Lana Del Rey Covers Nylon Magazine's November Issue

[Tyler 840]

This can't be totally complete because she doesn't mention Tropico and Elvira.

I bought the magazine yesterday, and she says "Elvis and and Jesus and Marilyn and extraterrestrials all in one." She didn't say Elvira.

[elllipsis 1,441]

this interview is probably the most informational one she's ever given but it's also kinda...off-putting in a way. not like that one where she says barrie and her are the only true artists left and all that stuff but it kind of shows how...shallow she is. 

 

One or two dumb comments aside (the 'dead friends' one really is something else... ), I actually liked this interview. I thought that for once she wasn't trying too hard to sound intellectual and subsequently saying a lot of half-baked stuff; she's clearly mostly influenced / inspired by visuals (which imo makes a lot of sense since one of the best things about her music is the mood & vivid imagery she's able to convey) and that really shines through in this interview. I liked reading about all the little things tbh - the decor of her new house, the streamers & fish tank in the trailer, the decadent camps of Lake Placid, how she describes even her alcohol of choice as 'anything fast and dark', the drives to the beach, the ideas behind the National Anthem video... it's like she takes inspiration from these little things (idealising them quite a bit in the process) & creates a whole song / video around them. Idk, I enjoyed reading about that and much prefer this type of interview to the ones where she tries to sound like a deep thinker.

[Poison Ivy 1,588]

She sounds so bad in writing to me, in radio interviews or w/e she could say some of this shit and it would be funny or cute or something. I love the woman but can't quite feel it in her latest interviews, I can't even put my finger on it. Off-putting describes it quite well. 

[Alicia 182]

I love how she doesn't try to impress with anything she says just says it matter of fact kinda way, except the smoking thing, to me shes a "real smoker" lol

[evilentity 13,303]

The two met after O'Neill's manager sent him "Video Games" with the description: "Your future ex-wife." He called asking to meet her, and they've been together ever since.

Damn, getting a date with her was that easy?

 

"Plus, I don't like to buy my own because I'm not a real smoker, you know?"

Keep telling yourself that, Lana. You'd think someone involved with rehab for so long would know better...

 

"So if you see two six-foot-five (?), half-naked giants emerge, that is who they are."

So... you like 6'5 half-naked giants, huh?

 

Its almost a mystery in itself how Del Rey has managed to remain an enigma. The think-piece police have been out in full force, screen-grabbing her digital breadcrumbs in an attempt to connect the dots between a blonde, open-mic-circuit singer named Lizzy Grant and the pinup-turned-Interscope buzz act who barreled to stardom after a much discussed Saturday Night Live performance. Google listed her in the top five performing artist searches of 2012

Doesn't sound like anyone you know, does it?

 

One of the apartments she stayed in was that of her then-boyfriend, Steven Mertens, a fixture in New York's alt-rock and antifolk scenes. He wound up producing her first album, Lana Del Ray a.k.a Lizzy Grant, which was eventually re-recorded by David Kahne for the independent label 5 Points Records.

I'd be curious if Lana specifically told the interviewer it was AKA or whether she just said her "first album". The "eight years ago" timeframe she gave for working with Mertens in another interview fit Sirens better and that sorta made sense since she said on two occasions that he made her first record and we all know it was David Kahne who produced AKA. But aside from the whole "eight years ago" thing, the idea that she recorded demos with Mertens and re-recorded them with Kahne for AKA makes a more sense. Referring to Mertens, she previously said "my boyfriend in the city made my first record". That didn't sound to me like an album recorded in Lake Placid (as Sirens was). Calling him by his alias Steven Saint and describing him as a producer, she also said the surf influence in her music came from him. That definitely sounds more like AKA.

 

Ever since I first made the connection that Mertens was this "boyfriend in the city", I've thought he may be one of the two guys she claims she's always singing about, maybe even the ex in Williamsburg whose couch she was crashing on. It would be funny if he was and Lanalysis had missed him this whole time even though he was always right under our noses.

At any rate, she seems to be reminiscing about him a lot. I'd be worried if I were you, Barrie. 

