LANALYSIS: Relating Songs To Known/Assumed Relationships

[evilentity 13,303]

I was going to mention this earlier, but I think @@Valentino is spot on with his observations about Arthur Lynn and his influence on her (or possibly their mutual influence on each other). Because I'd seen all that stuff before and noticed all the same connections he outlined. But while I also think Steven Mertens is obviously quite significant, I'm skeptical that he's good for the record executive guy she claims she had a 7 year relationship with, as @@Valentino suggests.

[Wynwood 19,966]

i didnt read all the pages cause its too much and this mightve been answered but who is lana talking about/with in Guns and Roses about going "back to Detroit, back to the promised land" has she lived in detroit before?

[luminom 3,275]

I wonder if we'll ever actualy know what happened   

[Valentino 884]

This is the boyfriend who Video Games is about

How do you know this? What would his name be? It seems like a really early picture.

EDIT: Wait, is that Mizrahi? Why does she look so young there?

This is the best post in this thread! So interesting to read. Arthur Lynn basically crafted Lana Del Rey 

and I think any relationship with "Jim" is just fictional. 

 You are too kind, but I really appreciate it.

 

I was going to mention this earlier, but I think @@Valentino is spot on with his observations about Arthur Lynn and his influence on her (or possibly their mutual influence on each other). Because I'd seen all that stuff before and noticed all the same connections he outlined. But while I also think Steven Mertens is obviously quite significant, I'm skeptical that he's good for the record executive guy she claims she had a 7 year relationship with, as @@Valentino suggests.

 

Do you have any ideas who the record executive guy could be? 7 years is just such a long time. If it was Mertens, it means they would have started dating when she was 15 ("we were just teenagers"?). If it wasn't Mertens, then her relationship with Mertens (which ended in 2008) would have been really short or her relationship with this other guy started before she was 15. Mertens wasn't really a "record executive," so that definitely throws him into doubt.

 

Another Lynn thing I wanted to mention but forgot: his Flickr account (angiespeaks iirc, same as his blog) has pictures of American flags on the early pages. I feel pretty confident that Lynn is the boyfriend who loved America.

[MermaidMotelle 278]

Anything Golden Grill= A$AP Rocky.

 

[Valentino 884]

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]
 

Lana: Video Games was a song that came after I abandoned all ambition of becoming anyone noteworthy in music. It was only ten months ago. I just wrote it when I felt love again. It was about a time when it was nice to focus on a relationship and simple things; watching your boyfriend play videogames. It sounds sad, but it was sort of happy. I’d let go of the idea of being a singer because things had gone so terribly for so long. So it depends on the song, but usually I start when a situation just strikes me in a certain way, or somebody that you think is amazing looks at you in a certain way. (SEP 23 2011)
 
 
LDR: A boy. I think we came together because we were both outsiders. It was perfect. But I think with that contentment also comes sadness. There was something heavenly about that life – we'd go to work and he'd play his video games - but also it was maybe too regular. At the time I was becoming disillusioned with being a singer and was very happy to settle with a boyfriend who I loved, but in the end we both lost sight of our dreams. Maybe there's something not-so-special about domestic life. (OCT 4 2011)
 
“The verse was about the way things were with one person, and the chorus was the way that I wished things had [/size]really been with another person, who I thought about for a long time[/size],” she says, breaking into an acapella of the song. “‘Swinging in the backyard, pull up in your fast car, whistling my name’. That was what happened, you know? He’d come home and I’d see him. But then the chorus, ‘Heaven is a place on earth with you, tell me all the things you wanna do’ wasn’t like that. That was the way that I wished it was – the melody sounds so compelling and heavenly because I wanted it to be that way. The verse is more matter-of-fact because that’s how it was. It’s a mix of memories and the way I wished it could have been. Just because things happened a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the way that they are. It really is what you choose to think about. Bad things happen every day but you’re not going to be any happier thinking about them. So I don’t think about them. I don’t have that luxury any more. Some people say that ‘Video Games’ stops them in their tracks; it’s that kind of song. It’s just really sad.” (Dazed 2011)[/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)

[Trash Magic 26,844]

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).

 

 

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 October 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."

 

 

You've said it yourself in this post. The guy in that early pic IS Josh. That instagram video is undeniable evidence Video Games is about him. And I guess Radio too, relating to that tweet about Lana wanting him back after becoming famous an him saying no (so she settled for barrie  ) and Josh is now covered in tattoos since that early photo so it's very real that songs like Yayo could even be about him?

