Q Magazine Interview - Donald Trump, Thoughts on BTD, and New Music

[baddisease 15,890]

Because a good majority of them do suck

 

no, they don't.

[bluefiona 8,050]

 

[paradisetropico 7,422]

does anyone in this damn forum have the full interview... what in the fuq

[Beautiful Loser 46,074]

does anyone in this damn forum have the full interview... what in the fuq

  

I didn't know how to change the format, I apologize. Full interview:

[/size]You’ll need to order an Uber to get there           

as there’s no parking, so press that button

at 3.30 and head out into the Los Angeles

traffic on Sunset and Vine. Lana Del Rey

will be ready for you at 4pm.

Leave the transience of Hollywood

Boulevard in the rearview and head

north-west, following ever-more leafy lanes

far into the hills. Life is good up here, a

picture of moneyed, rustic bohemia, with

pastel stoops, houses built on stilts and

floor-to-ceiling views of the Hollywood

Hills. But it doesn’t matter how nice your

house is when the big one hits and

everything tumbles into the fire and

brimstone of the San Andreas Fault.

Everyone knows that approaching fear

here. It’s all they ever talk about.

Pull up at some steep, winding steps

beneath a lofty, proud wooden residence.

Climb them, shake two pairs of hands and

walk through wide-open French doors into a

high-ceilinged rented kitchen-diner lined by

so much vinyl there’s a ladder on wheels to

reach the top shelf. She’s sitting on a stool

with her back to the kitchen as you enter,

scrolling through her phone, and rises to

greet you with a firm handshake and an open

smile. Say hello to the resident voice in your

head, Lana Del Rey. “Where would you like

to sit,” she asks? You really don’t mind.

“Are you a Libra?” Del Rey asks,

perceptively. It’s an incredible deduction

based on four words and maybe 30

seconds’ interaction.

“I only think of star signs because it’s

come up in my writing for the next thing

I’m doing,” she says, with a chuckle, as we

pull up two chairs to a round table with a

bowl of tiny red apples at its centre. “I never

cared before. I did get you right as a Libra,

though. Typical Libra answer.”

Lana’s a Cancer. Born on 21 June,

1985, in New York City, as Elizabeth

Woolridge Grant.

“All water. A little fire. Carry my home on

my back, like a crab. Crybaby. Compatible

with Scorpio and Pisces, which is funnily

enough my sister and my brother. Kind of

cute, huh? I’m on the cusp of Gemini, which

takes care of my more theatrical side.”

She presses record on her phone.

Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution. “I’ve

never needed it since I started doing it.”

But there was that one time she wished

she had done it, so she always records.

Lana Del Rey pulls at her long, loose

pony-tail and straightens her back. A

small, square vape. A puff of mango smoke.

You have exactly one hour with America’s

greatest singer and songwriter of the era.

 

What is it that you want to know?

First of all, you have to

tell her some good news.

Video Games, Lana Del

Rey’s breakthrough single

from 2011, has been voted

the Song Of The Decade

by the writers and readers

of Q magazine. It won

by some distance, too.

“No fucking way!”

she laughs, looking

absolutely thrilled, and

shocked, even though later we will discover

that she knew this already. Her joy seems

genuine. “I mean… the best song of the

decade?! People really voted for that?”

They did.

“Wow. Come on!”

It is a good song.

“One of my favourites.”

Its conception took time. Video Games

finally arrived after Lana Del Rey had spent

two lonely years living in East London with

her manager Ben Mawson, above a fish

market on Kingsland Road in Dalston.

“I was at the tail-end of 600 days of writing

in London, back-to-back days. With about

111 writers. I was writing for others too.

I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I’d kind

of exhausted my bigger sounds. I just worked

every day. For two years, I had no friends.”

The night that Video Games was born,

Del Rey was at the Sony studios in Mayfair,

working with a young English writer, Justin

Parker. “It was finally at the most casual

point in our relationship. We’d already

tried to write everything.”

On the piano, Parker started to pick

out a melody in F minor. “Hmm,” thought

Lana. “That’s good.” So she started to sing,

in a much deeper register than she’d

previously employed, “Swinging in the

backyard, pull up in your fast car, whistling

my name…” She knew immediately they

had something serious.