 

Del Rey jokes with them before giving a tour of the home under the watchful eye of a large pop-art rendering of Jackie Kennedy (a black-and-white photograph of Marilyn Monroe is wedged in the bottom right corner of the frame).

She panicked the day before the shoot, worrying her fans might think it was weird that she'd decided to portray both the wife and the mistress. "But I just couldn't choose between them. I wanted to do both," she says.

Not a misplaced worry, I'm afraid.

 

Not too long after, she moved to London, where she crashed with Mawson for a few years.

And all the Mawson shippers rejoiced.   (Meanwhile, me: )

Maybe this is just more couch surfing, but have you seen My Week with Marilyn? You know that scene where her manager pulls aside Eddie Redmayne's character and warns him not to get involved because she'll just break his heart like she did to him? I've always wondered if something like this happened. Marilyn and her manager reminded me a lot of Lana and Ben. Rather than her appearance and image, it's Marilyn's relationships and insecurities and so forth that remind me of Lana.

 

she moved to London, where she crashed with Mawson for a few years.

 

 

Is that true though? Never heard anything about her living in London before thissss. #badfan

 

What visa was she on, even?

Yep. She flew back home a lot, but spent most of her time from May 2010 until "Video Games" blew up recording in the UK.

 

"When 'Black Beauty' got leaked, I was a little bit discouraged, because I usually focus an entire record around one song, or one phrase, or one title, like... 'Black Beauty'," she says. In a time of contrived viral videos and choreographed twerking, the incident feels legitimately unplanned, unfortunate, and unspinnable. The leak didn't completely crush her creativity, "but it didn't help," she says.

This makes me feel ashamed of this entire fanbase tbh. 

[NamiraWilhelm 5,031]

God I want her eyebrows

[evilentity 13,303]

Damn quote limits...

 

She sounds so bad in writing to me, in radio interviews or w/e she could say some of this shit and it would be funny or cute or something. I love the woman but can't quite feel it in her latest interviews, I can't even put my finger on it. Off-putting describes it quite well.

this interview is probably the most informational one she's ever given but it's also kinda...off-putting in a way. not like that one where she says barrie and her are the only true artists left and all that stuff but it kind of shows how...shallow she is.

I actually think this is a really great interview/profile. The Electronic Beats interview was also extremely informative (sometimes unpleasantly so), but this one goes in-depth like none other before. (Kudos to the interviewer despite getting her age wrong.) Lana also manages to show her sensitivity without coming off as defensive or over-reacting. She's sympathetic rather than victim-playing.

[naachoboy 7,977]

not again u over analyzing interviews 

[Chris Cuomo 3,315]

Omg @ her sneaking in a pin up galore and disco mention

 

Interesting interview!

[COLACNT 5,170]

severe overanalysis alert:

even after nearly 2 years of hardcore obsession i'm still only certain about one thing; she's always going to contradict herself. i don't even think its intentional anymore? i just think she's crazy. or that she has no 'fixed personality', which, by the way, is sometime that apparently afflicted marilyn monroe as well. i think a lot of people theorized that she was a bit of a borderline personality? it would explain the darker sides of her temperament. the drugs, the depression, etc. so i dunno, it makes sense that lana would feel a connection to her. they're both beautiful and insecure and sought / seek out men for protection (~daddy figures). i honestly think the only things guiding her are her vague intuitions and/or emotions which are often ~inspired by what she finds to be 'beautiful'. so it makes her seem shallow, because theres such a strong attention to surface. which she probably is? but isn't? i dunno. i go back and forth on everything. and i go back and forth with her, especially

like, how do you reconcile the girl that wrote pawn shop blues with the girl that probably smokes just because it 'looks' cool? i think she's definitely very intelligent and intuitive, but again, that maybe she doesn't have a strong sense of identity. how else do you remain a constant 'enigma'? if there's not a strong personality to know or anchor you down, then that image / understanding you have of that person / yourself can always be shifting. i think the only constant with her is that she likes anything ~dark, ~sexy, and ~cool, and that she idolizes / idealizes those traits and ends up incorporating them into her music and her persona

