Lana Del Rey

setting aside the redundancy of "gangsta nancy sinatra" (idk maybe she should've gone with the gangsta lesley gore), the phrase makes sense in the context of hearing the entire album.

when I say "gangsta" I'm thinking in macro-genre terms here. not only gangsta but gangster too (i.e. all 3 scarfaces). a pop culture icon celebrating the pursuit of status, power, and money, with an undercurrent of existential sadness - hurtling towards doom, prison or the grave. dark side of the american dream stuff.

she's not toting a gun, but LDR is shamelessly obsessed with fame and status and power and money and kicks, as openly avaricious as any scarface, but with the same noirish tone that acknowledges where the fast times will end up - heartbreak, solitude, addiction, death. she's exploiting a femme mirror of gangsterism where her gun is her body, and she will use her talents, natural or un, to get what she wants, surrendering to suffer in whatever psychic trap that path leads her to. and that's not me doing the NYT thing and reading extramusical cues, this is what she puts out there lyrically.

money is the reason we exist / everybody knows it / it's a fact / kiss kiss

plus she does in fact utter the words "how do ya like me now?"

as I said above, when this stance is implicit it works really well for her, but when it's explicit the material falls flat. frustrating cause you can see the target that was being shot at, I kind of wish she had nailed it.

that line is so so bad

there are so many bad lines on this album

it is hard to imagine a line worse than that line

there's a potentially unique and interesting vision at play here, but the aesthetic chops required to pull it off are not present

xps o gimme a minute

money is the reason we exist / everybody knows it / it's a fact / kiss kiss

ha you can sing that to the "heaven is a place on Earth" part of the chorus to "Video Games"

how bout this

carmen carmen
staying up til mornin'
only 17 but she walks the streets so mean

it's alarming truly
how disarming we can be
eating soft ice cream
coney island queen

only 17 but she walks the streets so mean, I mean, c'mon

think that's a lou reed lyric tbh

All the colored girls
The colored girls sing
Video gaaaaaames

lol

'money is the reason we exist / everybody knows it / it's a fact / kiss kiss"

this reminds me of the Countess' song "money can't buy you class" from real housewives of NYC

ladies and gentlemen, this is the countess

elegance is learned
learned my friend
video gaaaaaames

all these bad lyrics are rendered in lush folds of dreamy technicolor pop, that swooning shit can make any kind of pap pop in a 16 yo's bedroom, this album will be widely quoted in high school yearbooks

(do they still print yearbooks? or is it all on fb now?)

what sets LDR apart is her shamelessness - it's the kind of shamelessness that makes pop stars

"all the terrible things you think about me are true, because I told you all about them"

^ not an LDR lyric, but I will license it to her for a small fee

then you'll have Morrissey coming after you

did I just unconsciously quote moz

haha you might as well have

woah now that i think about it lana del ray is the white morrissey

that's racist, clearly she's the american morrissey

I am the son
and the heir
video games

i love kent. litchfield county is about all i fuck with in connecticut. you know who else went to the kent school? the gangsta creator of the family guy.

The animated TV show Family Guy is written by alumnus Seth MacFarlane. In 1999, the school's headmaster, Father Schell, wrote to a number of companies urging them not to advertise with the TV show calling it obnoxious. Seth MacFarlane's parents, who worked at the school, resigned in protest.

it is pretty fucking obnoxious

this caption on the front page of the billboard website is killing me:

"Now that Lana Del Rey's hotly 'Born To Die' has leaked, expect the still-unproven live singer to elicit a whole new wave of 'she's not that bad on record!' defenses. But is the album any good? At 15 tracks, it's as puffy as the singer's oft-debated lips."

i didn't actually read the article though, for some reason despite loving "video games" i have almost zero desire to listen to this album

When it shoots up the dropper's neck
When I'm closing in on death
Video games

chorus to video games reminds me of the chorus of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MRdtXWcgIw

http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

btw since i haven't done anything except post fake lyrics to this thread. i think video games is remarkably dull, lazy in every respect. her voice and the production have some of the superficial hazy appeal of a david lynch soundtrack but it's not chewy at all (meaning it doesn't reveal anything as it goes along, let alone on repeated listenings) and memorable only in the most irritating sense. it would make a good 30-second commercial jingle but i can scarcely get myself to listen to more than 90 seconds of it before desperately wanting to do/listen to something else. i don't truly begrudge anyone for liking it though, coz taste is taste etc. but the amateurishness of her SNL performance didn't shock me because the "persona" on the record seems kind of too easily won and not very interesting to begin with.

i was probably hyperbolic there. the single isn't HORRIBLE, it's simply not outstanding in any way.

it reminds me of some lazy moody indie pop, not that a name comes to mind immediately. stuff i maybe listened to for a while in college. like the boring mazzy star songs or something. in the sense that it's all attitudinizing and nothing of formal interest at all.

xxxpost: The two chorus have the same chords I think?.... F Am C with an Em thrown somewhere in there.

Cuz when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the droppers neck
When I'm closing in on death
Video gaaaaaames

― uncle acid and the absquatulators (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 12:50 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xxxpost: The two chorus have the same chords I think?.... F Am C with an Em thrown somewhere in there.

― Moka, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 7:55 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this true?!

Cuz when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the droppers neck
When I'm closing in on death
Video gaaaaaames

― uncle acid and the absquatulators (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 12:50 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― uncle acid and the absquatulators (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 6:59 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oops can't keep up w/ this thread.

Oh, I think the chorus is definitely of formal interest. It's 22 bars long and seems to have two different beginnings. Unconventional rhyming structures, too.

And now that I think about it, it's that chorus that made me think of Mary Margaret O'Hara the first time I heard it.

driving in cars with boys (not on the album I know): sounds exactly like something else, can't remember what. (maybe this is why it isn't on the album, because the tune is a complete plagarism). anyone know what it is? some middling 80's pop song.

huh that's interesting. it scans as conventional and boring to me.

okay i can hear the indie thing here and here. i had no idea there were so many songs on youtube. i remember looking months ago and there weren't this many. tons now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZdOIn_xA_Y&feature=autoplay&list=UL7gqOg3PYAaM&lf=mfu_in_order&playnext=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gqOg3PYAaM&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

it scans as conventional and boring to me.

Seven lines in a row that all rhyme at the end and it's in a 3+3+1 configuration where the third line is extended in each part and then an extra line is tacked on at the end.

this is way bigger than lana on youtube right now. like a zillion times. not like video games wasn't huge there. it was. but people really want katy perry right now. the people have spoken. they already have a shape-shifting chameleon who has a hard time singing on snl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJtB55MaoD0

co-sign amateurist 100%

well they want beyonce AND katy. you know, they want two things. jessie j can do both.

And now that I think about it, it's that chorus that made me think of Mary Margaret O'Hara the first time I heard it.

I now feel slightly less nuts for having made that comparison on another board, thanks.

strings on 'national anthem' sound just like 'bittersweet symphony'; is jagger going to get a check again?

yeah I have to admit I'm kind of feeling timellison's posts xp

Keith Allen got the cheque i think.

jesus i'm not even pissed; Alan Klein rather.