Norman Fucking Rockwell - Post-Release Discussion Thread + Poll

[UltraviolenceBaby 5,014]

the NME magazine won't be for sale? i want to collect all of NFR era magazines!

also who won the Lattitude's dress????? 

[SparkleJumpropeNoose 8,750]

the NME magazine won't be for sale? i want to collect all of NFR era magazines!

also who won the Lattitude's dress????? 

tea omg i really wanted thatr cover....

[urbannoize 1,596]

For anyone who hasnt heard the preview Jesse Rutherford shared of his Lana collab

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Ho8CkFPLQ

[SparkleJumpropeNoose 8,750]

For anyone who hasnt heard the preview Jesse Rutherford shared of his Lana collab

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Ho8CkFPLQ

Lana's lyricism is amazsing 

[ParadiseFreak 676]

I agree as well, though I gave NFR as a whole only a 'C' after two days, and I still feel that way. I lost interest in it immediately.

 

C'mon--it's not a folk record. That's an absurd description. I think I see what she thought she was accomplishing, especially with the title track and the album as a whole, but she failed at that. No one, ever, in the years to come, is going to describe NFR as 'Lana's folk record.' 

 

There are a few great and very good songs, but also a lot of tepid, undynamic material that just sort of sits there and goes in circles. 'Hope' is a powerful song in many ways--but is it what more than a handful want from LDR? Except for a few hundred Stans, I don't think so. It's not what I want from her. To me, it's like her 'Sister Morphine,' Marianne Faithfull's failed commercial attempt at an 'artistic' song that came at the end of her 60s pop career. 

 

Like so many pop stars before her, especially female pop stars, from Marianne Faithfull to Joni Mitchell and Madonna and on, I think LDR started out happily producing songs with a broad range, from the BTD title track (which I love) to 'Radio' and 'National Anthem,' but then forces in the industry, including critics, male pop stars and female competitors, snidely said, 'Look at her--another disposable pretty girl pop tart, blindly enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame, thinking she's all that," and when those words reached LDR's ears, instantly she did the same thing that Faithfull, Mitchell, the Wilson sisters from Heart, Madonna and others have done: she decided that she will prove to the world that she's an artiste--not a silly flash in the pan--and with a vengeance! 

 

And so the playful, seductive LDR of 'Cola,' 'American,' 'Summertime Sadness' and 'Diet Mountain Dew' vanished, and the 'serious,' spooky LDR of 'Money, Power, Glory' and 'Ultraviolence' appeared. And that's led us right to NFR, after a detour through some of the songs on LFL, which were weak attempts to create commercial pop songs again. Do I think she's sure of the road she's on, and has been sure? No. I think she's had nothing but anxiety about her public persona, who she is as an artist and where she's going since releasing 'Paradise.' 

 

But this is certainly what can happen when, within 12 years, you adopt the name and think of yourself as Elizabeth Woolrich Grant, Sparkle Jump Rope Queen, May Jailer, Lana Del Ray, Lana Del Rey and God only knows what else. 

 

I'm not blaming her for anything--I'm saying this is what can happen when you mess around with your identity and persona. We see actors reporting it all the time--Joaquin Phoenix just said it,again, like Heath Ledger before him--that playing the Joker for a few moths really messed with his mind. 

 

I agree with most of what is said here... but another thing to take into account is what Lana herself has said about her last two albums.  When promoting Lust for Life she said she made it "for the fans"... as in, she didn't make it for herself as had always been the case with her previous work.  I think that was a clear line drawn in the sand.  Prior to Lust for Life, I believe she was making the music she was truly inspired to make.  And now with this latest one, she's mentioned in every interview that when Jack Antonoff first approached her she wasn't in a writing mood, and had no desire to make an album.  Of course, she also says that "his chords" got her writing again immediately... but it's not hard to read between the lines that these last two albums are not albums that she went into with the same passion or inspiration as her earlier albums.  And I think most discerning fans, who have followed her career since the beginning, can tell.

[lustforlife 19,008]

Fashion queen

 

https://grazia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/IMG_3072.mp4?_=1

[gatadelrey 4,617]

I can’t stop listening to this album.

[ADDICTEDTOLANA 1,373]

Billboard just said that Lana sold 104k in her first week in US... it’s really good: Lust for Life sold 107k, that means that she has stable sales over the years

[TrashMagiq 58,677]

it’s so weird hearing Doin Time on the radio

[lustforlife 19,008]

104k is a great number. Love and Lust For Life made some noise on EUA and NFR dont have any hit, only dt but its a alternative radio hit, not a smash billboard hit

[LanaCharts 1,980]

So... I was right! We love to see it

[UltraHeroin 8,803]

So... I was right! We love to see it

Damn dude, spot on!! well it's 1000 less but who cares

[Kurac na Biciklu 2,359]

I жћ-----..

[Off To The Races 2010 demo pls 19,336]

I actually think Lana is feeling frustrated that the album will debut at #3

and yes... she cares about numbers and sales and grammies and all...