i think maybe thats why she seems ~deep sometimes. because she's got a "chameleon soul, no fixed personality, etc". the less you understand yourself, the more you try and the more you think and the more you question yourself and whats really true? so it makes sense to think that she's been able to get a ~deep understanding of herself, because she's always thinking about herself and she's always writing songs about herself! so maybe when it comes to herself, and the commonalities that she shares with all people as a whole, she might actually be ~deep

but when it comes to anything else outside of herself -- she really only has a shallow understanding of it? so she has the capability of being a ~deep thinker, but she isn't, really, in a complete sense? in the external world, she seems to only pay attention to beautiful things. but i don't know if thats really her fault? she's obviously very sensitive to aesthetics and detail, so i guess it makes sense that she appreciates beauty more so than the majority of people? i dunno. i think you can argue about this conflict between depth and superficiality in regards to A LOT of artists, because aesthetics and art are kind of inseparable. a lot of the greatest artists have probably worried about being frauds at one point or another in their careers, because ~art is inherently abstract. a lot of artistic ability comes from intuition and you can't necessarily trust something that comes out of nowhere? one thing i've come to understand about people that are ~artistic is that they're almost always very sensitive, both visually and emotionally. i guess it makes sense, because if you're able to see such minuscule little details in objects, colors, textures, etc, you can probably also detect that level of detail in your emotional state, and others too? maybe all artists are crazy, in some way or another. both shallow and ~deep? because an affinity for beauty is shallow but the attention to emotion is ~deep? and having an acute awareness of both is kind of like being pulled by two extremes? i dunno. maybe thats why creatives are stereotypically depressive

 

[FROGGO 2,803]

I really liked this interview and I definitely agree with @@elllipsis + @@evilentity's thoughts on it.

I'm not a Buckley / Cobain / Morrison fan (RIP @@TrailerParkDarling  ) and can't claim to know too much about their individual personalities... but does anyone that does wanna humour me and lemme know if a Lana + ________ combo would amount to be being besties?  Like would the personalities click?

[Miguel3Zero 202]

@ I have seen this type of personality before. My mother never touched a drop of alcohol in her entire life. But at parties etc. acted like she was a little drunk. She changed her personality depending on the situation and the people she was talking to. .When men found her witty and interesting and gave her compliments she was really happy, even at one time actually running away with one very admiring guy. But privately she was a darker more unsure person. Me and my sisters didn't really understand her. Just look at Lana's behavior at the Echo Awards this year. She was glowing, being in the middle of people that was loving her and giving her awards. If you look at the faces of the hosts they seemed a little taken back by the American whirlwind sweeping in. Arriving back in London she seemed sullen and tired. Of course it had been a tiring event and the paps are annoying., but I don't think that is the only explanation. The thing that contradicts my observation is her Ride Or Die relation with Barrie. I guess Barrie is a really cool and understanding person.

[lola 6,616]

I really liked this interview and I definitely agree with @@elllipsis + @@evilentity's thoughts on it.

 

I'm not a Buckley / Cobain / Morrison fan (RIP @@TrailerParkDarling  ) and can't claim to know too much about their individual personalities... but does anyone that does wanna humour me and lemme know if a Lana + ________ combo would amount to be being besties?  Like would the personalities click?

if lana would let jim do anal, he'd like her . i know that kurt really didn't like many people, he was very demanding. he didn't suffer fools gladly and even the people he liked the most he fought with all the time. courtney probably was his best friend but they fought pretty much daily and pretty violently. he liked strong, smart, creative, independent women who could take care of him but where he could still be in control (part of the time). he hated people who he suspected of selling out (which lana did, i guess, with changing her image & music). he also hated when people completely adored him and thought he was some kind of god. he wasn't shallow at all, none of his girlfriends were really beauties. he was also very into music, lots of underground stuff, not just "the masters of every genre". idk really because i don't know lana personally but i'm not sure millionaire daddy's pseudo-deep submissive daughter would've clicked with a poor depressed highly sensitive bi-polar guy.

[elllipsis 1,441]

if lana would let jim do anal, he'd like her

 

Man, this is so accurate.

[evilentity 13,303]

if lana would let jim do anal, he'd like her .

You know, 'anal' is Lana's name, ahem, backwards.