“I wrote it very quickly, because it’s just

that melody.” The song itself was a stately,

melancholic ode to a formative boyfriend

who liked to play World Of Warcraft as their

happy domesticity slowly drifted off-course

into a too-comfortable funk. It captures

that moment when something is over

before it actually officially ends. She knew

it was right. She’d finally done it.

“So I sent it around to everybody and

said, ‘This is it.’ And they were, like, ‘This

is not it. This is six minutes long.’”

They were wrong. Coupled with a

video she’d made using her own webcam

segments and YouTube clips, Video Games

became first a viral sensation, and then a

bona-fide hit. “I’m really grateful to Fearne

Cotton, too, for giving me a spin every

week [on Radio 1] for four weeks. And

Justin Parker is very good.”

In other words, Lana Del Rey is saying

she did not do this on her own – but, really,

in all the important ways, she did. She had a

song that sounded how she felt at last, that

represented her in a way that the music that

she’d released independently earlier, both

as Lana Del Rey and as Lizzy Grant hadn’t.

“I wasn’t signed to anybody, but a couple of

people had their eye on me. Everybody loved

all the big stuff I was writing, but I was at the

point where I had written in every style

except my own. Now I had.”

With Video Games, she found her

bearings. “It showed me a lot about myself,

an insight in terms of persistence. I love to

exhaust every resource before I get to that

right path. But once I settle into myself and

learn to trust my own style, I fall naturally

into the vein of a singer-songwriter type.”

Del Rey felt her major label debut album

materialise. She quickly wrote its title track

Born To Die, Blue Jeans and Million Dollar

Man. “Then I was like, ‘Got it.’ Racked that

album and left all the 167 other songs

I’d written in London behind.”

Or so she thought. “Eventually they all

got leaked through my Hotmail, which

fucking sucked. Cos they weren’t good.

And I knew it, objectively.”

A what-can-you-do shrug. Vape. Mango

smoke curls upwards beyond her eyes. Then,

a smile. “It’s incredible that Video Games

won Song Of The Decade. Born To Die

[the album] had to sound bigger, but it’s

interesting that what was its most quiet

moment has won Song Of The Decade.

I loved that song.” A nod. “And I still love it.”

 

On the sleeve of Lana

Del Rey’s most recent

album, Norman

Fucking Rockwell, she

is clutching the waist

of a handsome young

man on board a

sailboat decorated

with a Stars and

Stripes flag, holding

out her hand towards

the listener. In the

background, the Californian skyline is

ablaze, as if the big one has finally hit.

Come to me, she’s saying, this is your

best hope of sanctuary.

In those seven years since Video Games

and its parent record Born To Die, Lana Del

Rey had made a further three albums before

 

“I have to do a lot to keep my feet on

the ground. I need to leave to come back.

I have to really get myself out, to get

myself back in. I have to toggle myself.”

NFR arrived in August, each trying to hone

what she is musically, how she writes. But

it wasn’t until she met Jack Antonoff, the

producer who’s worked with Taylor Swift

and Lorde amongst many others, that

she teamed up with a writing partner

able to work in perfect relief to her.

His virtuoso musicianship and

sympathetic ear collided with Del Rey’s

melodic flair and once-in-a-lifetime way with

a killer line. Together they created a complex,

beautiful masterpiece. NFR unfolds lyrically

like a great American novel about freedom,

identity and the wreckage of the battle of the

sexes set in modern-day California, where the

stench of pot drenches every street corner

and where the thump of distant G-funk

mingles with the ghosts of Joni Mitchell and

the other Laurel Canyon ’70s soothsayers. All

the while the Pacific rolls in, and out, and

every day the news cycle nags incessantly

about Trump, the climate crises and the big

one which is just around the corner…

It establishes Lana Del Rey as one of the

truly great American songwriters of the age,

perhaps the only one who has managed to

distil this decade across an entire album.

She’s a galaxy brain of emotional intelligence

and cultural insight, armed with a skeleton

key for stately melody, and who now has a

writing partner with just the right palate to

make it explode into Technicolor. You should

take that hand she offers on the sleeve.

“It’s an album about coming into

one’s own,” she decides. “And choosing

to laugh rather than cry.”