[Valentino 884]

You've said it yourself in this post. The guy in that early pic IS Josh. That instagram video is undeniable evidence Video Games is about him. And I guess Radio too, relating to that tweet about Lana wanting him back after becoming famous an him saying no (so she settled for barrie  ) and Josh is now covered in tattoos since that early photo so it's very real that songs like Yayo could even be about him?

 

The only thing about Radio is that Lana says it was about a guy coming back after she became famous. Maybe he reached out to her and she thought it was romantic but it wasn't?

 

"I mean you know people always said you know people will come out of the woodwork and change their mind about you. They’ll start to like you ‘cause you’re on the radio. And it is true but I don’t mind ‘cause I’d rather people be nice to me.

I don’t really care why people are nice to me I just like it when it’s easier. I just wrote it when this guy that I used to know came back into my life. So now my life is sweet like cinnamon. Cause he came back. "

 

I'm amused by that picture because it seems someone took a picture of a frame. They couldn't even be bothered to take the picture out of the frame and scan it, lol. Who still keeps framed pictures of their ex-girlfriends? Maybe they were just friends when that pic was taken. Which would make sense. She was dating other guys from like 2007 to 2010 and I hope she didn't cheat on them with him ("I am sleeping with your best friend" !????). In 2010/11 she starts dating him, even though she knew about him before. The VG interview says 10 months ago, in November 2010, which was when Mizrahi got married. Maybe he was always trying to get with her and she finally gave him a chance? I don't know her hairstyle chronology so other than saying "this pic looks old" I can't pinpoint a year.

 

The more recent Josh pics are hard to match with that early pic because he's grown facial hair. He does have a bump on his nose which this guy has, but I'm not certain about the rest of his face. The tattoos definitely look new. Maybe Lana liked him after he got tattoos.   A childhood friend becomes a lover? Who ends up playing WoW instead. His instagram has a pic of another gf and someone said something like "is a year of dating you like a year's subscription to WoW?" which shows that even in more recent relationships, he hasn't quit the MMORPGing.

 

I still think Yayo is about Jimmy, if only because he has a blue dragon ("snake... ink blue") tattoo and she posted it on his FB page. Or maybe she's taunting him? She posted the pic March 2009, potentially after she started dating Mizrahi. Gnecco is still a mystery. Here's a post from @@trashtrashtrash (and I think someone else) from this thread:

 

I've been hesitant to post this for a while because if it is true then it destroys a lot of theories, but I spoke to someone who dates Jimmy's son and she told me that Jimmy and Lana never dated. I asked her to tell me that story and this is what she said:

 

'Lana always was like obsessed with jimmy. She would always go to his shows and try to get him interested in her but jimmy would always turn her down because he wasn't interested. Since he was kinda off and on with his girlfriend and what not. And so her obsession just drove her to make a song about him. And it's really funny cause jimmy barely knows her and he found the song amusing actually. It's like this whole big joke. Especially since his son (my ex/friend whatever) has the same name. Just an overall amusing topic especially when I would see people thinking they actually dated. I finally broke though cause I felt bad with no one knowin the truth so there ya have it haha'

 

I don't know if anyone will believe me, but that's what she said to me. I spoke to her on twitter btw. I don't see any reason why she'd make this up, and it seems very possible. Yayo could still be about Jimmy, but maybe it's more a fantasy lana had... trust me I was really disappointed to read this haha 

..

ok I asked her if she would be willing to give me a photo to post here and she said she didnt really feel comfortable, which is what i expected, because it is weird hahah 

but if any of you want proof she said you can follow her on instagram and theres photos of them on there @sydneylarsenn but shes going on holidays for a few days or something so it might take a few days to accept you 

 

I saw the photo and he looks like jimmy's son, she's telling the truth sorry guys  

but yeah as trash said they definitely had encounters and she had a massive crush on him and went to heaps of his shows and talked to him and tried to get him interested in her if that's any consolation 

 

BUT Jimmy wrote a song called "Fall into my hands" that seems to be dedicated to Lana. He said, after the UV stuff, that the song was not about him (it was about ~alcohol~) and that he never dated Lana. Their relationship remains ambiguous.

