Lana covers V Magazine's Best of the Best Issue

[Pluto 1,581]

Does anyone know what stores in the US carry V Magazine?

I haven't been to the states in ages but I believe Barnes and Noble has it sometimes

[evilentity 13,351]

I missed this when it came out, but I thought it was worth commenting on.

 

Lana is an enigma that after a year I am still unable to untangle. She seems to want her songs to be read as confessions, while on the other hand so much of her work is a conscious creation. As always, I tried to get to the bottom [of] the mystery that is Lana Del Rey.

Yup, this sums up very well what's so beguiling about her.

 

Lana as a singer-songwriter sees her work as an expression of her reality. I try to argue that even if her songs are confessional, they are contributing to a creation of Lana's making--that her "reality" is largely of her own creation. This view disturbs Lana because she sees herself as a creative reporter of her experience, rather than an active sculptor of her persona.

This is the crux of the issue. Over time, I've come around more to Franco's position on this, but it is nevertheless at odds with what Lana says about herself and her work.

 

They read too literally into her lyrics

While I think this assessment of Franco's is true, and I would also apply it to myself, the plain fact is that Lana herself resists this interpretation and invites a fairly literal interpretation repeatedly throughout this interview:

 

feeling like I was writing about things autobiographically

 

for a writer, you don't know any story better than your own

 

With a lot of my songs, you don't have to look much further. I'm right here. It's right here. We could almost talk about anything else because I'm putting it all out there already. Anytime you have a question you can always refer back to the songs. Therein the story lies.

 

And statements like that are not at all atypical for her.

 

I do have a colorful past, and I've been pretty candid about that.

I don't know, have you really Lana? You're always intimating toward such a history, but rarely in enough specific detail to know what to believe.

 

The Beach Boys. Pet Sounds. Dennis Wilson's solo stuff.

JF So, what about a song like "Florida Kilos"?

LDR It's funny you should bring up that song because that's actually the only co-write on [Ultraviolence]. And that is Harmony Korine. He wanted me to write a tune about his movie that I think you're going to be in [The Trap]. It's about cocaine cowboys. So for fun, that was something where he was just spitting off insane lyrics and asking me to put them into melodies. That song in particular is not autobiographical.

Can you pander to @@Monicker any more, Lana?

 

And again, suggesting "Florida Kilos" is aberrational in not being at all autobiographical suggests she considers much of her work to be to some degree.

 

You have to select things within your own body of work for a record if you want a concept record--which they all are, in my mind. For instance, for Ultraviolence, I really felt the need to get back to my roots and back to something that felt a little more feral and wild...I had a lot of freedom to do a song in one take. Even if it's not perfect and my voice is breaking, it's special to me because it's the moment it was captured in. The concept with that record was to be as raw as I wanted to be.

Lana definitely has the luxury of selecting things from her large body of work if she wants an album to have a concept or cohesive sound.

 

The rawness of UV was such a welcome departure from the plasticity of BTD. More please.

 

JF Charles Barkley would say, "Look, I'm an athlete. I play basketball really well. I'm not a role model."

Ahem...

 

You can see how this can be problematic. It can send the wrong message to girls and her young fans

Oh, I forgot to respond to this in my first post in this topic. I've never bought this argument about any celebrity unless they portray themselves as a role model. I'm with Charles Barkley on this one:

 

 

Is James Franco just a big rip-off of, well... me?

 

TO BE CONTINUED... (fucking quote limits)

[evilentity 13,351]

CONTINUED...

 

JF You told me that you never wanted to be a live performer, al least not in huge venues, but it sounds like [the Endless Summer Tour] was a really positive experience.

LDR It was amazing. We played 40,000 capacity shows. Being in America, that definitely blew my mind.

JF So you're getting used to it?

LDR Yeah [laughs].

You once said that you were more successful in Europe. Do you still feel that way?

LDR People's perspectives are always changing. People change their minds. But I know that when I go to Paris and play a residency at the Olympia that it's going to be beautiful and I'm not going to be misunderstood. I never was, in France or Milan. Even for all the hard times I've had in some of the British press it was my first home, musically. So it's probably always going to be that way. But I do feel a lot more comfortable here now.

JF You're the number-one female artist here in terms of streaming. Your music is undeniably popular. [laughs]

LDR I guess there's a really big discrepancy in the amount of people who apparently listen to the music and a very vocal sector of people who have a lot of negative things to say. I mean, they almost cancel each other out. Statistics are so ethereal, it's hard to get a grasp on them. So, hearing what people say to your face if you have an altercation or if you read something in a publication that you read everyday, I don't think you can ever have a good grasp on whether people like you or not. But that doesn't mean they're not listening.

It's sad that the intensity of the criticism has so blinded to her to the enormity of her success here in the US despite it all, but it's encouraging that she's starting to get it.

 

I took two years in London and Sweden and elsewhere in Europe to do Born to Die.

As @@Trash Magic pointed out to me, this may be the first time she's mentioned recording anything for BTD outside the US or UK. I don't believe the credits for BTD mention any studios outside the US or UK, but a number of the personnel credited on OTTR are based in Sweden. Two years before the release of BTD is roughly when AKA was digitally released, so she could also be speaking generally about all the music she worked on in between. If so, this comment could be a reference to her working with Swedish producers Markus Sepehrmanesh and Tommy Typser, who produced at least one of the versions of "Hit It & Run".

 

In some ways making the record is easy, and then talking about it is hard.

Yeah, she really is light years better at making music than talking about it.

 

It's all contingent upon your state of mind, which is why I don't always do interviews--because it puts me in a bad fucking mood.

Gee, I never noticed.

[yourboy 3,397]

finally bought this bad boy

[#glimmeringdarling 4,629]

   

[folklore 1,528]

   

You better be hinting at some new outtakes from this shoot

[#glimmeringdarling 4,629]

I just wanted to thank the Gods for blessing us with this Issue. Thank u 

[99centlips 8,526]

I just wanted to thank the Gods for blessing us with this Issue. Thank u

I second that

[missdelreyxo 3,786]

the outtakes are miraculous and its my favorite shoot of all time