LANALYSIS: Relating Songs To Known/Assumed Relationships

[FROGGO 2,806]

- The interview where she describes "Video Games" as dealing with mutual sobriety in a relationship--her and her partner both staying clean.

@@SitarHero, I think this might be it but I can't recall:

 

 

 

“It’s not my fault that love went bad. I met this person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. We were both clean and sober. We lived together and then he started getting into trouble, and he had to leave. There’s a lot of facets to my life, they don’t all seem like they would come together. It’s been a strange ride.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/9027984/Lana-Del-Rey-interview-new-album-Born-to-Die-is-a-beautiful-thing.html

But its not necessarily about Video Games
 

[PrettyBaby 2,219]

I ran across someone speculating that Terrence is a reference to David Bowie's deceased older brother Terry Burns. I went looking for something more solid and forgot where I saw the first mention. #lanalysisfail

 

EDIT: I guess it was one of the earlier comments for the video on YouTube.

[Valentino 885]

Ultraviolence:

 

I used to be a member of an underground sect which was reigned by a guru. He surrounded himself with young girls and he had this insane charisma I couldn’t resist as well. So I was in this, I’ll call it sect, because I was longing for love and security. But then I found out that this guru wasn’t a good but a bad person. He thought that he had to break people first before he could build them up again. At the end I left the sect.

 

No, “Ultraviolence” look back on my time in New York. I was for a while part of a sloping underground scene, which was dominated by a guru. He believed in the concept, finished close people first and then rebuild. I fell for him because that time I longed for security.

 

The lyrics also mention a “cult leader,” and Ms. Del Rey said the song looked back to a time soon after she moved to New York City, when she considered following a guru who “believed in breaking you down to build you back up again.” “It sounds kind of weird,” she added, “but that is what it’s about, and having romantic feelings entwined with the idea of being led and letting go and surrendering. That’s always a concept to me, like I’m wavering between independence and falling into lifestyles and being led.”

 

There are so many things, really. I guess one of them is a personal experience I had with a person who believed in breaking you down to build you back up again. And although that mindset didn’t really agree with me, there was something freeing in letting go, for me, [with] this particular sort of guru-esque character. It’s a little bit about being in love with the act of surrendering, about being confused whether that’s a good idea.

 

 I think searching for guidance is a constant theme in my life. I knew relatively early on who I was. But I did not know exactly what I wanted to do. And I was always looking for people who are like me. So, I went at the age of 18 to New York. I was looking for this cool artist group, but I didn't find it. But I found someone who was like me. It was very interesting for me, we had a special relationship. He had built up a group that followed him. In the end, it wasn't right for me. 

 

The lyrics to UV make sense in this context. We have a guru (the "cult leader") who believes in breaking you down to build you back up again. Lana was in love with the idea of surrendering, and so him breaking her down felt like an act of kindness, especially since she felt lost at this time: "He hit me and it felt like a kiss." After the break down comes the reconstruction: "Jim raised me up, he hurt me but it felt like true love." However, Lana ultimately knew this wasn't right for her. "Jim taught me that loving him was never enough." The song seems to be a reminiscence, since Lana says this song is about her time when she was 18 in New York and the bridge says "we could go back to New York." She adds that "loving you was really hard." She says he "used to" call her DN and poison ivy, so she's singing in the present. The "I was filled with poison but blessed with beauty and rage/Jim taught me that" line seems very cultlike. One of the things cult leaders do is make you believe that there's some incredible thing waiting to be unlocked but that normally you can't access it. Of course, the cult leader can access it and that's why you should follow him and trust him. Jim "taught her" that she was "filled with poison" and he called her "poison." Not very positive things to say.

 

The nature of this relationship is unclear. She says it was a "sect-like" thing and refers to him as "guru-esque," so she doesn't think it was a straight up cult. She calls their relationship a "special relationship," but that can mean anything. One of her comments was about "having romantic feelings entwined with the idea of being led and letting go and surrendering." I'm not sure if "romantic feelings" refers to the guru or to the idea of surrendering. This whole thing would have happened in 2003, before she would have recorded Sirens! It's before any boyfriends we know of, too.

 

With this in mind, I wonder if Cruel World is also about this guru. "Shared my body and my mind with you" would be very appropriate for a cult leader. Cruel World is very unspecific. All we know about this guy is he had a lot of women, a bible and a gun, and he used heroin.

[Intriguing Penguin 867]

^ What the fuck?

