IanadeIrey

Her dress reminds me of this one that Annie (Heather Graham) wore in Twin Peaks -

Love what Jenna did conceptually….”tailored for you” and her ruler dress shows measurements.

The alligator clip, the feathers that look like palm leaves, the almost swamp-coloured skirt - love these homages to the bayou…

Why is Lorde giving sardine

Teyana looks incredible. I could actually see Lady Gaga wearing something similar and it would fit right in with the sartorial palette of the Lady in Red / Mistress of Mayhem looks she’s been doing this year—cane included.

Roses Bloom For You would be a perfect title for the country album by LDR...the visual of roses lends itself to the pastoral countryside while obviously being a recurring motif in the LDR canon. And the sentiment behind it seems to capture where she's at now. 🌹 If it's being considered for the album, I wonder if it's been fleshed out a bit more or given a production revamp since the seemingly full version she posted to Instagram in December 2017 -

Love how we all acknowledge that this is one of her best unreleased songs, if not the best…sometimes if everybody likes it, maybe it IS that good.

Haha aw thanks so much! I’m really glad to hear that post opened your eyes to something. I love reading your thoughts on here :-)

So well-said. That tension is part of what makes her art something novel. There’s social commentary embedded in there, and the slight opaqueness around her that invites debate (is she a conservative or not?!) is actually less about answering that question and more so about unpacking why that question is even being asked in the first place. Even if controversy ensues from her teetering the line between seemingly dichotomous things and holding space for dissonance—and she has been vocal about not loving the controversy it invites—I think she’s fully aware that the art that she needs to create is valuable for the insight on culture it provides. A true artist is going to ruffle some feathers!

On the topic of tradwives, I do love that the Stagecoach set was modelled off of their Louisiana home and how the lyrics to both “Stars Fell on Alabama” and “Quiet in the South” deal with themes of domesticity—but they take enough of a turn left to subvert what critics and skeptics would think of as Lana assuming a tradwife persona. Because she’s actually not. This is not to take away from the romantic sincerity of Stars Fell on Alabama, but she’s the one with the capital in the relationship and she’s doing the reassuring. In Quiet in the South, she’s not being subservient at all. She’s going to burn the house down because he’s MIA! So I love that she constantly holds these two notions of womanhood in tension and it’s so subtly but masterfully done—even if it’s not fully intentional, I think it sheds light on how Lana subconsciously attaches meaning to institutions that might render her subjugated, but ultimately don’t because she’s still in control.

I would love the title Stars Fell on Alabama, but something tells me we still don’t know what the title track is. Stars Fell on Alabama is so evocative and there’s gorgeous word-painting in it, though - and the sentiment behind it is obviously deeply meaningful so as to have it capture the entire record. As much as I love it, I feel like it would operate similarly to The Grants or Text Book in the context of the album - in that it’s central to the themes of the record but is highly specific in an autobiographical way and less of a defining statement in terms of the mood of the album (thinking about Blue Banisters being a sort of reflective call-to-action for herself as she works through her experiences in the other songs on the album; or Ocean Blvd having remembrance and not wanting to be forgotten at its heart, which are two themes that pop up throughout the album). Who knows, though?! She knows her vision best and I feel like the songs we’ve heard have such a distinct voice that I can’t even imagine how it’s all going to come together - and I love that.

Still thinking about the songs from last night…what do we think about their placements on the tracklist? Husband of Mine feels so much like an opener and I feel like Henry, Come On is either track 2 or 3, with the title track being next to it. Lana loves to have her “defining tracks” within the first three songs, so if the album “hinges” on this song like she says, it has to be there. Quiet in the South and Bluebird also feel consecutive to me, the way they were sequenced at the show feels like a slow-burn-to-cool-down moment so I could see them being track 6 and 7, respectively (as the centrepiece of the album if it’s still 13 tracks). 57.5 HAS to be the closer. If Stand By Your Man is on the album, I could see it as track 5, right before Quiet in the South as an interesting juxtaposition - and since it’s lyrically lighter, it could provide the same effect earlier in the tracklist that Doin Time did on NFR.

The way there’s very distinct facets of her personality across the three new songs—sentimental (Husband of Mine), brooding (Quiet in the South), and hilarious (57.5). You can tell she wrote 57.5 with Jack and it would be such a good closing track on the album…this record is shaping up to be EVERYTHING.

I love it so much. It’s hopeful but full of sorrow at the same time. The bluebird as a symbolic aspiration towards a freedom that she doesn’t yet have is an incredibly effective lyrical device and captures a sentiment that has been present throughout her writing since the beginning. It’s refreshing lyrical territory for Lana but still manages to situate itself in the biographical narrative she’s created through her more recent “self-revealing” releases. She manages to capture the essence of a great American standard by appealing to emotion through the use of cultural iconography—like the titular bluebird—while still chronicling experiences that feel incredibly specific to her (like the lyrics’ allusion to a troubled romantic relationship). Sonically, it’s warm, hazy, and has an obvious palette of sound. Between this song and Henry, it’s clear that she is as concerned with the stylistic aspects of this album as she was with the lyrical aspects on Ocean Blvd, if not more. That should be a given, since a foray into “country music” would naturally entail a conscious embrace of the genre, but it’s nonetheless a welcomed return to have Lana adapt a specific genre of sound the way she did with rock and jazz on Ultraviolence and Honeymoon. Also, I don’t know if it was mentioned already but the line “As the wake of my past crashes in” seems to have come up, albeit differently, in her NMPA speech (at 5:38)!

What an earnestly warm yet bittersweet song... But yesterday I heard God say you were born to be the one...to hold the hand of the man who flies too close to the sun. The thing that I get the most out of listening to Lana is being privy to her moments of self-reflection like this. It's all good and well to write a song simply about the end of a relationship, but she always takes it a step beyond and presents a very complex self-portrait that sees her songs about 'love' address so much more than that. It's not merely the fact that she's in these relationships that's interesting. It's how she interprets her positionality within these relationships as part of a lifelong journey towards self-understanding and acceptance. She accomplishes this through subtle but impactful lyricism like the line above. I'm excited to hear this in the context of the entire record!