[Viva 3,168]

transcript from nylon: 

 

 

"Where I'm at now... calls for a cigarette", Lana Del Rey decides with a laugh, drawing a Pall Mall from a pack and lighting it. Casually dressed in faded jean shorts, a chambray shirt, and brown loafers, her dark auburn hair piled on top of her head and held with a clip, the sad-core soul singer of "Video Games" fame might pass for the prettiest girl from high school -- the one everyone assumed was aloof but who was probably just shy, the one who, yep, Facebook confirms it, is still pretty -- were it not for a pair of lush, red carpet-ready lashes casting shadows across her cheeks with each blink.

 

Geographically speaking, she's at the midcentury home in the Hollywood Hills that she's rented for the past year, lounging on a mod patio chair on the circular back deck that overlooks a glinting turquoise pool, a back canyon to the Sunset Strip, another hill, and on less smoggy days, the Pacific Ocean. Her lease is up at the end of the week, and just inside, her belongings are half packed for an impending move across town to a historic house she just bought. 

 

Professionally, Del Rey, 27, is at a bit of an in-between place as well. More than 20 months have passed since the release of her breakthrough album, Born to Die, almost 12 since her follow-up EP Paradise, and yet the amount of bandwidth devoted to the baroque-pop star continues to balloon. She's served as a muse for Mulberry and modeled for H&M. The day of our interview, Cedric Gervais' dance remix of "Summertime Sadness", a song not originally intended for formal release, shot up the Billboard charts to No. 6. She's been traveling, and heard the track for the first time yesterday on her way to pick up groceries. "It's very dance-y" she says, almost in disbelief. "I love to dance -- I just never thought I would to my music." (*go go dancer blares in the background*) 

 

Her second-best-selling single in the U.S, "Young and Beautiful", off this year's The Great Gatsby soundtrack, just might be her most captivating to date, made for a film that complements her vintage aesthetic, but, ironically, the one best suited to pure listening, lights off, tears streaming. This fall, the singer stars in a film of her own, Tropico, a short directed by Anthony Mandler. Meanwhile, demos from her hacked email accounts continue to surface online, including at least one she'd slated for her next full-length, tentatively schedule for 2014. Its no wonder she's decided to chill out for a while and reboot. "Right now, I'm doing family and thinking about what i want to be doing" she says. "I'm enjoying living easily, planting trees, things like that." 

 

Del Rey's gaze shifts to the window of a bedroom she shares with Barrie-James O'Neill, frontman of the Glaswegian alt-folk bank Kassidy, and her boyfriend of a little more than two years. The two met after O'Neill's manager sent him "Video Games" with the description: "Your future ex-wife." He called asking to meet her, and they've been together ever since. The Pall Malls are his, "I'm just a little copycat", she quips. "Plus, I don't like to buy my own because I'm not a real smoker, you know?" She smiles, whispering that O'Neill and her younger brother, Charlie Grant, are inside, sleeping. "So if you see two six-foot-five (?), half-naked giants emerge, that is who they are." 

 

Its almost a mystery in itself how Del Rey has managed to remain an enigma. The think-piece police have been out in full force, screen-grabbing her digital breadcrumbs in an attempt to connect the dots between a blonde, open-mic-circuit singer named Lizzy Grant and the pinup-turned-Interscope buzz act who barreled to stardom after a much discussed Saturday Night Live performance. Google listed her in the top five performing artist searches of 2012, but the reviews for Born to Die were mixed, a response that matched the dichotomy of Lana Del Rey's persona -- a mishmash of Priscilla and Ann-Margret, Jackie and Marilyn, Valencia-filtered to hazy perfection. Whether you were a critic, a member of the record-buying public, or Brian Williams, you had an opinion on her music. And you were also buying it: five million albums to date, 8.5 million singles. 

 

Almost two years later, the discourse appears to be shifting heavily in her favor -- even some of her early critics have come around to acknowledge that Born to Die is unquestionably interesting and quite possibly a classic. With anticipating for her next album growing stronger by the minute, it may be time to ask: Has Lana Del Rey successfully transitioned from the most polarizing figure in popular music to the closest thing our contemporary culture has to an American icon? "Let's go inside", she says. 