True but honestly I'm satisfied with the fact that NFR got a very positive critical acclaim

[Vertimus 9,575]

Couldn't agree more with you about the identity thing. It's a very fucked off topic when it comes to any person, as it's actually nothing but some kind of unstable cultural construction, and it has become more and more questioned for everyone with the historical development of last century, I'd say. Being an artist, when all your life oscilates towards your own identity and vision of the world, the accusations of inauthenticism are always levitating around you, and the dynamics of the cultural industry -more even being a woman- have to burn you on that side very hardly. The way Lana has played with this stuff all the time on her own favour is what I think that made her and her output such incredibly interesting. Let's hope she's not actually that "burned out after all" and will be able to bring amazing art for many years, as I'm sure she will. Maybe NFR is kind of an inflection point in her artistic development, as it shows as a big rupture with what came before it.

 

 

Full agree about the dangers of the precarious public persona and how it relates to authentic identity. There are examples everywhere in popular culture--from the 1947 'A Double Life' with Ronald Colman, whose character slowly goes mad playing Othello on Broadway, to how Nico and Marianne Faithfull couldn't continue to manage their pop star personas and became junkies for over a decade, to Heath Ledger dying after playing the Joker and admitting that he couldn't rid the character from his psyche. There's also typecasting--which ended the careers of numerous actors, from George Reeves to Jerry Mathers.

 

The Wilson sisters of Heart started out doing exactly what they wanted to do and writing some pretty strong songs from an earthly, lustful female perspective, like 'Devil Delight,' but then got criticized by their own friends for it and immediately buckled down and became whitewashed, politically correct, 'nice' versions of themselves. When that failed, they transformed into even further whitewashed pop princesses, a million miles from their personas ten years earlier--and then, after that collapsed, they blamed the record companies for forcing them to play pop princess roles, as if they had not agreed to it themselves and willfully entered into the bargain. Hence, they're not generally respected today. 

 

LDR should have stuck to her guns, is my opinion, though obviously her initial LDR persona was easy to parody and satirize, as SNL cruelly did one week after her singing debacle on their show. And she was, at the same time, being attacked by Lorde for being "inauthentic," and singing about the Hamptons when poor Lorde was still in New Zealand looking for a ride home from a party. Why did LDR buckle under that sort of pressure from Lorde? And then she accused Lorde of stealing the very sound LDR used on BTD for Lorde's own debut. Thus, 'Ultraviolence,' a completely new sound for LDR, but not one I have personally ever found convincing, except on 'West Coast,' 'Old Money,' 'Is This Happiness' and 'Black Beauty.'   

I agree with most of what is said here... but another thing to take into account is what Lana herself has said about her last two albums.  When promoting Lust for Life she said she made it "for the fans"... as in, she didn't make it for herself as had always been the case with her previous work.  I think that was a clear line drawn in the sand.  Prior to Lust for Life, I believe she was making the music she was truly inspired to make.  And now with this latest one, she's mentioned in every interview that when Jack Antonoff first approached her she wasn't in a writing mood, and had no desire to make an album.  Of course, she also says that "his chords" got her writing again immediately... but it's not hard to read between the lines that these last two albums are not albums that she went into with the same passion or inspiration as her earlier albums.  And I think most discerning fans, who have followed her career since the beginning, can tell.

 

I think that's a very good point, and I do think it's reflected on both LFL and NFR.

 

To me, LDR is not an album artist in the sense that she makes masterful albums that are cohesive and great from start to finish, like, say Joni Mitchell's classic 'Court & Spark,' the Beatles' 'Abbey Road,' or Tori Amos's 'Boys For Pele.' I expect to like half the songs on a new LDR release at best. Even on my LDR favorite, 'Paradise,' I don't care for the 'Blue Velvet' cover. 

[Off To The Races 2010 demo pls 19,336]

nvm lol

[Marius 12,853]

So... I was right! We love to see it

I STAN. As I said earlier - I'm happy that she's hit 100k copies and nvm that she's 3rd on BB200.

[Vertimus 9,575]

We were talking about her identity and how being on the cultural industry surely is a huge challenge when it comes to keep a solid vision on one's own creation. Lana herself said to maybe be "burned out after all" on The Greatest, where she discusses herself this topic. The intention was to bring the matter to discussion, cause it's a very interesting one, not to made ethical judgments about Lana or her output. Even if I found this last album less interesting than her previous ones for most of it, I wouldn't say it's worse, cause there's no way to objetctively approach to it, just giving my views on it. 

 

 

Right. We're not talking about which project or song is objectively better, but our own personal impressions of NFR as a whole, sometimes in relation to her recent past.

 

Not only did she say she was burned out, but she said, in regard to the glamour girls and debutants in the Slim Aarons' book, "I'm not that," and mentions how hard it was for them to live up to some impossible social standard of beauty and decorum. Surely that is a reflection on her initial LDR persona, and why she's now presenting herself less glamorously unless she's at a red carpet event or something similar? Presenting herself perhaps as realistically as possible, as close to her real, daily self? I don't like the album cover at all, but for overall aesthetic reasons only. I like the interior shot of her standing against the sail very much. 

[White Hot 527]

104k is great, I'm glad she managed to match the debut numbers of LFL and Honeymoon. Doubt she cares that much about being at #3, it wasn't a secret to anyone that she wouldn't top Tool's or Taylors numbers even if she pretended she didn't know about Lover's release while working with Jack Antonoff

[Ryusei 5,071]

The album still grows on me with every listen, she really did THAT. AOTY or riot!!