Reoccurrence in Lana's melodies and structures?

[Deleted User]

Hey everyone!

I made this topic to discuss something I noticed as soon as I listened to Ultraviolence and Brooklyn Baby...

First, does anyone notice the STRIDENT simmilarity between Ultraviolence and Born To Die's overture? The orchestral, empiral string cadence?

 

And in a second hand, does anyone notice a vocal melody simmilarity between brooklyn baby's "My boyfriend's in the band" and Summertime Sadness' "I've got my red dress on tonight"?

 

After I compared them and sang them one after the other I felt somehow disappointed... I just can't describe the feeling. It's not quite disappointment... It's as if I feel she always writes about the same things with the same punch lines or objects (red sun party dresses, brands, cigarrettes, daddies, and stuff like that) and not just that but her melodies are repetitive too?

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE her ever since I discovered her in Stereogum in exactly August 23rd 2011 with this article http://www.stereogum.com/786631/lana-del-rey-video-games-video/video/
So I'm all here for the love.

But I just felt like talking about this

[YUNGATA]

Totally agree w/ the Brooklyn Baby/SS similarities! first thing i heard in the snippet. interested to hear other peoples thoughts~

[Rebel]

Yeah I hear the BBY/SS simlarity and I kinda love it.

 

For some reason, the intro of the bridge in Y&B is so familiar to me, and I don't know where I've heard it before... (another episode of "What song is Rebel thinking about?")

[Waywent]

Yeah I hear the BBY/SS simlarity and I kinda love it.

 

For some reason, the intro of the bridge in Y&B is so familiar to me, and I don't know where I've heard it before... (another episode of "What song is Rebel thinking about?")

I think I can explain that.

 

 

https://a.tumblr.com/tumblr_n6gyp9Tfna1qfo41fo1.mp3

[Waywent]

Also, should this be moved to Lana Thoughts?

[Sitar]

Oh yeah, the "empiral string cadence"...

[GangstaBoy]

I've always felt like many of Lana's songs don't have a solid melody, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but it's like they're so ethereal and fragile they're not well defined, so many of the songs tend to sound alike even when they don't actually do...

I don't know if this makes any sense, but after hearing the Brooklyn baby snippet I couldn't remember the exact melody and only after hearing it again I could figured it out. The melody is so soft and simple it escapes my mind

[Summersault]

I think Lana, like most singers, have a range of stock melisms or melody fragments that she just belts out when improvising.

 

I don't know about the writing process of all her songs, but judging from what she said about Video Games she comes up with a lot of the melodies on the spot, so every now and then those stock melodies find their way in to several songs.

 

I.e. a little phrase that comes up in both Ride and Black Beauty:

 

At 1:19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvb8wdBglpw

 

 

At 2:42

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqjWFFrHMBQ

 

I think she also has an affinity for certain chord progressions, like the one in Blues Jeans and the chorus of Cola. I hear a little bit of that in Ultraviolence as well.

[sweetie]

Idk, I find most of Lana songs are extremely similar chord-wise, and this makes them easy to play on piano. You can play most of her singles with the same progression.

[Rebel]

I think I can explain that.

 

 

https://a.tumblr.com/tumblr_n6gyp9Tfna1qfo41fo1.mp3

 

I don't get it 

[Waywent]

I don't get it 

Well, I saw Y&B as You & Me by accident. 

[DeadAgainst]

She has a symbolic language of her own. Themes are repeated like recurring hieroglyphs or musical notes.

[slang]

There is a thin line between having a style and using a formula. She is no worse, imo, than Depeche Mode or Alanis Morrisette, in terms of milking a style, although there are obvious complications for LDR, like multiple versions of the same songs (e.g., every man gets his wish) and intentional reuse of musical themes in very different ways (e.g., Dangerous Girl and You and Me). But the thing that strikes me as weird is the range of styles. I would never have predicted (most) Lizzy Grant emerging from May Jailer or (most) Lana Del Rey emerging from Lizzy Grant. Then the leaks and unreleased often convey other flavors (e.g., lots of really decent bubble-gum pop). So yeah, certain songs have similarities to each other, but the range overall is what I focus on. Wish the leaks/unreleased/aborted-releases were a more proper part of her discography, as I think that range is what reflects her greatness the most (well for me, at least).

[butterflies]

It does but like it's out of tune lol...

 

Limelight called me delusional but pls this is almost the same...

 

https://soundcloud.com/kristijanmajic/tb-bb/s-EtAhV

[lavender-sunshine]

Even though the moods of the songs are so different, there is melodic similarity between the choruses of You & Me and Dangerous Girl. The notes are almost exactly the same.

[CarcrashBandicoot]

Hm. It's an interesting thought, I don't hear it. Of course, we haven't heard the full studio versions of the songs (keeping my fingers crossed that we get the original version of the album one day...) so maybe they do have a similarity but I just haven't been able to hear it personally. She does have a certain sound that I think a lot of us here will end up missing with this next album, which the sound was used on BTD quite a lot... She was supposed to be "changing her sound" but let's be real, it's Lana Del Rey, when does she ever change much?  She's used the same lyrical structure and actually copied some of her OLD lyrics from 4 years ago and used them in recent songs so... "He hit me and it felt like a kiss" (then again, that was a song by The Crystals in the 60s, I believe...) has been used a few times by her and "meet me in the pale moonlight"/"you can find me in the pale moonlight" has been used since MMITPM in 2010... then again somewhere on BTD... So she reuses both lyrics AND melodies, I'm guessing?

[TRENCH]

Even though the moods of the songs are so different, there is melodic similarity between the choruses of You & Me and Dangerous Girl. The notes are almost exactly the same.

I was thinking about the same thing 

[Slumdog]

When they first played the Cruel World snippet I was thinking "why is everyone so excited, this is not a new song, it's Blue Jeans".

[Venice Jesus Whore]

Totally agree w/ the Brooklyn Baby/SS similarities! first thing i heard in the snippet. interested to hear other peoples thoughts~

 

this. i noticed it too.

[veniceglitch]

She seems preoccupied by repetition, rituals, iconography. It feels almost religious. I believe she truly is a visual thinker, and tries to use her words to paint the obsessive scenery she loves. I like how she talks about how words sound; their universally understood meaning or context isn't so important to her, which I think gets her in trouble with more linear types (journalists) in interviews, etc. The title Ultraviolence is a good example. She knows its pop cultural history, but she bends the word itself to her own will. It's all how it makes her feel, and how she can use word and motifs as tools to create new meanings. For her, language is an intuitive art like everything else.

 

Red dress. Blood red jam. Red lipstick. Red nail polish. Red, white, blue. Blue dark. Blue jeans. Blue hands. Blue mascara. Boy blue. Swayin'. Swingin'. Driving fast, 'bout 99, in cars with boys, alone. The list goes on.

 

I enjoy how sensory-oriented her lyrics are, but I get the sense she does this knowing that concrete words can hold a lot of abstract power, not because she literally only thinks about things in terms of their color etc. I get the sense she approaches melody-writing similarly; she's fine recycling her own motifs because it reinstates the ritualistic nature of her music. That said, I am hungry for new metaphors and themes from her. I'm sure the music she makes in her 30s will reveal a whole new part of her mind and soul.