 

As predicted, two giants emerge, though fully clothed. O'Neill wears a white T-shirt and Dark Side of the Moon-themed pajama pants, her brother: shorts and a tee. Del Rey jokes with them before giving a tour of the home under the watchful eye of a large pop-art rendering of Jackie Kennedy (a black-and-white photograph of Marilyn Monroe is wedged in the bottom right corner of the frame). She points to the pictures of Kurt Cobain and the Virgin Mary lining the baby grand's music rack. It's clear the singer has a thing for icons, but she says it's a coincidence that her lifelong heroes happen to be the most famous people in the world. "I just thought Elvis was the most handsome person I had ever seen", she says. "I thought I was the only one who knew." 

 

Del Rey lifts a chandelier out of a box. "I picked this up in Australia -- once all of its crystals are back on, its going to be great", she says. Her decor plan for the new house: "the 70's in the South of France, lots of rattan, blue and gold, bamboo, and long curtains." Del Rey is looking forward to the move-- and not only for the house's original wood detailing and natural light. "The neighborhood is really quiet", she says. "The thing about being up here is that people can follow you; its harder to just be." The constant attention has affected her writing process as well. "It's harder to be an observer when people are watching you", she says. "You have to go further inside because the outside world becomes a harder place to draw from." She's also not winning any "good neighbor" awards in her current home. "We leave the trash out, and we don't put the bins in the friggin' street," she admits. "Everyone just hates us. They are going to have a party -- and so are we -- when we leave." 

 

Del Rey's parents met in advertising in New York City. In 1986, they gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, and moved to Lake Placid, where her father began investing in real estate and, later, online properties. "Where we lived in the Adirondacks was very small, like 1,100 people", she says. Del Rey recalls family trips to Florida down the eastern seaboard. "I remember over all the bridges and seeing all of the flashing lights and more and more people and being absolutely thrilled at the possibility of all these things I could do when I grew up," she says. "Lake Placid is the coolest spot in the nation, other than Duluth." 

 

She attended a Catholic elementary school called St. Agnes, and was the cantor of the church across the street. "I loved church," says Del Rey. "I loved the mysticism, the idea of something bigger, the idea of a divine plan. For me, the concept of religion transitioned into a really healthy idea of God -- I don't have the traditional views of a conservative Catholic, but my imagination was opened within the big blue-and-gold cathedral walls. I liked the idea of being looked after." She spent most of her school days looking out of windows and wishing she were somewhere else until a philosphy class she took at 15 changed the course of her life. "That was where I knew I'd find my people. I wanted to be around people who were asking, "Why are we here?" Around the same time, she'd also discovered alcohol -- her teenage drink of choice: "anything fast and dark." 

 

"Sometimes when I write about my feelings, about what sounds like a person, I'm actually writing about the way I felt when I was completely inebriated, which was really good -- until it wasn't working for me anymore," she says. Her parents sent her to a strict boarding school in Connecticut, and by 18, she was sober. "Thinking about not drinking forever was very scary, but once I did it wasn't hard anymore because I had all of these miracles happen that let me know I was exactly on the right path," she says. 

 

She enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx to study philosophy and began volunteering at a homeless and drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation programs. At one point, she took a road trip across the country to paint and rebuild houses on a Native American reservation. Around this time, she aslo began singing at Williamsburg and the Lower East Side venues like Laila Lounge, Galapagos, The Living Room, and The Bitter End. 

 

Throughout school, she moved around between the apartments of friends and boyfriends. "My mom called me 'the couch queen'," she says. She remembers spending long nights at a Chinese deli on 42nd street. "They'd let me buy a banana and a coffee and stay there until midnight," she says. "I would go over different rhymes in my head, like rhyming 'disco' with 'go-go', writing about girls with blue mascara and black eyeliner, and about all of the men I had met who I just loved. It was a very liberating, penniless, hilarious, fun, fun time." 