 

This intention is clear from the very

first line, she says.

“Probably my favourite line on the album.

[she starts to sing it] ‘God damn man child,

you fucked me so good I almost said I love

you.’ That’s a tough one to sing in front

of your dad. And the album ends not on a

laugh, but still on a lightness.”

On that final song, Hope Is A Dangerous

Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have, she

sings of the many reasons why hope is a

dangerous thing for a woman like her to have

today, before a final echo where she softly

insists three times, “But I have it…”

The motives behind these two songs,

however, are not just what the album is

about alone, clarifies Del Rey.

“Also, hard work. Craftsmanship.

True craftsmanship. Eleven-minute

songs. Fifteen chord progressions…”

Lana Del Rey raises her eyebrows.

She is already carving out the next

chapter of this new imperial phase. In

her 20s, she was always looking for songs

to write. Now, she’ll write them when

she can. Antonoff comes to Los Angeles

every month and they’ll meet to see where

it takes them. “Sometimes we don’t write,

we just talk. And then, if I’m lucky, I’ll get

a song a month.”

This next album may come in 2020, it

may come in 2021, and it may be called

White Hot Forever, or she may change her

mind. But it will definitely have a first song

and a last song decided before any others.

“I always say that if you have a closer and

an opener then you know where you

are going,” she explains.

She’d spent four years working on Hope

Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like

Me To Have before she met Antonoff.

“Not because it was special, but it wasn’t

piecing together. So I sang that to Jack

a cappella the day I met him and we did

Norman the next day. Just a series of chords

that he played that I freestyled over. And

I thought, ‘I’ve got the first song and I’ve

got the 13th song.’ And then I pretty much

know what to do in-between, I just don’t

know how long it’s going to take. I have

the same thing for this next album but it’s

actually going to take longer than I want if

it’s going to be as good as this one…”

Most importantly, though, she has the

outline of the words for the next album.

Certainly, if she was a white man holding

a guitar and writing words as potent and

poetic as she does on NFR, she’d be put

on a much higher pedestal.

“They’d say I was like Johnny Cash or

something,” she agrees. “It’s the words that

make me feel confident about the next one.

Every now and then one long phrase will

come to me. Like, Hope Is A Dangerous

Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have, Will

You Still Love Me When I’m No Longer

Young And Beautiful… I have no idea where

they’re going to go, but objectively I’m,

like, ‘Oof, I want to fill it in.’ So I have three

of those. One in particular, Let Me Love You

Like A Woman, there’s just something about

it. I feel like it’s going to be really important,

but I don’t know why yet. That’s where the

magic comes in.”

It’s during the filling in of these long

phrases that Del Rey determines the song’s

meaning. Hope Is A Dangerous Thing…

was easy to determine. It’s about the toxic

masculinity that she’d seen displayed on

her journey through musical showbusiness,

and her response to it.

 

“I think it’s dangerous for a woman who

is too kind, I really do,” she says. “That’s

what it’s about. Hope is a dangerous thing

for a woman who is told to bend to whatever

comes along because it’s the right thing to

do. So it’s less dangerous if you never gave a

fuck, but if you care it’s dangerous on seven

different levels.” She stops. “Do you agree?”

Kindness is not normally a trait that

bad men respect.

“I always say to my male friends that

good guys don’t know anything about the

bad side of truly bad men.”

This may be true. However, any man

who has been on a stag do, or even regularly

shared a locker room as part of a team

sport, can attest to the fact that even the

objectively “good” men can be much

worse than one imagines.

Lana Del Rey’s face sets to stone. “Well,

they’re the really bad ones. It’s rare to come

across someone who’s truly wonderful.”

The room falls momentarily silent.

What can we do?

“Write songs about it,” says Lana

Del Rey solemnly.

 

Lana Del Rey spends a lot

of time at the wheel of

her black pick-up truck,

trawling the highways

of her adopted state of

California out of her

base in Los Angeles,

heading north towards

San Francisco, or south

towards San Diego,

where she has other

nests. Not because

she has to, but because she needs to.

 

“I have to do a lot to keep my feet on the

ground,” she explains. “I need to leave to

come back. It’s almost like toggling. I have

to really get myself out, to get myself back

in. I have to toggle myself.”

