Why do newer fans seem to dislike AKA?

[Heaux 1,400]

Hi everyone I haven't been on this site for about 8 years but hello just dropping in.

 

Alright so ten years ago, post BTD and I guess also post UV, AKA was held in very high esteem by fans and a lot of people seemed to prefer it to BTD. It was always included as an option when ranking her albums or best lead track/closer stuff like that. Whereas now I'm seeing a lot of fans, especially on Tiktok, just not counting it as an album or saying that they hate it/only listened to it once. 

 

I have theories on why the tide has turned against it. 10 years ago streaming services were only still gaining popularity and we were either buying albums on iTunes or downloading them illegally (more likely lol) and therefore people were a lot more likely to download AKA and put it on our music apps on our phones back then. Newer fans seem to go to Youtube for Lanas unreleased material now because of this switch to streaming. That brings up two issues for AKA.. People are less likely to listen to an album at all if its only on YT as its inconvenient and secondly the quality of the uploads of the album on Youtube are pretty bad. Most of them have a pitched up version of Gramma which sounds awful and they have the demo version of For K Part 2. There's also parts of the outros clipped off so the songs end abruptly and don't flow well into one another as intended ( Its meant to be a gapless album as some songs are meant to have slight overlaps like For K Part 2 into Jump, Put Me In A Movie into Smarty) So I can understand someone listening to the versions on YT and thinking that its a badly produced messy album.

I guess some of it is just to do with the fact that she has so many albums now and this is one of her oldest and least talked about albums. I can also confess to probably only having listened to Lust for Life a handful of times because its not really my vibe but I don't talk shit about it either or pretend its not an album she released.

 

I hope she eventually rereleases the album in good quality without re-recording it, and gapless too please. (Side note I used to have a gapless version of AKA but Apple Music has a bug that adds gaps into gapless albums  ) Even if she just does it quietly without any physical releases, even though they would be nice. I think there would be a big shift in peoples opinion of the album if she did rerelease it

 

Anyway, I'm interested to hear if others have noticed this and if you have other thoughts on why this shift has happened.

 

Apologies if this has been brought up before, like I said haven't been on here in years.

[past the bushes 30,939]

I definitely think it's a favorite around here, Tiktok takes are kinda shit 

[fishtails 13,817]

I didn't really become a fan of Lana until 2017, so I can't speak for what it was like 10 years ago, but I think one of the reasons is just (like you said) its so hard to find AKA as a newer fan and it kind of just gets mixed in with all the other unreleased songs on YouTube or SoundCloud, etc.

 

And often the songs are pitched too, so thats another reason why people may not like them as much...I think that if AKA had been left on streaming as an official release, people would like it more and consider it more

 

I also hope Lana puts it back on streaming one day too lol it would be really interesting to see how it would be received 

[TropicoKitten 5,013]

Imagine not liking AKA

[Rody29 72]

what's the best way of listening  to AKA? 

[Dark Angel 202,785]

there's a lot of people on social media nowadays, mostly young people, who somehow think her lizzy grant days were problematic/traumatic for her for no reason, they claim that she was a prostitute, living in poverty because she was living in a trailer park, being groomed, or addicted to drugs, i'm actually a massive fan of the lizzy grant era and AKA is my #1 favorite album of all time, so clearly i'm very biased towards AKA and the music she made during that time  for what it's worth, a lot of people here really like AKA and it seems like the lizzy grant era in general has become more popular here in the past few years, i honestly don't have any social media really so i really don't know for sure what people feel about AKA, i feel like some people may prefer lana's mainstream major-label albums because they do sound quite different compared to AKA, AKA isn't nearly as cinematic or luscious sonically, it's a completely different feel, people are allowed to like what they like, but my issue is people acting like it's wrong to listen to it because they claim it's problematic

 

i actually was watching a video yesterday of somebody showing off their vinyl collection and all they could really say about AKA was that it was "camp" and i honestly felt a bit offended  because it seems like "camp" is just a code-word for "bad", AKA is genuinely a masterpiece, not ironically, not in a campy way, GENIUNELY, SERIOUSLY a masterpiece

[Embach 43,623]

It's because they think that all of the songs are controversial thematically like Put Me In The Movie (which is a great song but a very sad one) and this TikTok generation tries to be (fake) woke as hell. 

