Unpopular Lana Opinions

[Sam Fucking Rockwell 137]

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is a better record than Honeymoon (and I listen to it more often than HM already) ^{this is a personal opinion don't kill me}

 

I agree, HBHBHB is a great album and it tells a story, every song fits in its place perfectly! It's probably my favorite album of the year so far. BUT Lana is my favorite artist, so Honeymoon holds a special place in my heart - even if I think there's a lot of albums released this year that are objectively better in many ways.

[Sam Fucking Rockwell 137]

Also, I don't really care if Lana isn't a hugely popular star or if she ever returns to her BTD pop sound. I've liked basically every song she's ever made and I'll probably go on still liking everything she does. Not every singer needs to be a pop star and make huge numbers, some thrive well with a smaller dedicated fanbase. It doesn't really seem like Lana wants to be a pop star anymore anyway, what with never doing promo anymore and all.

[joshuasean2900 281]

I need a rerecorded version of Pawn Shop Blues sans the annoying production quirks. tbh the main thing that holds AKA back for me is the annoying production quirks scattered throughout it

 

As for my favourite albums/EPs of the year so far:

1. FROOT - Marina and the Diamonds

2. Honeymoon - Lana Del Rey

3. M3LL155X - FKA twigs

4. How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful - Florence + the Machine

5. SUCKER - Charli XCX (I'm from the UK so technically it came out this year for me)

[KozzyKozak 135]

Yayo is one of the greateat classics of our times

[Anthem 1,557]

Hint: if its posted on one page three times already, it might not be unpopular

 

I like Paradise and Honeymoon more than her other albums and I like their covers more than the other covers too 

 

I don't think UV is some untouchable masterpiece. It's very good, maybe her best, but its not miles high above her other work like everyone has been acting lately.

[a11111 528]

@

 

wow that was a super depressing read dude.. fuck..

I absolutely love Honeymoon right now. Every more listen pulls me in harder. She sounds beautiful in all songs.

(There were 3 songs or4?, i don't like), but the rest and the vibe- awesome. definately a downer album tho..

you have to be in the mood for.. but i love it.. i can't not love it.. its intense as fuck for me.

 

This all worries me more  @..

I agree, except the fact (for me), some of the greatest  songs/vocals ever recorded..

completley confused now..

I feel the same. HM is a good album but her delivery is so cold, detached that is hard to listen to it. I don't understand Lana, she's a puzzle of contradictions. Jon Caramanica wrote about her that she "has a bad, maybe even terrible, attitude underneath the pristine exterior" after watching on of her first shows in NY and I'm starting to agree with him. My theory is that all of her problems are starting with her stage fright and her inability to sing live properly. None of the authenticity debate would ever existed if she would sing her songs live well. But without convincing performances this amount of sadness that she's putting out is just piling up and becomes less and less appealing without the emotional connection to the artist. I didn't have the opportunity to see her live but, form what I saw on Youtube, her shows are far from the level of artistry and emotional involvement that her material demands. Her shows kind of worked with the more campy BTD and Paradise but for performing UV and HM she needs to improve a lot. The problem is her attitude: she won't do it.

[letsescapelizzy 672]

I feel the same. HM is a good album but her delivery is so cold, detached that is hard to listen to it. I don't understand Lana, she's a puzzle of contradictions. Jon Caramanica wrote about her that she "has a bad, maybe even terrible, attitude underneath the pristine exterior" after watching on of her first shows in NY and I'm starting to agree with him. My theory is that all of her problems are starting with her stage fright and her inability to sing live properly. None of the authenticity debate would ever existed if she would sing her songs live well. But without convincing performances this amount of sadness that she's putting out is just piling up and becomes less and less appealing without the emotional connection to the artist. I didn't have the opportunity to see her live but, form what I saw on Youtube, her shows are far from the level of artistry and emotional involvement that her material demands. Her shows kind of worked with the more campy BTD and Paradise but for performing UV and HM she needs to improve a lot. The problem is her attitude: she won't do it.

 

Good post from you Vertigo, as always. , but yes, interesting thoughts.. i need to go back and listen to the radio one performance a few weeks ago..

this is getting complicated for me now..

[neuf 197]

I think "24" should have been a bonus track or something.  It breaks up the flow and feels out of place despite being a nice song.