Practically, this means heavy road-time.

“I’ll take a month at a time commuting to

Newport. It’s an hour and 20 minutes, at

least 80 miles every day. So I’ll drive to

Newport and come back the next day.

I’ll do yoga, I’ll swim. Then I’ll come back.”

This all leaves a lot of time alone in

her car with herself. “I am quite a planner.

I figure things out. I’m very much from

here,” places one hand on her chest, “to

here.” Puts the other hand on her head.

She has feelings. She has thoughts. It’s

why she needs the yoga and swimming:

to stretch those feelings out beyond her

chest, out into her toes and fingers.

But as she drives, those feelings and

thoughts start to re-emerge and she once

again begins to order them. She’ll dictate

lyrics and ideas for hours on end, and then

she’ll have to torturously unravel them at

home. She also “free-writes” every morning

and evening on her old typewriter, which

requires a lot of untangling before she

unearths any nuggets. It’s worth it, she says.

“Jung says that every character in your

dream is you,” she explains. “So every

morning I wake up and think, ‘Was I the

killer and the spider?!’ I’ve heard that

dream analysis upon free writing is the

only way your psyche can communicate to

your conscious self. So if you write, write,

write and eventually look at it you think,

‘Why am I writing that?’ There’s definitely

something to it.”

She’ll also think about the routing of

upcoming tours in her car. She’ll chew over

whether she’d like to do just a friends and

family circuit, a tour that takes in theatres

in unusual places. Alabama. Des Moines.

Places that people with multiple worldwide

Number 1 albums don’t typically play. But

maybe she will. Maybe she will.

“Sometimes I think enough songs

have been done. Enough tours. We toured

constantly for four years. And we did at

least 20 summer shows as well, and our

own tours. So now, we can do what we like.

We can do anything.”

So when she’s driving and she has an idea

about this, or that, she can make it happen.

For example, last weekend she did a “friends

and family show” at Jones Beach, in New

York, the site of the first concert she went

to 20 years ago: Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

She invited two old friends who hadn’t

seen each other for 21 years to join her, as

well, just because she could and thought

it would be beautiful. Sean Ono Lennon

came on and sang their collaboration

Tomorrow Never Came for the first time

ever. And, on Leonard Cohen’s birthday,

his son Adam sang Leonard’s Chelsea

Hotel No 2 with Lana Del Rey. Not a dry

eye on Long Island.

“Man, I got to say, that show at Jones

Beach has got to be the best show I ever

did.” Enthusiastic vape, mango smoke.

“It was just a very gentle spirit.”

It got her thinking about who else she can

have join her on this tour. Next week at the

Hollywood Bowl, Weyes Blood will step

up alongside her, as will ’80s heartthrob

Chris Isaak “just because I like him.” Joan

Baez has been invited to Berkeley. “I hope she

comes. Diamonds And Rust is what we have

planned to sing. She’s someone I think a lot

about in terms of people I want to sing with.”

She picks up one of the apples from the

fruit bowl.

 

Before we press that

Uber icon again,

Donald Trump

shows up, as he

so often does

nowadays.

This August,

in response to the

mass shootings in

El Paso, Texas,

and Dayton, Ohio,

Del Rey wrote

and swiftly released a single, Looking For

America. In a landscape noticeably bereft

of any protest singles, certainly from big,

mainstream stars, Looking For America is

powerfully direct. “I’m still looking for my

own version of America,” runs the chorus,

“One without the gun, where the flag can

freely fly.” It signalled that Lana Del Rey

is happy to step beneath a spotlight

American pop stars tend to shun.

The day that we meet, the Trump

impeachment festival is in full swing on all

the news channels. Del Rey asks what the

latest from CNN is. She’s happy that some

legal norms still function.

“Nobody is above the law and you can’t

obstruct justice,” she notes. “It’s not just

because you’re an asshole.”

The Trump era has been helpfully

revealing, she says.

“What I like about it is that it’s mirroring

our tiny microcosms. It’s so-what culture.

