We're Looking For Members to Help with the Interview Subsection!!

[FROGGO 2,806]

Yay! Just let me know about stuff because I suck at taking initiative!  

 

 

These are still available to do, you can choose one!

Sunday Times  

Rolling Stone Mag

[elllipsis 1,441]

Typing the Sunday Times article right now (I will need a magnifying glass for this one).

 

EDIT - Oops. Unless @@Hundred Dollar Bill wants that one? Just saw @@maru's post.

[Hundred Dollar Bill 21,809]

 

 

These are still available to do, you can choose one!

Sunday Times  

Rolling Stone Mag

Typing the Sunday Times article right now (I will need a magnifying glass for this one).

 

Alright! I'll work on Rolling Stone. I just post it here when I'm done? 

[FROGGO 2,806]

@lHundred Dollar Bill and @@elllipsis - thanks guys! And yeah, you can just post it here :3

[FROGGO 2,806]

THERE ARE NO MORE 2011 INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE TO BE TRANSCRIBED/TRANSLATED/TYPED, THEY ARE EITHER COMPLETED OR ARE IN THE PROCESS OF BEING FINISHED. THANK YOU!

 

HERE IS A LIST OF 2012 INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE FOR TRANSCRIPTION; THE LIST IS NOT YET COMPLETED. PLEASE POST THE INTERVIEW(S) YOU DECIDE TO WORK ON SO I CAN MAKE NOTE OF IT AND AVOID CONFUSION

[Hundred Dollar Bill 21,809]

Here's the Rolling Stone interview!

ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE INTERVIEW

LANA DEL REY

Bombshell singer-songwriter blows up the blogs with songs about love, loss and video games

 

Ever since she started writing songs at 17, Lana Del Rey (born Elizabeth Grant) has cut together moody homemade music videos and posted them online. Now 24, she has made dozens, most featuring found footage that fits her aesthetic - part pouty Sixties bombshell, part "ride or die" bitch. When she uploaded the clip for her torch song "Video Games" this spring, she didn't expect it to set her career on fire. "My other videos had, like, 11 views," says Del Rey, wearing a tight black leather jacket and a jeweled crucifix, over coffee in Manhattan. "A lot of people seeing my video was just not something that was supposed to happen." 

But music blogs took to the song, and influential BBC Radio 1 DJ Fearne Cotton started spinning "Video Games." In weeks, views soared past a million; by the end of the summer, Del Rey had landed a deal with Interscope and earned fans from Jessica Alba to Diplo, who tweeted, "Ur channeling Tupac and Chris Isaak simultaneously." 

Del Rey, raised in upstate New York, had started out playing small gigs as Lizzy Grant around Manhattan and Brooklyn after she moved to the city for school. When she was 20, producer David Kahne, who had recently worked with Regina Spektor and the Strokes, agreed to produce her debut. When it failed to take off, she decided to put music aside. "It was like being in love with someone who will just not love you - it will drive you mad," she says, widening her fake-lash-framed eyes. "I stopped singing and started focusing on other interests - my own personal education, reading a lot, taking jobs off Craigslist." 

Reinvigorated, she eventually got back in the saddle and says she's already written several of the songs for the album Interscope plans to release early next year (she's working with a few producers she likes, including Jeff Bhasker, who has collaborated with Kanye West and Alicia Keys). As for subject matter, she's sticking to the autobiographical: "Love is the easiest thing to write about, because I know it well." She flutters her lashes. "And loss is just as easy, because I know it well too."

 

I'll work on this interview from 2012 next!

[-] June 21st, BBC Radio 1 (with Fearne Cotton)

[Pin Up Paradise 463]

i'll help with transcribing as i think it's the least i can do for this site, but i suck at finding interviews? 

[lola 6,644]

oops, i started typing the sunday times one up without posting here, sorryyy

 

The mysterious Lana del [sic] Rey is behind the song of the year. Does it matter who pulls her strings, asks Dan Cairns

 

Even by the breakneck standards of the digital world, Lana del [sic] Rey's year has been a fast once. The 24-year-old New Yorker, real name Lizzy Grant, started generating interest in Britain in the spring, when her song Video Games and, more important, the video for it that she subsequently posted on YouTube began to create a stir. In the five months that have followed, Grant's pseudonym has been dropped so many times, and the hype/mythology machine smoked so vigrously, that, inevitably, a backlash has begun. So far, so virally predictable. What is refreshing - or plain insane, depending on your viewpoint - is that a backlash against the original backlash is now rapidly gaining support. And what is easy to forget, amid all the hubbub, is that Video Games is quite simply the song of the year. Yes, it's that good.