[Divisive Princess 3,754]

So here's another Mr. Campbell dilemma. The following post mentions real but non-famous people. I don't know if I should name them or not. The problem is they've willingly put out all the information themselves, and it's not hard to find. I want to see what the ethics committee (i.e. you guys) has to say about this situation.

 

Okay, so this song, Joshy and I.

 

It leaked August 2015.

This was posted in June 2015:

So this guy says his cousin dated Lana, and that his cousin posted an instagram video backstage from a Lana concert. If you look at the instagram video, you'll see it's made by somebody called Josh. The caption: "Sometimes this happens when you ignore your gf to play World of Warcraft." Now this is a bit odd. This guy claims to be the reason Lana wrote Video Games. However, we had received "insider info"~ from the ldr.fm days (alas, I wasn't there) that the song was written about Mike Mizrahi. If you take into account that Lana said BTD, BJ, and VG are all about one guy, it gets even murkier. Here are some interviews where Lana mentions why she wrote the song (emphasis mine).[/size]

 

 

The date the song "Joshy and I" leaked with was 2011, the same year Video Games started blowing up.

 

Moreover, she said she picked the model for the BTD video based on his resemblance to a former boyfriend. Once again, hesitant to give links, but Josh's instagram shows that he is heavily tattooed.

 

So here's a crazy theory - could Josh be a guy Lana dated after Mizrahi?

 

We have a date for when Mizrahi first met Lana (January 2009 iirc) but we don't have any solid indicators of when they broke up that I know of.

 

Before Joshy and I leaked, there's a guy who says his cousin, Josh, dated Lana Del Rey (before she "became Lana"). We didn't have any clue that a Josh would be someone in the Lanaverse, so it's hard to say this is some guy BSing who happened to come up with the right name. Josh fits the description of the BTD model, who is said to be based on an ex. Could the Mizrahi relationship have ended before 2011, and could Lana have started dating Josh in 2011 (ultimately breaking up with him and then getting together with Barrie, can anyone find the earliest known reference to Lana and Barrie dating?).

 

I can't find the original tweet for the second image up there, so if anyone would like to help, that'd be swell.

EDIT: Found it. It was posted October 25, 2014. And it was directed at Josh's cousin. So this isn't every poser with a cousin named Josh coming out of the woodworks after the leak to claim he's the real Josh - this is way before Josh was even a twinkle in our eyes.

 

DOUBLE EDIT: It gets better. Mike Mizrahi got married to someone else November 2010. Obviously he must have broken up with Lana by then. She says in the September 2011 interview that Video Games became a thing because she abandoned all pretenses of being a singer ten months ago. That would be November 2010, after Mizrahi got married. What boy could there be in her life, then? Josh.

 

Revised timeline:

 

Mertens: ???-2007

Lynn: 2007-08/09?

Mizrahi: 2009-10

Josh: ???-2011

Barrie: 2012?-14

 

Collecting hearsay from the thread:

from SitarHero: "I guess my only defense is that I'm only collecting the information others have written about publicly. For instance, everyone called "Afraid" a sister to "Video Games", and I trusted that. Do I have a statement that Mike controlled her? No."

"Just recently, some stalkers insiders made it vaguely apparent that they were positive "Video Games" is about Mike Mizrahi."

from evil: "I also suspect that the Knocks from the Underground review he wrote may have been a friendly or planted interview. (It wouldn't be the first. The Index magazine interview was done by Brea Tremblay, another musician who played at the same Songwriter's Hall of Fame New Writer's Showcase and was also mentored by Bob Leone.) I suspect this based on the fact that they were supposedly together two years (according to a source extremely close to the situation  ) in conjunction with the fact that a video of his marriage to another woman was uploaded to his YouTube account in November 2010 means they had to have been living together at least a couple months prior to the February 2009 Arlene's Grocery show he reviewed, unless their living together overlapped his marriage, which I doubt, or he married the other woman almost immediately after they broke up and the source is exaggerating the two years time frame somewhat. Although, this Facebook post, which predates that show by only a few weeks, sure doesn't sound like they were living together yet.

 

I don't know. It's all very strange. But if they were living together at the time of that interview, it means she might have had more control over its content. "

 

gameboy (Posted 12 December 2012 - 11:25 PM): "MM is Michael Mizrahi. She lived with him for 2 years in the Village. She got her record deal and left him in a bad way. She tried to come back to him and even tried to get between him and his new GF who he married. He told me "never date a musician!" He gave her those film credits to help her before she was Lana. I googled mike and found this page. I'll let him know, I'm sure he won't care." (this member only has 1 post, which is this. the 2 year timeline doesn't fit the fact that he met her in 2009 and was married in 2010)

This is very interesting because she said in an interview that she wrote VG about World of Warcraft and she said in a different interview that it's her least favorite video game because it consumes every man in her life.