 

Also I think that most newer fans do not know that AKA exists and here's great proof, from the comments, they start panicking when they see the album written as RAY not Rey ⬇️

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsMKisEgsvx/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

It's really shocking because when I became a stan, I started reading her whole biography including her Lizzy era and I instantly delved into AKA and other Lizzy songs. I was really young then too, in my early teen years, I came home from school and I instantly learned new things about Lizzy then, it was so interesting. It was something so fascinating, like a part of history that wasn't talked about enough. Lizzy era is still one of my favorites and I think that AKA is one of her best albums. 

[Dark Angel 202,785]

not gonna lie when i first read the title of this thread i was tempted to just reply "because people are fucking tasteless" and just leave it at that   

[prettywhenimhigh 49,396]

well they can choke it's one of my fav albums ever  

 

4 minutes ago, Surf Noir said:

not gonna lie when i first read the title of this thread i was tempted to just reply "because people are fucking tasteless" and just leave it at that   

 

not me doing exactly that

[past the bushes 30,939]

2 minutes ago, Surf Noir said:

not gonna lie when i first read the title of this thread i was tempted to just reply "because people are fucking tasteless" and just leave it at that   

I read the title and immediately asked myself 'what would @lizzyology and @Surf Noir say?' 

[Dark Angel 202,785]

Just now, past the bushes said:

I read the title and immediately asked myself 'what would @lizzyology and @Surf Noir say?' 

 

we're gonna need @sparklrtrailrheaven and @Super Movie's input  

[Super Movie 51,765]

It's because people on TikTok basically decided to create their own fanfiction around the Lizzy Grant era and Lana's life during the making of AKA, so now they've deemed it "problematic" to listen to  AKA is an excellent album and one of my favorites of all time, and she definitely deserves to be appreciated as the icon she is

[DCooper 37,087]

lack of taste and/or brain power and/or critical thinking skills 

[Thats why they call me Dita 10,065]

I agree it’s probably due to not being on streaming services.. alongside it being worlds apart in sound from her more recent albums.. and I suppose if you became a fan for an album like her last 4, then you’re maybe not in to that sound 

 

I wish it was on stream services and reproduced too because I never ever listen to it for that reason too 

[past the bushes 30,939]

2 minutes ago, Super Movie said:

It's because people on TikTok basically decided to create their own fanfiction around the Lizzy Grant era and Lana's life during the making of AKA, so now they've deemed it "problematic" to listen to 

same people who claimed that 'Lana burns bibles'  

[Heaux 1,400]

42 minutes ago, Rody29 said:

what's the best way of listening  to AKA? 

I had a quick look on Youtube just now and this appears to be one of the only uploads of the correct original version of all the songs. I haven't listened to it in detail but flicked through and it seems good.

 

I don't use spotify but I've heard that people upload unreleased lana stuff there as podcasts so there might be a version on there

 

https://soundcloud.com/user-44795412/lana-del-ray-aka-lizzy-grant-full-album

This is also a good option. seems high quality and has the correct versions. These are both gapless too.

[Dark Angel 202,785]

1 minute ago, past the bushes said:

same people who claimed that 'Lana burns bibles'  

 

whenever i think of the lana cult on tiktok i think of @cancermoon one of the scat troll's many accounts because they have the same profile pic/meme

 

oh, yeah @Heaux scat is still a thing here if you're wondering

[boom like that 11,927]

The truth is that the tiktok kids are collectively boycotting AKA because it wasn't released as a 22 track lp with Ben, Axel Rose Husband, Coconut and Key Lime Pie, Reflec, Trash Magic, Lemonade Motorcycle Heaven, Jimmy Gnecco, Hundred Dollar Bill and Motel 6 on it. They won't stop till justice has been served 

[The Siren 30,524]

It's probably their SJW/keyboard warrior side hating the put me in a movie lyrics etc

28 minutes ago, Rody29 said:

what's the best way of listening  to AKA? 

By finding a download of the original itunes purchase or @bigspender's 2021 WAV remaster

[bluechemtrails 27,004]

TikTokers have always been a strange species, I just remember the Lana Del Rey cult or the many random (also unreleased) songs that were turned into hits (currently Radio). It's just a crazy bunch, always chasing the latest random trends.