 

Back to the chatter, though, for it is deafening. Every constituency is manning the barricades. Fans acclaim Grant as one of the best new singers of her generation. Detractors, meanwhile, post poison about her rich dad, self-mythologising back story, mysteriously deleted debut album and suspiciously voluptous lips, the last presumed by the doubters to be surgically enhanced (Grant has, surely unwisely, created the debate herself, responding on one website: "Right - I didnt [sic] get surgery whoever the f*** u [sic] are - i [sic] didnt [sic] even have a house to live in let alone $ to f*** w [sic] my face.") Behind the scenes are management, label executives and publicists whose air of micromanaging secrecy sommunicates not confidence, but anxiety. That's a pretty rich, not to say putrid, brew.

 

Yet, and it is important to remember this, the main bullet points of the marketing plot are working with a smoothness beyond the wildest dreams of any team tasked with launching a new artist. Radio is hugely supportive (Video Games is predicted to rise to the Radio 1 A-list this week); other influential tastemakers are jumping on board. What this once ideal and fractious scenario says about the new lines of communication between artist and fan, and the obstacles that - the democracy and egalitarianism of the web notwithstanding - are placed in the way of them, is about much more than Video Games or Lizzy Grant. She just happens to be the most recent and glaring example of this new commercial culture. She also happens to be very pretty. Does that make her a fair target? Well, let's ask her.

 

Sitting in a London hotel room, her fake-nailed fingers clamping a succession of cigarettes, the singer is easily identifiable as the retro femme fatale who stares expressionlessly at the camera in Video Games, yet utterly different: one minute hard-eyed and verbally robotic (ending some answers with an abrupt and terminating, "Um yeah"), the next seemingly unsure of herself, inarticulate or unedited. Some of her replies are so hair-rasingly, well, wrong, almost Miss World-like, you wonder why she was ever let loose with an interviewer.

 

Talking about the failure of her debut album, and her musical influences, she says: "When I started listening to people I consider to be musical icons, my tastes were sort of confirmed in my own mind. And that's why, you know, even though nothing good ever happened, I was deterred from trying to be a noteworthy artist. But I wasn't deterred from making things that I thought were beautiful. In fact, I haven't listened to anything new for 10 years, because, you know, I like what I like. I mean, sometimes I find things that strike me, but in general I have names - I like, you know, Jeff Buckley, he was a show stopper. When I see footage of him live, I just think, "He's unbeatable." Kurt Cobain, just his face alone was, like, enough. He didn't even have to sing, his presence was scary, sick. Elvis, Frank - and Bob Dylan."

 

Then there are glimpses of another, much clearer and less bewildered or regal person, as when she returns, again, to the shelving of her first album. Overseen by the Paul McCartney and Regina Spektor producer David Kahne, and either self-titled or called Nevada (the internet is unclear on this), the album was preceeded by a well-received EP in late 2008. A few tracks can still be found online, and songs such as Kill Kill, Kinda Outta Luck and, especially, the blowsy, strings-drenched pop-noir of Yayo are audibly the work of the same artist you can hear on Video Games and its double A-side, Blue Jeans: woozy, nostalgic odes to glamous with a murky underside, to love on the wrong side of the tracks, and as visually evocative as anything seen on Grant's own videos, which feature grainy Super 8 footage spliced with television new snippets, the Stars and Stripes swaying in the wind, and the singer herself, dressed  in vintage clothes. If these songs are anything to go by, it must have been a remarkable record. So. presumably, the shelving of the project (and Grant's management seem determined to sit on it, preferring to big up her new material) must have been devastating. And have made her wary?

 

"Oh, I'm wary," Grant agrees. "Incredibly wary. But I'm not jaded. I'm nervous, definitely - probably more than most people you might meet this year. I don't think I've really left anyhing [behind], stylistically; my new songs are still autobiographical and cinematic. Having the record just shelved for two years, that's difficult for anyone, especially when you're younger and you make it with a famous producer, which David was.

 

"It was an exciting time and, making the record I thought... it's not that I wanted anything to be larger than life, I just thought, "Well, here I am, I'm on my way to not having to do anything else in life." And to have absolutely no reaction, and no recognition, and no nothing, after you make a record that you think is perfect, you definitely start to think, "Well, good try, but you'd better go find something else that works." Because, if you keep chasing something that isn't working, you'll drive yourself insane."