[cinnamon 224]

Ultraviolence is my least favourite song off of Ultraviolence 

[NoPretty 79]

Ultraviolence is my least favourite song off of Ultraviolence

Same for Honeymoon

 

Also I'm at a point where I don't really care about celebrity culture, charts, hits/flops, and I don't see this as an argument for anything (may apply to Lana somehow)

[neuf 197]

I started liking Honeymoon a lot more once the album came out.  Before that, I'd skip it.  I only really skip Terrance, Interlude, and 24 now.

[TRENCH 15,450]

I think some people forgot that HM (slow/dark but brighter) is a CONTINUATION of UV (low/dark)

 

Also I feel that Honeymoon (song) is a very Lizzy-esque song

[Wynwood 19,967]

HBTB is one of my favorite songs off Honeymoon

[Limelight 4,707]

I actually prefer DLMBM as the album closer than Swam Song. SS is good but not that strong to close

[Harpunn 399]

Guess everyone has their own opinions, but I'd rank Swan Song among the better tracks of this album. The chorus is simply iconic, so simple yet so powerful and enchanting. I fell in love from the very first listen.

[SwayTokyo 867]

Guess everyone has their own opinions, but I'd rank Swan Song among the better tracks of this album. The chorus is simply iconic, so simple yet so powerful and enchanting. I fell in love from the very first listen.

 

Me too. I can't believe there are people that don't like it. 

That and the Interlude are probably the most played so far, closely followed by The Blackest Day and HBTB. 

 

I don't really care about Salvatore, if only for the name connection to Backfire.

[SuperMegaStan 9,978]

i don't like freak except the bridge.   (i still don't know why people love it so much)

 

don't come for me everyone. have mercy plssssss...

 

i feel the same for UV (the song), it's haunting, i like the verses and the bridge, but i don't like the chorus... it's my least fav song on UV 

[veniceglitch 379]

Don't know if this "unpopular," but it is a series of opinions.

 

I remember reading a piece that spearheaded Lana’s importance: holding up the lonely torch of the female depressive in pop culture as a voice that deserves to be heard.

 

I agree with this. It's so easy to see her disaffected nature as a defect, but it's at the core of who she is and why she makes art to begin with. It's what gives her introspection, but also brings forth isolation.

 

Lana's perspective, from a 'marketability' and thematic angle, is one that would have made more sense in the mid 1990s. She would have kindred spirits in Garbage, Tori, Fiona, even Alanis. But in some ways, her perspective is even more needed now, because there is SUCH a lack of diversity in the females we hear from in pop culture, and the kinds of stories they tell. Shirley Manson of Garbage has pointed this out, fittingly enough. We need to hear from the miserable girl, the loser, the ones who don’t want to play nice, and maybe don’t even get out of bed some days. There’s always been a place for that girl in other media: literature, film, art. Music, especially pop music, doesn’t know what to do with this personality type. If it’s Kurt Cobain or Leonard Cohen (or any number of current male indie mini-gods), it’s tortured genius. If it’s a woman doing it, it’s pathetic, INDULGENT solipsism. How dare you be so lazy, inwardly focused and torpid when there are SOCIAL ISSUES to examine and crusade. That's the attitude Lana faces.

 

 We live in the age of the Totally Transparent, Fervently Disciplined, and Manicured Go-Getter. Taylor. Katy. Demi. Even Rihanna. They are corporate workhorses, THIRSTY for the fame, and more than ready to play and stay in the game. The personality type this workload requires is not for the delicate, sensitive, ambivalent type. They don’t look inward. They are fixated on the crowd. You see these same types in offices all over the world. Type A middle managers. They get shit done, might seem like “team players” (dictators in disguise), but they aren’t interesting and don’t offer a lot of innovation or insight into life, creativity, or much else. I’m sure the economic collapse of the past 10 years and the wreckage of the music industry has a lot to do with why this middle manager pop star archetype has prevailed. It’s sheer survivalism. 

 

The truth is the Lana of Born To Die, and that album itself, is an anomaly. It’s a character study in what it would be like to be a famous pop star. In philosophy, there’s an idea that to create a character, you have to lack what that character has for it to work (Homer vs Achilles is a classic example.) Lana was never a natural star by any means, but she’s clearly seen it as a way to transcend herself or try to another skin on. (“Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” - Oscar Wilde.) To parallel her to Britney, Lana never has had a pre-Blackout glory era. This is where I think some LDR fans get it wrong. BTD was not her Baby One More Time or Oops! or whatever. Even on BTD, she was a propped-up simulacrum of what a pop icon might be like. She represented the IDEA. It was NEVER natural. She was the weirdo philosophy major playing dress up as the cool girl, singing into her mirror. The fact that she found an audience is a small miracle, but her intuitive habitat is still dancing around, alone, with her headphones on, wondering what it would be like to be onstage. The actual stage is foreign to her, and almost besides the point. I bet when she’s up there, she imagines being alone.