‘I fucked you over? So what? I’m going to run

away with your money anyway.’ Trump is

reflective of that culture. I mean, he was

elected. And it’s no coincidence that it is all

happening at this late stage of our climate

crises. Again, that’s why I like Hope Is A

Dangerous Thing, because the people at the

forefront of fighting climate change are so

lovely. Do people listen to lovely voices?

Yeah, yeah, we’ll cut emissions in 10, 20, 30

years’ time.”

And yet, she says, that the more unhinged

the world becomes, the more creatively

stimulated she feels. “It’s definitely no

coincidence that I’m gaining clarity in the

midst of crises. I think chaos brings that: lots

of ‘good to know’ moments. Like, ‘Oh! That

entire group of people feel the same way?

I had no idea.’ It’s a time for concerted effort.

If just the needle could shift, be it in terms

of the climate crises or impeachment.

Then, it’s a question of the damage done,

culturally and environmentally.”

The time has come to press that Uber

app. Where are we headed, asks Del Rey. To a

hotel called Dream, opposite a bar, Black

Rabbit Rose, which makes a cameo on a

song on Norman Fucking Rockwell,

Happiness Is A Butterfly: “Hollywood

and Vine, Black Rabbit in the alley/I just

wanna hold you down the avenue…”

“Black Rabbit has a magic show every

Wednesday,” she says, ruefully. “Been a

while since I’ve been, but I do like Hollywood

and Vine. I don’t get stopped there,

unlike the younger areas.”

Her biggest foe are the paparazzi.

“I’ll have quiet months, then all of a sudden

I’ll be at lunch and they’ll be there and I’ll be

like [gasps]. It still surprises me. It’s like

waking up from a dream. ‘What are we

doing here again? I was just at a taco truck,

and now what the fuck?’”

She says that when she feels uprooted

by fame, either by paparazzi or just by

fans coming too close while grocery

shopping, she can call her friends, “Sarah,

Jen or Anne, and be, like, ‘You are not going

to believe what happened, and who I was

with, and now they will never speak to me

again.’ Because it’s unusual if you are with

someone and they get surprised by it too.

It’s slightly alarming.”

She shrugs, and laughs.

“Living the dream!”

No way out now.

“There’s a way out,” she says firmly. “Yes,

there is. I know it. I see it. Out of the corner

of my left eye, I have a rabbit hole. But you

know what it entails is not working. No

promoting. So it’s hard, but you could make a

lifestyle change. I’ve seen people do it,

sometimes not intentionally.”

We step out on to the verandah. Del Rey

reveals she did actually know about the Song

Of The Decade award: she was so touched, in

fact, that she organised her own photo and

video shoot for us to use this morning in this

very house. We deserve it. “I mean, Song Of

The Decade? Come on!”

As we stand admiring the view and the

beautiful houses of Laurel Canyon, a woman

appears at the window opposite. She is fresh

from the shower and clearly naked. “Ooops,”

says Lana Del Rey, almost involuntarily,

and pulls back inside the house. “I saw

boob! I do not want to get caught looking

into strangers’ bathrooms.”

Oh look, there’s our ride. A handshake,

a wave and away we go back down to the

grime of Hollywood Boulevard.

 

A week later, an email

arrives. A friend of

a friend was just at

an Afrobeat night

at a club in San

Francisco, the

evening before Lana

Del Rey’s big show

in nearby Berkeley.

As the music

and lights swirled on

the dancefloor, our

correspondent spotted a familiar face in a

booth outside the floor. Emboldened by the

night’s rush, she approached Lana Del Rey.

“I love your music,” she told her, and

“I’m coming to see you perform tomorrow.

I often listen to you before I go out,” she

added. “I listened to you tonight even.”

“That’s so funny,” replied Lana. “The

person I listen to before going out is here

tonight with me too,” she said, pointing

to the middle of floor. “We’re actually

singing together tomorrow.”

There, frugging energetically in the

midst of the throng on the dancefloor,

was 78-year-old songwriting legend and

activist Joan Baez.

And, in that booth, Lana Del Rey

smiled joyfully. She’s living the dream.

Finally enjoying the fruits of her labour.

 

“It’s so-what culture. ‘I fucked you over?

So what? I’m going to run away with your

money anyway.’ Trump is reflective of

that. It’s no coincidence it is all happening

at this late stage of our climate crises.” 