[Divisive Princess 3,754]

I know I just posted on this thread, but now I'm really intrigued by Arthur Lynn. 

 

I wonder if Waiamia/Wayamaya is inspired by him because of this

[Wynwood 19,967]

the conclusion to Lanalysis in my head is that lana will always fall for bad boys, she'll always get her heartbroken, she'll always say fuck you, and she'll always end up loving them forever. its the theme to her whole discography. I bet Honeymoon will start with her ending the relationship then have songs about one night affairs and then the last few songs will be about missing him. quote me for when the album is released and i am right

[delreyfreak 5,341]

the conclusion to Lanalysis in my head is that lana will always fall for bad boys, she'll always get her heartbroken, she'll always say fuck you, and she'll always end up loving them forever. its the theme to her whole discography. I bet Honeymoon will start with her ending the relationship then have songs about one night affairs and then the last few songs will be about missing him. quote me for when the album is released and i am right

I'd like to think Lana isn't that shallow and predictable, but now that I think about, I feel like you could be right with your HM prediction 

[rivieragirl 143]

Has anyone spoken about Velvet Crowbar on this thread? Wish there was a thread search tool 

[HEARTCORE 18,971]

Has anyone spoken about Velvet Crowbar on this thread? Wish there was a thread search tool

There is

[rivieragirl 143]

There is

 

Where?

[Intriguing Penguin 867]

Where?

Scroll all the way up to the top of the page! Look on the black bar at the top where it says your username, and all that other stuff. You'll see the search bar. 

[rivieragirl 143]

Scroll all the way up to the top of the page! Look on the black bar at the top where it says your username, and all that other stuff. You'll see the search bar.

Thank you! Sorry I am clueless! X

[Intriguing Penguin 867]

Thank you! Sorry I am clueless! X

  You're fine, doll. 

[Tizhny 2]

This is very interesting because she said in an interview that she wrote VG about World of Warcraft and she said in a different interview that it's her least favorite video game because it consumes every man in her life.

I've looked at this guys instagram account and he also has tbt pictures of him looking much younger "fresh outta rehab" and playing bass in a band... could be onto something here

[SoftcoreBabyface 262]

i'll write a song with some words to sing

no one will listen but you, you sing back to me, every word
you're standing there in your pink underwear
smiling at me like a child, you tell me to come, over there

"so much stronger, stronger here today
they can't push me down, turn me around
now i'm whole again, so much stronger today

music would heal me but not like you, songs used to kill me but now i'm immune, nothing matters, only you
the prettiest girl in the whole wide world, tell me you love me again, would you be, be my wife

don't need no money
don't need no friends
i just need you by my side"

 

Stronger by Angiescreams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebJpBccLqlI

on Arthur Lynn's youtube channel 

 

These lyrics remind me of several Lana songs, the video was uploaded Nov. 3rd 2008

[Divisive Princess 3,754]

I've looked at this guys instagram account and he also has tbt pictures of him looking much younger "fresh outta rehab" and playing bass in a band... could be onto something here

 

What's his ig?

[delreyfreak 5,341]

i'll write a song with some words to sing

no one will listen but you, you sing back to me, every word

you're standing there in your pink underwear

smiling at me like a child (American), you tell me to come, over there

 

"so much stronger, stronger here today

they can't push me down (literally a song with this title), turn me around

now i'm whole again, so much stronger today

 

music would heal me but not like you, songs used to kill me but now i'm immune, nothing matters, only you

the prettiest girl (DMD) in the whole wide world, tell me you love me again (AKA songs), would you be, be my wife

 

don't need no money (HBTB)

don't need no friends

i just need you by my side"

 

Stronger by Angiescreams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebJpBccLqlI

on Arthur Lynn's youtube channel 

 

These lyrics remind me of several Lana songs, the video was uploaded Nov. 3rd 2008

These are the parallels I've picked up. Good find!

[theeternalstars 4,576]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/19/lana-del-rey-s-trailer-park-days-my-time-with-lizzy-grant.html

 

This has some interesting bits in it

[Intriguing Penguin 867]

^ Thanks for that read it was very nice to hear more about her early days.