 

One of the apartments she stayed in was that of her then-boyfriend, Steven Mertens, a fixture in New York's alt-rock and antifolk scenes. He wound up producing her first album, Lana Del Ray a.k.a Lizzy Grant, which was eventually re-recorded by David Kahne for the independent label 5 Points Records. The "Ray" would change to "Rey" by her breakout sophomore release, of course, but the title of her debut spelled out in plain letters that a transformation was afoot. The record also helped her secure the first permanent address of her young adult life. "Obviously, when you're 20, you don't have too much money, but when I signed my first deal, I got a check for $10,000," says Del Rey. She used the cash to rent a trailer in the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in North Bergen, New Jersey, and commuted on the Hudson-Bergen line for her final year at Fordham. "There were a lot of families and residents who had been there for 35 years," she says of the community. "I liked the time by myself. I liked decorating it with streamers -- but only on the inside -- fish tanks, little pink speakers with a jack for my iPod touch. I wasn't partying, I was really serious at the time, and I liked the diverse environments -- going from the Bronx to New Jersey, and then recording with David on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking district. I loved taking cars from one place to another." 

 

Her label shelved the record for a couple of years before releasing it on iTunes in 2010. Three months later, Del Rey met a lawyer named Ben Mawson, who, along with Ed Millett, would become her manager. Del Rey was their first client. "When I met Ben and Ed, they helped me facilitate, but the tunes were a natural progression from where they began," explains Del Rey. "Even the new videos, conceptually, are an extension of what I was exploring a while ago." Mawson and Millett also helped her get out of her deal with 5 points, where, she says, "nothing was happening." Not too long after, she moved to London, where she crashed with Mawson for a few years. 

 

All the while she was uploading spliced YouTube videos to tunes of hazy young romance, songs like "Yayo" and "Mermaid Motel", to little attention. "I loved what I was doing and it was so much fun," she says. "I loved the mood I was creating just for myself and by myself." About fifth in line was a montage for "Video Games", a song she'd written with Justin Parker about the simple pleasure of watching an old boyfriend playing video games. The instrumentation was minimal and melancholic -- an unfussy piano line, soft strings, occasional harp trills. For the video, she interspersed footage of California landscapes and the Chateau Marmont with fuzzy shots of herself singing. By then, she's traded Lizzy Grant's blonde bob for Lana Del Rey's long, silky locks. A french manicure, off-the-shoulder sweater, and come-hither pale-ink pout completed the look. 

 

Del Rey's younger sister, Caroline "Chuck" Grant, took many of Del Rey's early promotional photos, and continues to help define her visual aesthetic. Grant says growing up in a resort town inspired the sisters' mutual appreciation for visual representations of the American Dream. While the decadent camps on Lake Placid didn't belong to them, they took comfort in their cinematic grandeur. "[During shoots], we'll talk about creating realities through creative and spiritual intention," she says. "I think of the photographs as a series of postcards that represent the different worlds we've created or been to -- worlds we've spent a lot of time in." 

 

With the video for "Video Games", Del Rey perfectly encapsulated a similar misty reverie -- something the Internet generation craved near the tail end of the first decade of the new millennium. Plus, the mysterious, self-styled "gangster Nancy Sinatra" cooing to the camera was, to say the least, compelling. "Suddenly, well-known people were posting it, and I thought, "How did they get my video?" she says. Among the die-hards was actress Jamie King, who has become one of Del Rey's closest friends. "Seeing all of those images put together, along with the songwriting, the melody, and just her face, was something that captured me where I could barely breathe," says King. When she heard the singer was performing a small show at the Chateau Marmont, she rushed over after shooting an episode of Hart of Dixie but got there too late. "She was walking out as I was walking in, and that's how we met," she says. The two ran into each other a few more times in L.A over the next few months. "It was like the universe brought us together, and it makes sense because she's like a sister to me," says King. "I'm pregnant right now, and having her by my side through this process has been so important to me. There something very calming about her presence." 

 

Del Rey isn't sure why "Video Games", a long song with no drums, was the one that took off. "I know when I wrote it, I was in love with it -- I sent it to everyone, saying 'Look! This is me in song form', she recounts. "No one in my own circle had a very big reaction, but then Fearne Cotton on Radio 1 started spinning it every day, and that's when things really started to change." King, for one, was not surprised. "What's really stunning to me about Lana is that everything she creates is completely from the depths of her heart and her soul," she says. "Most artists these days, especially female pop artists, unfortunately, have a whole machine behind them. They choose from the same core of songs that are being written by the same give people, and then they have No. 1 hits, but it's not something they conceptualized, or sat down with pen and paper and wrote. What's astonishing is that she's sort of a Jim Morrison. There's nothing inauthentic about what she does. Every song, every look, every video, everything that she puts out into the world is all from her, and that's so rare. The only person who created Lana Del Rey is her." 

