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Born to Die - Post-Release Discussion Thread + Poll

What are your favourite tracks from Born To Die?  

75 members have voted

  1. 1. What are your favourite tracks from Born To Die?

    • Born to Die
      30
    • Off to the Races
      49
    • Blue Jeans
      27
    • Video Games
      34
    • Diet Mountain Dew
      24
    • National Anthem
      31
    • Dark Paradise
      17
    • Radio
      25
    • Carmen
      23
    • Million Dollar Man
      25
    • Summertime Sadness
      26
    • This Is What Makes Us Girls
      18
    • Without You
      25
    • Lolita
      19
    • Lucky Ones
      18


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On 1/8/2021 at 11:22 AM, Clampigirl said:

Last night, I read something about that Carmen is another word for drugs? Some people argued for it because of the lines “they all like Carmen, she gives them butterflies”, “her mind’s like a diamond”. Thoughts? I always imagined Carmen to be a girl, a personification of Lana’s teenage years during her alcohol abuse.

Lana fans are obsessed with everything being a drug metaphor.


Just do it. Just do it - don't wait!

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I was wondering... since next year it's going to be the 10th anniversary, do you think that we even have a small chance that they'll release something special? I would love to have for example a bonus LP with the demos or maybe an alternative cover. What would you guys want?? 


13.04.2018 Rome - Lana wore my hat! 

Dying by the hand of a foreign man, Happily
Calling out my name in the summer rain, Ciao amore

 

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I don't know what I would like! But it would definitely be time for her to release songs that were intended to be on BTD, like that unreleased album she mentioned a few years ago! :)

I was also thinking of making some kind of project here with everyone on LB and present it to Lana in some way, but we'll see!


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19 minutes ago, Fireffie said:

I was wondering... since next year it's going to be the 10th anniversary, do you think that we even have a small chance that they'll release something special? I would love to have for example a bonus LP with the demos or maybe an alternative cover. What would you guys want?? 

 

I'd love for them to do this, it was a big album of the time so it deserves and anniversary edition

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I had such a glorious walk listening to this album last night. It's so good and sets up Lana's journey as an artist so well. The production is a lot more over-the-top than the rest of her work and she leans into a bit of a caricature at times, but it's all very deliberate and clever. 

 

It's funny (sad) that this wasn't well received by a lot of critics despite being such a knockout debut. I don't even think it's that this album was ahead of its time. I think regardless of when this was released the music industry wouldn't have been ready for Lana. It was her "debut album" but as we know from all her leaked materials she already had an insane amount of fully realized tracks where she explored the darkest and strangest parts of her mind. She blends pop music, dark themes, and evocative imagery so well here and no one knew what to do with her. Critics saying that she must have been a product of the industry because she came out fully formed already is so dumb, as if an artist can't take the time to create something special before releasing it to the world?

 

I've always liked This Is What Makes Us Girls but I've never given it enough credit as the narrative ending to the record, I guess because I always listen to the album with the bonus tracks so it doesn't feel like the conclusion, but now I see that it really is. It's like she's saying goodbye to that more immature persona she inhabits throughout the album and knows it's time to move on to new growth. Even though the song jumps back to a younger Lana, I feel like that experience of leaving those friends behind is a reflection of where she's at by the end of the album and is ready to go through a similar process with herself and the life she's been living.

 

Then comes Paradise, which almost seems like a death and rebirth of the Lana we got to know in Born To Die, leading us seamlessly into Ultraviolence where she's reached a new level of her confidence and maturity and there's no turning back from there. I know there are people that want Lana to return to Born To Die's level of production but I personally am not one of them and I can't really imagine her doing so at this point. I feel like Born To Die was meant to be an isolated sound and experience in some ways, which makes sense given the title and concept of the whole album. Her character here is always walking a fine line between fun and danger, always on the edge and fantasizing about death, even desperately asking for it, but that's not a sustainable mindset. By the end of Born to Die, and especially Paradise, she's put that person behind her and she's grown into a new phase of her life and her artistry. Of course she's continued to explore dark themes her entire career, but she's left behind the teenaged mentality that she explores in Born To Die, and leaving this style in the past only further strengthens both this album and her entire storytelling journey to me.