 

Is there any non-song proof that she dated Reeve Carney?

 

EDIT: Just noticed this similarity:

From you're gonna love me: "there's nothing from you that I wanna take/I just wanna be like you"

From Catch and Release: "I didn't want a thing from you/just to be like you"

 

Another interview: "I once had a boyfriend who talked about all the reasons why he loved flags, Rock-and-Roll, and America. I didn't know much about all of that, but I did love him and I wanted to be just like him."

 

EDIT 2: Re-reading Lanalysis is so useful. Found this quote from Spacecamp, a band Steve Mertens used to play in:

"Well, we were her back up band once cuz her and Steven used to make-out sometimes, for like a year"

So Steve isn't our 7 year record executive. The search continues. Let's assume Lana broke up with the 7 year record executive and immediately got with Mertens. So she would have been 14 when she started dating him. Interestingly, she says she always felt like a change of routine for him, not like the main dish: "I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern."

 

EDIT 3: From the interview about the BTD trilogy:

He doesn’t know (that BTD, VG, and BJ are about him). His mother knows. We’re in touch. (XFM interview 2012)

She's friends with Josh on her old FB. But Josh totally knows (or at least thinks) VG is about him...

 

Mystery Record Executive: 1999-2006

Mertens: 2006(?)-07  (surf punk musician from LA)

Lynn: 2007-08/09(?)  (guitarist for Lizzy from Jersey with ties to Greenwich/loves DMD)

Mizrahi: 2009-10(?)  (filmmaker from NY(?), Jewish)

Josh: ???-2011 (he plays WoW a lot)

Barrie: 2011(?)-14 (musician, depressed)

[320kbps 3,430]

 

 

The more recent Josh pics are hard to match with that early pic because he's grown facial hair. He does have a bump on his nose which this guy has, but I'm not certain about the rest of his face. The tattoos definitely look new. Maybe Lana liked him after he got tattoos.   A childhood friend becomes a lover? Who ends up playing WoW instead. His instagram has a pic of another gf and someone said something like "is a year of dating you like a year's subscription to WoW?" which shows that even in more recent relationships, he hasn't quit the MMORPGing.

 

 

 

He posted an old picture for Father's Day a few weeks back that looks exactly like him, but with shorter hair. 

[ednafrau 831]

She's friends with Josh on her old FB. But Josh totally knows (or at least thinks) VG is about him...

 

Mystery Record Executive: 1999-2006

Mertens: 2006(?)-07  (surf punk musician from LA)

Lynn: 2007-08/09(?)  (guitarist for Lizzy from Jersey with ties to Greenwich/loves DMD)

Mizrahi: 2009-10(?)  (filmmaker from NY(?), Jewish)

Josh: ???-2011 (he plays WoW a lot)

Barrie: 2011(?)-14 (musician, depressed)

 

great work, @@Valentino !

i (and others) posted a long time ago that the mystery record executive could be van wilson, the 5 points records A&R guy that discovered her in september 2006 at the WLSC competition. but either way, 1999-2006 isn't necessarily the timeline, because it's been implied that she was the other woman in that situation (also, there is a possibility that the 7 years she stated could be as fictitious as the decade she didn't touch alcohol - i don't know if intentionally or because she's just chronologically challenged?). i can't really search right now, but if van isn't the long-term affair record executive, at the very least they had a fling, i think:

 

she and reeve were in a relationship, but it didn't quite work out. we had speculated that he was the locally famous boyfriend she alluded to in several early lizzy/lana songs. there was on old interview with reeve's brother that mentioned his relationship with lizzy, but i don't have it at hand. a "couple-y" pic of them together:

 

now, your breakthrough is the josh connection and his importance in lana's life!

he is obviously the guy in the old photo with lana looking very may jailery, which is proof they go way back! this current pic makes it super clear he is the same person:

 

and look at this oldie but goodie i found!

quite a domestic setting, non? could qualify as receipts

[ednafrau 831]

oh, and regarding jimmy, an old post of mine that contradicts jimmy's claims of having met her, like, last year 

http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/5378-jimmy-gnecco-has-spoken/&do=findComment&comment=211753

they may not have dated, but she wasn't just a stalker. we had even surmised that "get drunk" might have been about him and reeve (or her fantasy of that).