 

Look at ALL her work before, and after, BTD. The work of an outsider dreaming her life away, imagining that fame could transform her, fulfill her, then finding nothing there. Even before she became famous, the lyrics suggest she already was aware of its empty promise (probably due to her study of doomed cult icons). If anything, what she’s doing now is getting back to her roots: turning her LACK of fulfillment into art, trying to make something tangible of a void within. It’s hard work, and clearly she’s not always up to making it a complete vision. To create and share art is an attempt to tell your story in the hopes of CONNECTING with people. But that’s where it stops for Lana. In solitude, she records her vision then hits “send.” Then she disengages, unable to sustain the ideal in real-time. Unable to fulfill the pop duties. Unable to deliver the big pay off, for herself, or for her fans. It’s like a surrealist film that cuts off in the ‘wrong’ moment, just to leave you on edge. How many times can you get away with it? We’ll be finding out.

 

And that’s another thing. I think Lana’s “failure” to rise the occasion affects certain fans personally. Not just because they want her to get a Top 10 and compete with the ‘normal’  pop stars. But because maybe they, too, are depressed and know too well what it means to not deliver, to not function optimally, to disappoint people. When you’re depressed, being able to complete ANYTHING can feel like an insurmountable challenge. If you’re blessed with the strange mix of being both ambitious AND prone to depression, you are constantly at war with yourself, which Lana seems to be. Sometimes she has the energy to fight through it and deliver us true magic. These are her little victories. Other times, she drowns in her own ennui and forgets everyone but herself. Some fed up fans say she doesn’t care, but I don’t believe this is true. I’m sure she’s in a state of frequent frustration, with the “world,” but more often, with herself.

 

Part of what drew me — and many others, I’m sure — to Lana’s work and persona was that she seemed malcontented, if not quite tormented. Life is too much, and not enough, for her. I remember that little-known Gwen Stefani lyric (“I sip on dreams and choke on real things.”) To me, that’s Lana constant M.O. She wants desperately to escape, to isolate, and to never work another day again (the ultimate sin of today’s life-hack-driven, entrepreneurial, “optimize yourself!” digital nomad climate). She never makes it clear what it IS, exactly, that would make her happy, because what she’s asking for is impossible. A LOT of people empathize with this ambivalence, despite the fact that this passive, me vs. the world view of reality is literally censored out of modern day music. You’re not supposed to complain! Things will get better if you live, laugh, and love! LDR will never live, laugh and love first-hand, but she’ll always wonder what that might feel like. And pine for it like its her to mourn.

 

Female depressives can sustain a career. It doesn’t have to end in a Sylvia Plath/Amy Winehouse tragedy. Shirley Manson and Fiona Apple are still going strong 20 years down the line, and in some ways, seem more connected and ‘healthy’ than ever, while still finding a way to channel their grievances through their art. They’ve evolved their artistry to a level that is undeniably iconic. They will never top the charts again, but that was never the point. They have huge cult followings that will always follow their next move. It’s a family. I’d love for Lana to have this in her 40s, too, but I believe at some point she’ll have to start making art as part of a conversation, not just a soliloquy, for this to happen. 

[naachoboy 7,993]

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is a better record than Honeymoon (and I listen to it more often than HM already) ^{this is a personal opinion don't kill me}

But it's not, critics agree. 

[ZeroZero 2,225]

I hate Lana's Nina covers. The original TOW and DLMBM are so beautiful, you can hear the pain in Nina's voice and she's perfection on the low notes. But with Lana well... you don't really feel anything! There's no soul to it. I know that sounds harsh but idk from Lana's vocals on the tracks it seems as thought she doesn't feel much regarding the feelings in the lyrics/vocal melody. It's nice to listen to I guess but I'd prefer if Lana sang songs that complemented her voice. Like maybe an Amy Winehouse cover (actually idk) or a peggy lee cover. But no nina my dear lana