 

The precise reason the album was shelved is as much a mystery as why anybody around Grant felt it was okay for her to enter the publicity fray with stories such as her time spent living in a New Jersey trailer park (albeit, apparently, an unusually bohemian one). Her father is a multi-millionaire domain-name entrepreneur and philanthropist. Then there is the effort to market her as an indie artist - her new releases are coming out on a small label, Stranger Records - when even cursory research reveals that she has major-label dollars behind her, and that she is working with a small army of the usual bespoke-songwriter suspects.

 

Such nervousness and sleight-of-hand tactics are baffling - who cares if she's not totally "authentic" (whatever that means) or bears traces of manufactre? Yet neither Grant nor her handlers are forthcoming about details they consider awkward - and they are a little too energetic with the opposite, with results that are what would be politely described as bearing signs of embellishment (I'd say enhancement, but let's not go there.)

 

Her team cannot, however, be solely blamed for such distractions, although these seem at best unnecessary and at worst counterproductive. We are all culpable, and perhaps need to refocus on what really matters - and, for starters, ignore the darker end of the hype and airbrushing. You sense that Grant is becoming aware of the pitfalls of her current situation. Talking about some of the comments posted beneath her videos, she says: "Obviously, you're not going to enjoy ones like "Oh, look at the hype" and "This will all be over before it begins"." Then, forlornly, she adds: "If I could do it over, I thing I would just post the song." Ah, "just" the song.

 

Well, perhaps that's the point. Listen to Video Games' incredible bridge, on which, as harp and piano ascend, the singer captures the rapture/wistfulness one-two of love, singing, almost sighing, "It's you, it's you, it's all for you", then tell me you're still bothered by her lips or her percentage. It will say far more about you than about Lizzy Grant if you are.

 

[FROGGO 2,806]

i'll help with transcribing as i think it's the least i can do for this site, but i suck at finding interviews? 

Ha, lots of us suck at doing that! S'all good though, it'd be really helpful if you could transcribe a thing or two; take a look here and remember to post which interview you're tackling so I can make note of it! 

 

@elllipsis, lola did the Sunday Times interview so if you haven't started or haven't finished, there is no need to start/finish it

[Zagato 235]

I've found a Dutch interview at VPRO (18 November 2011) and a Dutch article on the site of Humo (3 February 2012)

but I don't know if you want articles also or just interviews?

Shall I translate them?

[lola 6,644]

transcribing 2011 daft dog now

[Hundred Dollar Bill 21,809]

OMG Lana makes this hilarious dying whale noise when Fearne introduces her  

[FROGGO 2,806]

I've found a Dutch interview at VPRO (18 November 2011) and a Dutch article on the site of Humo (3 February 2012)

but I don't know if you want articles also or just interviews?

Shall I translate them?

Wow! Great find on the VPRO interview!   Definitely transcribe it! As for the article, it looks to be more of an album review so I don't think it's necessary for this project. Just interviews we're working on! 

[FROGGO 2,806]

Also, don't think I don't see the people consistently lurking the thread to read the interviews but not even bothering to contribute...       

if you're here for that long reading the interviews, you might as well pitch in. 

[lola 6,644]

daft dog

 

DD: What is your name?

LDR: I'm Lana Del Ray.

DD: Occupation?

LDR: I am a singer and B-movie actress.

DD: Where do you live?

LDR: I live in New York City, in Greenwich Village.

DD: Are you signed to a company?

LDR: I have management and I have a lawyer here in London so I'm working with Ben Mawson and Ed Miller and we're looking for a new deal.

DD: What have you been doing in Daft Dog?

LDR: At Daft Dog, we have been working on a song about an All American relationship gone wrong. That's two.

DD: Future plans?

LDR: Future plans... have fun, have fun, have fun, do good things.

DD: What is your favourite food?

LDR: When I eat, I eat a lot of junk food but usually I just drink a lot of coffee and do my lemonade maple syrup diet, that's pretty much it.

 

[lola 6,644]

going to do these now:

[-] November 15th, FaceCulture/Part 2 [VIDEO] (have both parts been done?)

[-] January 12th, VH1 [VIDEO]

[-] January 23rd, Radio 6

[Zagato 235]

Wow! Great find on the VPRO interview!   Definitely transcribe it! As for the article, it looks to be more of an album review so I don't think it's necessary for this project. Just interviews we're working on! 

 

Ok, I'll start translating the VPRO interview. (The Humo article is indeed more an album review so we leave that.)

You'll have the interview this week. I'll have to translate during the evening or weekend as I'm working in the daytime.

And I'll keep on searching for other Dutch interviews.

[Pin Up Paradise 463]

is anyone doing April 20th, BBC Radio 1 (with Fearne Cotton) ?? (love this interview   )

Edit: I have checked the list of interviews, but I saw people speaking about Fearne and Lana interview but I know there is a few so it may be another one?