 

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Happy 9th Birthday! :party:

 

I remember the first Lana song I listened to was Radio, and I instantly fell in love. The lyrics immediately spoke to me, and let me know that things may one day get better (even if they never become the best). To be honest, I don’t know where I’d be today if it wasn’t for that song or the album. I don’t know where I’d be today if I never discovered Lana. ❤️ 


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this album changed my life in ways i could have never understood as a fourteen year year old. i can’t believe this year will be ten years since the debut of video games. this album is so iconic on a pop culture level and iconic to me on a personal level. an alt pop masterpiece. 


 

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A lot of times I think whoa there’s no way it has been X years since X was released but Born to Die definitely feels 9 years old to me if not older!

 

Don’t find myself ever listening to the album tracks other than Radio and maybe Without You. Of course all the singles stand the test of time (Dark Paradise not included. National Anthem substituted for the eerie and more sparsely produced Demo #2). 


It’s always so weird to me when time passes and I turn the age my favourite artists were when they released some of their most pivotal works. 9 years on she was 2 years older than I am now. It’s weird there always seems to be a huge disconnect when you are a young teen listener enamoured with a twenty-something singer there seems to be some kind of vast, mystic disparity between you both, where it seems they are light years away from you in age but still not “old”. Then before you know it you grow up and realise just how young they were and what an accomplishment and how truly extraordinary the things they achieved were at that age. ?


"It's 2011, and we should all be aware of exactly how fast technology is developing" - Lana Del Rey

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For me and many others, Born To Die will forever be one of the most game-changing records of we past few decades.
 

As an upcoming artist, Lana managed to produce a perfectly cinematic amalgam of existential hedonism, darkly idyllic Americana, the obsessive sense of invincibility that follows youth, and jarring emotional vulnerability.
 

Executing any of these aspects successfully is a feat of itself, and she managed to encompass all of them with her own stylistic flair in a way that was both cohesive and captivating. Born To Die is forever that bitch. 


“…and this is all I looked for all my life – to be able to give of my love, my spontaneous joy, unreservedly, with no fear of…misuse, betrayal.”
Sylvia Plath 

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i think this album has a strange place in my heart because it kind of feels like it hasn’t aged well but it kind of feels like it has? like when i listen to the music it’s all fantastic. even the worst songs on born to die or the ones that lost their shine are still immaculate songs, but i feel like i’ve internally run this album to the ground. i’m actually going to try listening to this album less in the hopes it’ll be better when i go back.

 

i remember at one point i realised i hadn’t listened to video games in awhile and i cried when i first listened to it again lmaooo. but saying all of this, when the paradise tour leaked it felt like rediscovering this whole era. the dark paradise live studio was so beautiful, it really took me back. i think that’s why i can’t ever say this album hasn’t truly aged well. it’s just an album that’s supported me so much throughout my life that i recognise her all too well.


 

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Happy Birthday Born to Die. Crazy that I became a huge fan at my age. I have had the good fortune to see Lana 5 times and start my own YouTube channel. Lanaboards has been been a big part of it. Love to you all. I had no idea it would be such a crazy journey. I am most pleased that BTD is continually being discovered by new audiences.

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Blue Jeans is the first Lana song that caught my heart. I wasn’t a huge fan of BTD at first (some songs struck more than others like the title track, OTTR, Dark Paradise, Diet Mountain Dew, Without You), but after watching the MV, I fell in love with National Anthem and went back to the whole album. I loved the contrast of the strings with the beats, the 60s Americana infusion in the present, the naive idealism of loving someone bad for you. Though it’s not my fave from her, it is so iconic and I return to it a couple of times per year, and I still love the songs and the genius lyrics (the chorus of This Is What Makes Us Girls is brutally honest).

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even though I don't listen to the full album that much nowadays, born to die has a special place in my heart and it will stay there until I die

9 years ago... can't believe this. can't believe I was only 15 when this was released and that I love lana now even more than before... time flies and I'm glad my life is so much better than it was 9 years ago, when BTD and unreleaseds were my escapism


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