 

And the evolution is ongoing. After all, like many women in their 20's, she's been seduced by the constant reinvention possibilities of persona-generation social media outlets. Her family still calls her Lizzy, though sometimes they'll switch to Lana. "It's interchangeable for them, like a nickname or something," she explains. These days, a typical afternoon involves waking up late, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette on her back porch with O'Neill, and then taking a drive, usually to Malibu and always with Del Rey behind the wheel. He'll hum a song into his iPhone recorder; she'll put in her two cents. Sometimes they'll stop at Neptune's Net, a biker bar at the end of the beach. Del Rey feels connected to motorcycle culture, the freedom of the open road, the nomadic lifestyle. "It's about living for the day, which was my mindset for a long time," she says. 

 

Other days, they'll just drive to the ocean, stop on the side of the road, and watch the waves. "We talk about the future, what we want to do, and how we're going to work out everything with timing, since I have a lot of shows coming up," she says. "Driving is our thinking time. Then we'll come back and write." The two initially bonded over a mutual love of Kurt Cobain. "He's a big part of our daily conversation. Jeff Buckley is another big inspiration. And Jim Morrison -- I mean, we talk about these people like we know them. They're a part of our relationship. We always say, 'All of our friends are dead, and they never knew us'. I'm lucky to have met someone who feels that way, too." 

 

The couple have been recording some 70's style rock with producer Jonathan Wilson in Silver Lake for fun, but Del Rey characterizes her next release as a work-in-progress, done on her own terms and timetable. "When people ask me about it, I just have to be honest -- I really don't know," she admits. "I don't want to say, 'Yeah, definitely -- the next one's better than this one,' because I don't really hear a next one. My muse is very fickle. She only comes to me sometimes, which is annoying." Also bothersome: having your email hacked. "When 'Black Beauty' got leaked, I was a little bit discouraged, because I usually focus an entire record around one song, or one phrase, or one title, like... 'Black Beauty'," she says. In a time of contrived viral videos and choreographed twerking, the incident feels legitimately unplanned, unfortunate, and unspinnable. The leak didn't completely crush her creativity, "but it didn't help," she says. 

 

Previously, she'd worked with Mandler on videos like "National Anthem," in which she plays Jackie and Marilyn to A$AP Rocky's John F. "I had storyboarded this idea of a modern-day Kennedy story," she says. "I've been inspired by the footage I've seen of them, more than their story, just all of the colors in the film. And as far as the song, I've had a few relationships where there was complete devotion on behalf of the guy. I loved the idea of a girl telling her boyfriend, 'Tell me I'm your national anthem, your star-spangled banner, salute to me and love me' -- you know, in a good way, in a beautiful way. I wanted to show how modern-day romance could still have that classic feel." She panicked the day before the shoot, worrying her fans might think it was weird that she'd decided to portray both the wife and the mistress. "But I just couldn't choose between them. I wanted to do both," she says. 

 

Back outside, Del Rey drops a burning cigarette into a glass jar half-filled with water and forms a steeple with her long fingers, extended by red-painted acrylic tips, a remnant of her NYLON photo shoot from a week earlier. A tiny cross of gems dots the nail of her left ring finger. Below it, a faint tan line marks the spot of a certain piece of "mystery bling" the paparazzi have been scoping since February. It's clear that no matter what Del Rey decides to do next, she will continue to fascinate -- and inspire more myth-making. "It's important to have a good relationship with yourself when you become well known," she says. "People will say a lot of things, and you'll start to wonder if they're true. But then you have to go back to all of those little truths and kernels you found along the way that remind you: You are where you're supposed to be."

