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Norman Fucking Rockwell - Post-Release Discussion Thread + Poll

Norman Fucking Rockwell!  

1,049 members have voted

  1. 1. What are your favourite tracks from NFR?

    • Norman Fucking Rockwell
      378
    • Mariners Apartment Complex
      396
    • Venice Bitch
      569
    • Fuck It, I Love You
      362
    • Doin' Time
      256
    • Love Song
      346
    • Cinnamon Girl
      515
    • How to Disappear
      238
    • California
      539
    • The Next Best American Record
      209
    • The Greatest
      523
    • Bartender
      378
    • Happiness is a Butterfly
      384
    • hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it
      247


Recommended Posts

Venice Bitch = The Greatest = Norman Fucking Rockwell = Mariners Apartment Complex = Bartender

>

Cinnamon Girl = Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have - But I Have It = California = Love Song

>>

Happiness Is A Butterfly = Doin' Time

>>>
Fuck It I Love You (Single Version)

>>>>

How To Disappear The Next Best American Record (=Fuck It I Love You (Album Version))


anigif_enhanced-buzz-3260-1375807715-35.

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My honeymoon with Norman ended last evening

 

when I started to listen to Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette albums

 

after a week of non-stop listening to it I can not say it is her best. I like it as it has a mood like Honeymoon album and is great for relaxing and falling asleep...

 

No stand outs for me and no personal favorites - unless I count Doin' time which I played so so much before the album

 

all in all... yeah... the hype is gone... she has started to behave strange... so that is it

 

Feeling in a similar way about it. Even worse. Last night a friend of mine and me were wondering about how the hell the album has gotten the HUGE acclaim that the media are giving it. It's not a bad album, but it has a lot of obvious flaws, a composition and songwriting thats quite weak in many of its songs (can't understand how Pitchfork has said that she's "the best next american songwriter", really can't, even if I love her work as I do), a production that has evident and almost begginer kind of failures... Maybe I'll feel different about it in some years, but now I'll save the highlights it has -mostly the first half of the album, and then Bartender and Happiness, from my perspective - and go to listen other things. I don't get the point on keeping the hype, and yes, she's behaving in a very weird way (not necessarily in a good one), and mostly on the artistic side, which is the only one I care about when it comes to her music.

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Replace Doin Time and TNBAR with The Blackest Day and Heroin and it's perfect.

Especially this order: The Blackest Day - Heroin - California!

This would be such a dark album lol, I love it.

      giphy.gif

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As much as I love Hey Blue Baby, wouldn't it be repetitive if she included it on White Hot Forever?!?! Another Jack-produced track where she says the guys is making her blue!?!?!

 

I want a hundred of those

All the roses are red, and Jupiter too 

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Feeling in a similar way about it. Even worse. Last night a friend of mine and me were wondering about how the hell the album has gotten the HUGE acclaim that the media are giving it. It's not a bad album, but it has a lot of obvious flaws, a composition and songwriting thats quite weak in many of its songs (can't understand how Pitchfork has said that she's "the best next american songwriter", really can't, even if I love her work as I do), a production that has evident and almost begginer kind of failures... Maybe I'll feel different about it in some years, but now I'll save the highlights it has -mostly the first half of the album, and the Bartender and Happiness, from my perspective - and go to listen other things. I don't get the point on keeping the hype, and yes, she's behaving in a very weird way (not necessarily in a good one), and mostly on the artistic side, which is the only one I care when it comes to her music.

 

 

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 months really messed with his mind. 

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Love that you're not afraid to admit the truth that Doin' Time is one of the best songs on the album. Her version of it is just perfect. Most of my rankings would be fairly similar

I fuckin love doin time. I’m a big sublime fan and it’s my favorite song of theirs. I mentioned here when it was announced, one of my very close friends had just died only a few days before and sublime was her favorite of all time and I always think of her when I listen to them so the song is really special to me. I hate seeing the slander against it lol


LIZARD PEOPLE

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I fuckin love doin time. I’m a big sublime fan and it’s my favorite song of theirs. I mentioned here when it was announced, one of my very close friends had just died only a few days before and sublime was her favorite of all time and I always think of her when I listen to them so the song is really special to me. I hate seeing the slander against it lol

I'm so sorry to hear that  :( It must be rough but I hope that as time goes by their music will remind you of the good times together with your friend rather than this particular time. I was always fascinated by the deep connection people can develop with music and particular songs, especially when seemingly random songs evoke vivid memories that aren't even necessarily related to the lyrics at all.

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I am totally supportive of the hype I will not take NFR slander, she's come so far as a songwriter both musically and stylistically. 

 

Y'all can have your opinions but I adore the album and love that it's getting so much acclaim. 

 

Have my ever changing track ranking:

 

1. NFR

2. HIAB

3. TG

4. California

5. Cinnamon Girl

6. MAC

7. VB

8. Love song

9. FIILY (single version shits on album version)

10. Bartender

11. HTD

12. Hope

13. TNBAR

14. DT

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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. 

 

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.

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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.

okay im all for us having different opinions but lets not speak on Lana's music as if its factually worse than it was 10 years ago. it's just your opinions that the songs aren't as good or that she's burned out. if it were objectively true, im pretty sure the record wouldn't be receiving such wide acclaim from both critics and fans. if you dislike it, that's fine. totally here for that for you. but, to claim anything about her music is factually inauthentic or undynamic is just not true.

giphy.gif

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I feel like Lana is very ingenuine in interviews. I think she's generally a happy person and all that, but she hardly shows her "deep" side in interviews because she knows it's not received well and she doesn't want to be labelled a sad girl. She never really tells us what her songs are about, she pretends to be happier than she is. When she said FILY is about a "friend" because she would sing how awesome California is, I don't buy it. I'm sure she likes California but she must also realize what that place does to a person (she wrote about that in Heroin as well). She doesn't owe us her life story or to tell us how she's feeling all the time, but this does lead to some awkwardness in interviews sometimes because I know sis is lying. 


All the roses are red, and Jupiter too 

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okay im all for us having different opinions but lets not speak on Lana's music as if its factually worse than it was 10 years ago. it's just your opinions that the songs aren't as good or that she's burned out. if it were objectively true, im pretty sure the record wouldn't be receiving such wide acclaim from both critics and fans. if you dislike it, that's fine. totally here for that for you. but, to claim anything about her music is factually inauthentic or undynamic is just not true.

 

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. 

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