[/size]

[trailer park 248]

This interview is very weird tbh (as expected). Didn't she say a couple of years ago that she wanted to release an album consisting of 25 of her favourite unreleased tracks? Now she says she doesn't like them while she's even sung some of them on tour

[necessary sacrifice 8,864]

This interview is very weird tbh (as expected). Didn't she say a couple of years ago that she wanted to release an album consisting of 25 of her favourite unreleased tracks? Now she says she doesn't like them while she's even sung some of them on tour

I mean, she likely doesn’t hate every single unreleased song. She probably means most of them she wasn’t happy with and they weren’t in the direction she wanted to pursue, so it was probably embarrassing having them leak then constantly be associated with her. She’s probably just trying to make it clear that a lot of them were in a style she never really wanted to pursue and never will officially. Especially since lots of those 2010-2011 ones are insanely popular with her fans, but she doesn’t feel like they represent her or her art that much. Like I’m sure there are some she likes, especially since, as you mentioned, she performs some live and wanted to release an unreleased anthology. Just like there’s probably some released songs she’s not too fond of, I doubt she thinks every single unreleased song of hers sucks.

[Auto-Tuned Loon 650]

Lana Del Rey spends a lot of time... out of her base in Los Angeles, heading north towards San Francisco, or south towards San Diego, where she has other nests. Not because she has to, but because she needs to.

 

“I have to do a lot to keep my feet on the ground,” she explains. “I need to leave to come back. It’s almost like toggling. I have to really get myself out, to get myself back in. I have to toggle myself.”

Ah, she's migratory like myself.

[trailer park 248]

I mean, she likely doesn’t hate every single unreleased song. She probably means most of them she wasn’t happy with and they weren’t in the direction she wanted to pursue, so it was probably embarrassing having them leak then constantly be associated with her. She’s probably just trying to make it clear that a lot of them were in a style she never really wanted to pursue and never will officially. Especially since lots of those 2010-2011 ones are insanely popular with her fans, but she doesn’t feel like they represent her or her art that much. Like I’m sure there are some she likes, especially since, as you mentioned, she performs some live and wanted to release an unreleased anthology. Just like there’s probably some released songs she’s not too fond of, I doubt she thinks every single unreleased song of hers sucks.

 

Many of these tracks however resemble the feel of the songs she included in born to die. It's unfortunate for her that they leaked (and most likely many of these songs weren't even properly finished) but I don't think she was pushed to write and create things she didn't relate to on a personal level at the time.

[necessary sacrifice 8,864]

Many of these tracks however resemble the feel of the songs she included in born to die. It's unfortunate for her that they leaked (and most likely many of these songs weren't even properly finished) but I don't think she was pushed to write and create things she didn't relate to on a personal level at the time.

No, I don’t think anyone forced her to make those songs. But she did admit that when making them, she didn’t even feel like they were for herself. Maybe she was hoping to sell them to other singers, like Carole King used to do. And she said she didn’t even know what her sound would be til she made Video Games and had a lightbulb moment, so maybe after that, she looked back and was like “wow these songs aren’t me at all.” Also lots of artists will make music that isn’t really in the direction they wanna go in to break out and earn the chance to make art the way they want. I’d say there was probably a variety of all these circumstances in the making of those songs. I wouldn’t really overthink it. She just wasn’t happy with a lot of them and probably assumed they’d just disappear forever after she decided not to use them.

[evilentity 13,303]

Lana’s a Cancer. Born on 21 June, 1985, in New York City, as Elizabeth Woolridge Grant.

#tbt

You're born in 1986--

Uh-huh. [Nods.]

 

--just like me.

Oh, really? [Laughs.]

 

...

 

You're 25 now?

Mm-hmmm. [Nods slightly.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd1B5hqkPKY

 

Girl...

 

 

She presses record on her phone. Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution. “I’ve never needed it since I started doing it.” But there was that one time she wished she had done it, so she always records.

A couple of interviews have mentioned her doing this now. I've always found this a bit odd in a way. Didn't she previously say, or at least suggest, that she did this in response to her infamous "I wish I was dead already" Guardian interview? ...Which the interviewer recorded. And he posted the audio of that quote. Unless she means she records to fact check herself before she pops off half-cocked at interviewers as she is wont to do.