[Valentino 884]

oh, and regarding jimmy, on old post of mine that contradicts jimmy's claims of having met her, like, last year 

http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/5378-jimmy-gnecco-has-spoken/&do=findComment&comment=211753

they may not have dated, but she wasn't just a stalker. we had even surmised that "get drunk" might have been about him and reeve (or her fantasy of that).

 

Thanks for the photos! Great to have proof that Carney dated her (I wonder if she dated him to get back at Jimmy for ignoring her "How do you like me now" indeed). I love how everyone is finding these photos of Josh on their own, doe, eventually his last name is gonna come out.

 

Yeah, I kept reading through the thread and realized that the record guy relationship was on and off. The guy was not married. I'll have to re-read it more carefully then to come up with a tentative timeline for Mr. Major. They met in her early twenties, when she was shopping for labels, so it sounds like after Steve Mertens (she was 22 when they broke up, and he produced an early version of LDR that has never leaked afaik). Maybe around the same time as or after she made the No Kung Fu demos (I know it's a fake name but it's useful)? If it started in 2006, then it would have ended in 2013. It also lasted through Arthur, Mike, Josh, and Barrie. You go, girl. 

 

And if it turns out it was Van Wilson... man, what kind of throwback to early Lanalysis would that be?

 

As for Gnecco's January 2014 comment, I think he meant that he met up with her at that date and discussed the song UV with her, since he also makes sure to mention he's not the subject of the song UV. I didn't take it to mean that it was the first time he had ever met her.

 

"HM: Any shout outs you’d like to make?

 

JG: I guess I should address the most recent events of my life, speaking of Lana Del Rey. I just want to say, what an amazing woman for putting me on those shows. Keep a warm place in your heart for Lana because what she did putting me on those shows, I’ll love her forever for it. What courage to do that. People might not understand why and maybe one day we can talk about why, but I’m just going to say, what a woman. So thank you. Give her as much love as you can give her."

http://hearmagazine....s-jimmy-gnecco/

 

I get the feeling that he treated her badly in some way, which is why he's talking about her courage to put her on - she's 'big enough' to ignore the past and put him on the show. If that earlier post is correct, it sounds like Lana was kind of a big joke in Gnecco's circle. Maybe that's what he feels guilty about. Maybe it's something worse. He unfortunately chose to play the "we'll discuss that another time" card that Lana loves too.

[dressedinblack 345]

This is the boyfriend who Video Games is about

So it is K?

[Valentino 884]

So it is K?

VG is about Josh.

We have no proof K is a real person, unfortunately.

[Trash Magic 26,844]

So back on the myspace account i forgot existed /lanarey

 

there is this photo

 

which seems so random. I know she says she has scottish roots??

anyway a google image search links it to Michael Corby https://myspace.com/the1stbaby who was in the band The Babys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Babys

 

any significant link? Another one of Arthur Lynns favs? and lol at Raymond Kennedy being listed on their wikipedia page. These coincidences 

[shadedfeelings 16]

can't wait to hear a song "Salvatore" on Honeymoon

 

"Salvatore you can def be my baby blue..."

[SuperMegaStan 9,662]

ok. now guys, do a "Who is Terrence" lanalysis. thanksssssss~

[Wynwood 19,966]

is Terrence a city somewhere? or a neighborhood or something

[Intriguing Penguin 867]

^

I googled Terrence places, Terrence neighbourhood, Terrence city-- the first result that dropped down when I was typing it into Google was, "Terrence city in Alabama", but there is no such thing as a city, neighborhood, or any place named Terrence as far as Google knows. But there is a director named Terrence Malick. Who has made some highly critically acclaimed films since the 70s. So if anyone is a Terrence Malick fan and can relate anything possibly to the song that'd be cool. Because, that is the only person named Terrence that I could see her possibly naming the song after or maybe she's referencing a love theme in his movies? 

[YCBTB 90]

There is a Terrence Wilcutt who was an astronaut. Could have a connection to the "major Tom" & space reference.

 

There is also a Terrence McNally who is a playwright. Lana might have followed his work.

 

And there are two movie actors, Terrence Howard and Terrence J/Jenkins.

 

Maybe there are connections there.

I also couldn't find any Terrence connections to cities, states, or places (other than a Terrenceville in eastern Canada); nor could I find any connection between "Terrence" and Los Angeles.

 

EDIT:

I found a professor at Fordham that is named Terrence Tilley, teaching in the department of Theology.