[Quentin 552]

Gonzai interview *hipster alert*

 

LANA DEL REY
These boots are made for running

 

Why let herself lock up in a role when you can be the master of the scenario ? Yet almost anonymous, the American Lizzy Grant, 24, has not taken the risk and already presents herself as the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra".

 

In its character of Lana Del Rey, she puts in scene her fatal beauty, sticks a sulky pout and directs her watery eyes towards the camera, tragic actress irresistible for her clip Video Games. Archive footage dating sometimes of yesterday, punctuated by explosions on Playstation, we finds there the paradoxes of our generation, which she says condemned. Her voice is sublimated by a harp, the melody and the voice are soft and oppressive: she's like a distraught girl squeezing too hard the neck of her lover. Character almost worthy of a Lynch film, with all the cliches that implies, she dreams of being an heroine of film noir and has found the perfect trailer for her album in preparation.
It could be a blockbuster, unless she reaches actually nothing and join the ranks of disillusioned pop stars. But I wanted to interview her no matter what happens, while she is only at the beginning of this career, almost as if I had been able to discuss with Britney before with her two braids and her open blouse becomes a generational icon. I hear fatty laughters resounding thus far, the laughters of guys who, on the contrary, are on knees in front of Tyler The Creator because he understood everything about life. But while Tyler invents bitches by drinking whey in the living room of his mum, Lana Del Rey makes an open letter to the torturers of her heart, as on the most R'n'B Diet Mtn Dew. Even if she has a jazz formation, consciously or not, the big sisters Nancy, Nico, Britney, Nina, Madonna, Beyonce, Aaliyah watch. Like a queen of the bees, she surrounds herself well : her producer has worked with the Strokes, Regina Spektor... She has already two managers at her boots, it's to them that I spoke to contact their protected. Now based in London, she answer for the moment to interviews only by email. It wasn't the interview of the century, nor a discussion between friends on MSN, just an interview that she was perhaps trained to respond since her adolescence, waiting her time.

Hello Lana, are you real ?
Yes, I am as real as we can be. I'm one of those millions of girls living the dark side of the American dream. I like cars, bad boys and good music.
 

The songs that you put online so far are love stories of a morbid sadness. Do you sometimes feel grateful to all those boys that break your heart and inspire you ?
No, they do not deserve the least embrace, nor least pity. Although some of them should still be credited for all the tortured lyrics they inspire me.
 

Originally you are a jazz singer ; why this new direction rather pop and R'n'B ?
I did not make consciously the decision to go to a register more street. The inspiration for my first record, which I recorded with the producer David Khane, came to me from places where I evolved and from the boys who pleased me. All that transposed in a cinematographic style, that could serve as a soundtrack for a film noir. I lived in the Bronx during four years and later in Brooklyn, so I bathed in hip hop, and the heavy beats on this album came naturally.
 

Pop stars nowadays can still pretend to be icons ?
The only thing that pop stars make well today, it's to perpetuate the heritage of the celebrity. I believe in the power of elevating people to the rank of icons, and even living gods, if they deserve it. Elvis deserved it, he was by nature of a disturbing cool.
 

What expectations you had on Britney's new album ?
In my opinion she can not fail, she's the only real female pop star, and I'm sure she really believes in what she sings. She is driven in her own Hollywood tragedy, and it's beautiful to watch.
 

How would you describe our generation ?
Condemned.
 

If you're the new Nancy Sinatra, then who's your Lee Hazlewood ?
Reeve Carney (this guy is starring at the moment in Broadway in the role of Spiderman, note)
 

Who currently works on your album ?
Many people : movie composers with a classical formation, and hip-hop producers. The perfect mix to attain an ideal beauty.
 

Is that really you that play the harp in Video Games ?
I am afraid not, honey : it's Robopop.
 

This video is breathtaking, where does this dramatic side come from ?
I was surprised by all the attention it has received. I am a very dramatic girl. I live for the drama in all its splendor. This includes music, videos, my loves : if it's not epic, it's not worth it.

 

[FROGGO 2,806]

going to do these now:

[-] November 15th, FaceCulture/Part 2 [VIDEO] (have both parts been done?)

[-] January 12th, VH1 [VIDEO]

[-] January 23rd, Radio 6

Yep, both parts have been completed

 

Ok, I'll start translating the VPRO interview. (The Humo article is indeed more an album review so we leave that.)

You'll have the interview this week. I'll have to translate during the evening or weekend as I'm working in the daytime.