 

 

Lana Del Rey had spent two lonely years living in East London with her manager Ben Mawson, above a fish market on Kingsland Road in Dalston.

Hmmm... I've thought for some time now that our favorite manager/lawyer/forum harasser was an undersung (figuratively not literally) Lanalysis and lyric inspo candidate.

 

More broadly it's amazing to me how little is known at this late a date about her time in London.

 

 

Racked that album and left all the 167 other songs I’d written in London behind.” Or so she thought. “Eventually they all got leaked through my Hotmail, which fucking sucked. Cos they weren’t good. And I knew it, objectively.”

Every time I have encountered a personal e-mail address or something like that in the course of my sleuthing or have read certain information she's divulged in interviews I've winced knowing she was leaving herself vulnerable to less ethical actors in her fanbase.

 

This also takes me back to the SIN days. I remember people posting cryptically about feeling so bad for what happened to her without saying specifically what had happened, but over time I got the impression they were meaning she'd been hacked.

 

 

Cos they weren’t good. And I knew it, objectively.”

Yeah, some of them aren't great. But a lot of them really are. It's kind of sad that Lana doesn't know that. And most the ones that aren't great are not great but in interesting ways.

 

 

“Probably my favourite line on the album. [she starts to sing it] ‘God damn man child, you fucked me so good I almost said I love you.’ That’s a tough one to sing in front of your dad.

Charlie: Happy Father's Day!

Rob: A new fishing reel and an extension of my Domain Name Journal subscription. Thanks Chaz!

Caroline: Happy Father's Day!

Rob: A new Hawaiian shirt. Thanks Chuck!

Elizabeth: Happy Father's Day! Listen to this song I posted on Instagram.

Rob: ...

 

This next album may come in 2020, it may come in 2021, and it may be called White Hot Forever, or she may change her mind.

2021. And it will be called something different. Calling it now. If she doesn't change her mind, some asshole will probably leak the title track so she has to change the whole project.

 

 

She’ll dictate lyrics and ideas for hours on end, and then she’ll have to torturously unravel them at home. She also “free-writes” every morning and evening on her old typewriter, which requires a lot of untangling before she unearths any nuggets. It’s worth it, she says.

Cool insight on her current process.

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED... (fucking quote limits)

[13bitches 6,175]

I guess it's a case of an artist being her own biggest critic.

But we also know her taste low-key sucks like she scrapped your girl fine china and yes to heaven just to put florida kilos on there.

tea

[Creyk 11,497]

This interview is very weird tbh (as expected). Didn't she say a couple of years ago that she wanted to release an album consisting of 25 of her favourite unreleased tracks? Now she says she doesn't like them while she's even sung some of them on tour

In a livestream (I think around the release of Honeymoon album) she explicitly said that she loves the song "Caught You Boy". So I think she doesn't dislike all of it, just most of it.

[evilentity 13,303]

“Jung says that every character in your dream is you,” she explains.

The way she said this reminds me of when she quotes Francis Ford Coppola in the Keds video.

 

 

In a landscape noticeably bereft of any protest singles, certainly from big, mainstream stars, Looking For America is powerfully direct.

Yeah, as someone who made large anti-war playlists of mostly '60s protest songs during the Iraq War it's disappointing how few protest singles from big, mainstreams stars there were both then and now. LFA was such a breath of fresh air. And genuinely surprising coming from historically apolitical/retrograde political Lana.

 

 

“Nobody is above the law and you can’t obstruct justice,” she notes. “It’s not just because you’re an asshole.”

YES. Just because people have been looking for a reason to impeach you because they don't like you or anything you stand for does not mean they are not right to impeach you when you do impeachable things.

 

 

The Trump era has been helpfully revealing, she says. “What I like about it is that it’s mirroring our tiny microcosms. It’s so-what culture. ‘I fucked you over? So what? I’m going to run away with your money anyway.’

YAS! Drag Moy.

 

 

To a hotel called Dream, opposite a bar, Black Rabbit Rose, which makes a cameo on a song on Norman Fucking Rockwell, Happiness Is A Butterfly

This is a very Lynchian sounding sentence. Also love that this confirms the specific place this refers to.