 

 

wow taht was a long interview. Thanks @ is lot to trasncript. Thanks for doing all that and giving yourself the trouble

[Viva 3,168]

if lana would let jim do anal, he'd like her . i know that kurt really didn't like many people, he was very demanding. he didn't suffer fools gladly and even the people he liked the most he fought with all the time. courtney probably was his best friend but they fought pretty much daily and pretty violently. he liked strong, smart, creative, independent women who could take care of him but where he could still be in control (part of the time). he hated people who he suspected of selling out (which lana did, i guess, with changing her image & music). he also hated when people completely adored him and thought he was some kind of god. he wasn't shallow at all, none of his girlfriends were really beauties. he was also very into music, lots of underground stuff, not just "the masters of every genre". idk really because i don't know lana personally but i'm not sure millionaire daddy's pseudo-deep submissive daughter would've clicked with a poor depressed highly sensitive bi-polar guy.

 

they would bond over their mutual hate of Americas critics and general media

[Creyk 11,495]

The interview was fine. A bit boring. Like sorry I want to read about your music/videos not your family or the decor of your house.

Anyway.

Did you notice how she said that she and Barrie often write together after coming home from watching the Ocean, but then she says her muse visits her rarely. So what, does she like, sit quietly while Barrie is writing? Surely not! Come on Lana you pumped out at least 20 songs by now, admit it

Get ready for that January 2014 release!!! (okay okay, but how cool would that be)

[COLACNT 5,170]

if lana would let jim do anal, he'd like her . i know that kurt really didn't like many people, he was very demanding. he didn't suffer fools gladly and even the people he liked the most he fought with all the time. courtney probably was his best friend but they fought pretty much daily and pretty violently. he liked strong, smart, creative, independent women who could take care of him but where he could still be in control (part of the time). he hated people who he suspected of selling out (which lana did, i guess, with changing her image & music). he also hated when people completely adored him and thought he was some kind of god. he wasn't shallow at all, none of his girlfriends were really beauties. he was also very into music, lots of underground stuff, not just "the masters of every genre". idk really because i don't know lana personally but i'm not sure millionaire daddy's pseudo-deep submissive daughter would've clicked with a poor depressed highly sensitive bi-polar guy.

 

this doesn't really belong here, but i thought you would find it interesting (if you haven't already seen it) 

 

its a 130 page psychological case study on kurt cobain i found a while back when i was reading about him / MBTI / personality theory, etc. i think it says he's INFP in there somewhere. maybe i should have posted it in the MBTI thread but i think its interesting that you (?), lana, and kurt are INFP (or at least presumed to be) and that we all subconsciously / consciously connect / obsess over people that are in ways similar to us, at the core, and that we do it without even realizing that we *are* similar, but just because we appreciate what they create. like also, for instance, stanley kubrick is theorized to be INTJ/INTP (@@evilentity). i don't think these are coincidences? 

 

like i think a large part of why lana says she fell in love with kurt was because he was ~beautiful but a part of me thinks (or at least hopes) that there was more to it than that? not necessarily a rational thought or anything, but some really basic emotional connection? she said she identified with his sadness, or whatever. i hope theres some actual truth to that 

 

tbh i feel like lana and gaga should be / would be friends if they weren't like, rivals lmao 

[FROGGO 2,803]

this doesn't really belong here, but i thought you would find it interesting (if you haven't already seen it) 

 

its a 130 page psychological case study on kurt cobain i found a while back when i was reading about him / MBTI / personality theory, etc. i think it says he's INFP in there somewhere. maybe i should have posted it in the MBTI thread but i think its interesting that you (?), lana, and kurt are INFP (or at least presumed to be) and that we all subconsciously / consciously connect / obsess over people that are in ways similar to us, at the core, and that we do it without even realizing that we *are* similar, but just because we appreciate what they create. like also, for instance, stanley kubrick is theorized to be INTJ/INTP (@@evilentity). i don't think these are coincidences? 

 

like i think a large part of why lana says she fell in love with kurt was because he was ~beautiful but a part of me thinks (or at least hopes) that there was more to it than that? not necessarily a rational thought or anything, but some really basic emotional connection? she said she identified with his sadness, or whatever. i hope theres some actual truth to that 

 

tbh i feel like lana and gaga should be / would be friends if they weren't like, rivals lmao 

still think Lana is an ISFP and not an INFP. She's an intuitive person, but she lacks intuition as a cognitive process. There's a difference between the two imo.