song's entire lifetime)

if i made any sense?

Yes that's something that I personally do myself while sorting stuff in my library.

For example, Lana and Greg would always call MPG just "Money Power Glory", however the Dan demo that leaked was strictly called Money & Power (same with Fuck My Way) so I do have it saved as Money & Power (Demo) to keep it accurate. Keep in my though that sometimes title changes of that sort may just be done to ease communication. I'm sure that every demo/file/mention of Tunnel wasn't called "Did you know that there is a tunnel under ocean blvd v2", they would just do "Tunnel" or "Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard" etc. That doesn't have to mean the song was called that in its version, it was just faster to type it.

25 minutes ago, lanaismamom said:

@BlackoutZone was wait for life released version ever intended to be featured on Ultraviolence or there is another unlekaed "uv" version?

Nope

[Deadly Nightshade 12,852]

These days in LB learning about all the creative process behind Lana’s music have to be some of my favorites ever 

Edited January 4, 2023 by Deadly Nightshade

[taco truck 32,991]

@BlackoutZone idk if u have ever said this but what is ur favorite unreleased/ leaked song?