 

 

Her biggest foe are the paparazzi. “I’ll have quiet months, then all of a sudden I’ll be at lunch and they’ll be there and I’ll be like [gasps]. It still surprises me. It’s like waking up from a dream. ‘What are we doing here again? I was just at a taco truck, and now what the fuck?’”

What's up with this album cycle and interviews with taco references? Not that I'm complaining.

 

something something taco trucks on every corner Trump joke

 

 

“There’s a way out,” she says firmly. “Yes, there is. I know it. I see it. Out of the corner of my left eye, I have a rabbit hole. But you know what it entails is not working. No promoting. So it’s hard, but you could make a lifestyle change. I’ve seen people do it, sometimes not intentionally.”

I'm glad to see her acknowledging this. She does have choices, she does have agency, but fame and avoiding its downsides come at the cost of one another. It's a much healthier and more mature perspective than in past interviews.

 

As I said back in the day about her whole "I wish I was dead already" kerfuffle:

 

If Lana doesn't like headlines like these, there's an easy solution: Don't give journalists soundbites like this to work with. And if she just can't help herself there's an easy solution to that: Stop giving interviews. This is just the umpteenth example of Lana's victim-playing far exceeding her victimhood. It's getting really old.

Something I've been thinking about lately is a theme in both her music and interviews: passivity. (And also in this instance passive-aggressiveness.) The passivity or submissiveness in her lyrics has been pretty well dissected, especially the feminist angle, but as it relates to her interviews, I don't think it really has been. She's always talking about how sad she is and how her treatment by the media makes her sad and that she keeps playing for her fans even though it doesn't make her happy and she doesn't want to do this shit anymore... as if she has absolutely zero agency and is just an object acted upon by external forces. She constantly blames others and takes no responsibility for her own role in her current situation or her ability to take action to get out of it. I mean, she has resources at her disposal such that she could do almost anything she wants. If she really doesn't want to do this shit anymore, barring contractual obligations (which would still be her responsibility, she signed the papers), she should be able to stop making music today, never work a day in her life again, and still live a quiet, comfortable middle-class life on the money she's already earned, if she hasn't completely squandered it on topiary ponies or making self-indulgent 30-minute short films. And if she's contractually obligated to produce a certain number of albums, she's got plenty of stuff already recorded she could use. At some point she needs to put up or shut up. Or at least stop pointing her finger everywhere else and look within. Really, this episode is a low point for both her and her fanbase.

LOL. I think we've both mellowed a bit over the years.

 

 

“That’s so funny,” replied Lana. “The person I listen to before going out is here tonight with me too,” she said, pointing to the middle of floor. “We’re actually singing together tomorrow.” There, frugging energetically in the midst of the throng on the dancefloor, was 78-year-old songwriting legend and activist Joan Baez.

[mkultraviolence 5,829]

it must be so painful feeling like the victim all the time. even if it isn't justified I feel like that must be a lonely confusing feeling.

[Elle 114,463]

All this talk about private jets... turns out Lana flies coach.

[Valerie 1,379]

All this talk about private jets... turns out Lana flies coach.

Nope! Let's not be selective for the one time she decides not to go on a private jet!

 

We know for a fact she usually uses private jets, such as the New Orleans photos, where a fan got to take a photo with Byron and it was just the band that was flying separately from her, whereas Lana was on a private jet, with pictures provided by none other thannnn Lana and co! Then of course the selfies/videos Lana took of her flying solo in her private jet, and all the times she's been spotted getting off her private jet, like her arrival in Sydney (video footage of that) and other major cities (again, footage of that too) etc.

 

The private jet claims from everyone did not come out of thin air, there's plenty of photos & videos of her using private jets.

[Elle 114,463]

After 34 years, Q Magazine is releasing their final issue on the 28th Lana has graced three different covers for them, and was included on the cover in a collage of various artists for their latest issue in June. So sad, an end of an era! x

 

[AnarKissed 278]

"Are these the dying cries of an old regime, or are they the birth pains of a brand new division in the country of chaos?"   ----L.D.R., interview with BBC former employee Annie Mac, January 11, 2021.

 

Source: 

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