And I'll keep on searching for other Dutch interviews.

Sometime this week sounds great! Thank you for searching for the Dutch interviews, that's a HUGE help.

 

To anyone reading this in Europe/Australia/Asia, you'll have a much easier time searching for Lana interviews conducted by your country's press than I will with my Canadian search settings. If anyone has time to do a quick google search to make sure that we're not missing an interview, that would help out TREMENDOUSLY.

 

is anyone doing April 20th, BBC Radio 1 (with Fearne Cotton) ?? (love this interview   )

Go for it! I'll make note of it.

 

Gonzai interview *hipster alert*

 

LANA DEL REY

These boots are made for running

 

Why let herself lock up in a role when you can be the master of the scenario ? Yet almost anonymous, the American Lizzy Grant, 24, has not taken the risk and already presents herself as the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra".

 

In its character of Lana Del Rey, she puts in scene her fatal beauty, sticks a sulky pout and directs her watery eyes towards the camera, tragic actress irresistible for her clip Video Games. Archive footage dating sometimes of yesterday, punctuated by explosions on Playstation, we finds there the paradoxes of our generation, which she says condemned. Her voice is sublimated by a harp, the melody and the voice are soft and oppressive: she's like a distraught girl squeezing too hard the neck of her lover. Character almost worthy of a Lynch film, with all the cliches that implies, she dreams of being an heroine of film noir and has found the perfect trailer for her album in preparation.

It could be a blockbuster, unless she reaches actually nothing and join the ranks of disillusioned pop stars. But I wanted to interview her no matter what happens, while she is only at the beginning of this career, almost as if I had been able to discuss with Britney before with her two braids and her open blouse becomes a generational icon. I hear fatty laughters resounding thus far, the laughters of guys who, on the contrary, are on knees in front of Tyler The Creator because he understood everything about life. But while Tyler invents bitches by drinking whey in the living room of his mum, Lana Del Rey makes an open letter to the torturers of her heart, as on the most R'n'B Diet Mtn Dew. Even if she has a jazz formation, consciously or not, the big sisters Nancy, Nico, Britney, Nina, Madonna, Beyonce, Aaliyah watch. Like a queen of the bees, she surrounds herself well : her producer has worked with the Strokes, Regina Spektor... She has already two managers at her boots, it's to them that I spoke to contact their protected. Now based in London, she answer for the moment to interviews only by email. It wasn't the interview of the century, nor a discussion between friends on MSN, just an interview that she was perhaps trained to respond since her adolescence, waiting her time.

 

Hello Lana, are you real ?

Yes, I am as real as we can be. I'm one of those millions of girls living the dark side of the American dream. I like cars, bad boys and good music.

 

The songs that you put online so far are love stories of a morbid sadness. Do you sometimes feel grateful to all those boys that break your heart and inspire you ?

No, they do not deserve the least embrace, nor least pity. Although some of them should still be credited for all the tortured lyrics they inspire me.

 

Originally you are a jazz singer ; why this new direction rather pop and R'n'B ?

I did not make consciously the decision to go to a register more street. The inspiration for my first record, which I recorded with the producer David Khane, came to me from places where I evolved and from the boys who pleased me. All that transposed in a cinematographic style, that could serve as a soundtrack for a film noir. I lived in the Bronx during four years and later in Brooklyn, so I bathed in hip hop, and the heavy beats on this album came naturally.

 

Pop stars nowadays can still pretend to be icons ?

The only thing that pop stars make well today, it's to perpetuate the heritage of the celebrity. I believe in the power of elevating people to the rank of icons, and even living gods, if they deserve it. Elvis deserved it, he was by nature of a disturbing cool.

 

What expectations you had on Britney's new album ?

In my opinion she can not fail, she's the only real female pop star, and I'm sure she really believes in what she sings. She is driven in her own Hollywood tragedy, and it's beautiful to watch.

 

How would you describe our generation ?

Condemned.

 

If you're the new Nancy Sinatra, then who's your Lee Hazlewood ?

Reeve Carney (this guy is starring at the moment in Broadway in the role of Spiderman, note)

 

Who currently works on your album ?

Many people : movie composers with a classical formation, and hip-hop producers. The perfect mix to attain an ideal beauty.

 

Is that really you that play the harp in Video Games ?

I am afraid not, honey : it's Robopop.

 

This video is breathtaking, where does this dramatic side come from ?

I was surprised by all the attention it has received. I am a very dramatic girl. I live for the drama in all its splendor. This includes music, videos, my loves : if it's not epic, it's not worth it.

 

Thank you!!