Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019)

I can't argue w/ unperson's ranking. Born to Die really has not aged well for me, for the most part.

I prefer Lust For Life over Honeymoon

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles),

same

I bet Stevie NIcks kicks herself every morning for never coming up with "Beautiful People Beautiful Problems."

Bartender has a very beautiful melody, as does NFR. I do think having so many excellent songs released far in advance throws the listening experience off, somewhat.

"My baby used to dance underneath my architecture"-- what an opening line...

This is wonderful all the way through, but not better than Ultraviolence or Honeymoon for me yet. Her cover of Doin' Time is such an outrageous flex...

born to die still pwns yall are nuts

It's a great album though I'd snip some songs off it and it certainly sounds of a time.

NFR and Ultraviolence are pretty easily her two best, the other three are all quite inconsistent but have their moments. i'd probably put Lust for Life as her worst since it's way too long and has some real clunkers on it

For the unitiated she has the best, most popular pile of unreleased songs of any artist i've ever heard of, some gold in here, especially Pawn Shop Blues and Serial Killer which she plays a lot live

https://nylon.com/articles/best-unreleased-lana-del-rey-songs

Driving in cars with boys is still one of her greatest songs.

not that i really give a shit about her politics but theres still something validating abt her worldview seeming as facile to me as her music

I don't know of any American pop stars with non-facile politics, but this is a good quote imo

In reply to a photo of West in a MAGA hat, Del Rey said that Trump's election was "a loss for the country," but that West's support of Trump was "a loss for the culture."

Prior to that, she had performed at West's wedding to Kim Kardashian.

"Lana Del Rey on Trump, Kanye and the Right Time for a Protest Song"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/arts/music/lana-del-rey-norman-rockwell-album.html

The first verse of "Bartender" is like a particularly vicious parody of Joni Mitchell.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, August 28, 2019 12:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Lol is it now?

I don't hear it as parody. She's revisiting some of her motifs to show how some things never change.

yeah I mean she uses all sorts of Cali iconography all the time, if anything it seems like a shot at the Coachella crowd still dressing like Laurel Canyon

The video version of "Doin' Time" adds what every Sublime cover needs: a 45-second string interlude

https://youtu.be/qolmz4FlnZ0

The beats in Doin' Time are bad. It didn't really bother me when I listened to it in isolation but it sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the album.

I don’t know how anything sticks out on any of her albums it’s all one long gauzy monorhythmic ig vacation phitkb

*photo

no, it's a phikb

I like her cover of doin' time now. I particularly like the 'she's evil' background vox bit. I think the song adds some needed levity (if you can call it that) to the album though yeah I'd probably rather Season of the Witch be on there.

but one thing I think that interview, and 'looking for america' makes clear, is that she an antanoff can bang some quality shit out very fast. I'd like to see her not constrained by 'album' releases going forward. I'd be happy if she dropped a song a month again.

I went from finding it odd to fine to basically indispensable on the tracklist

(xps)

D-40 if all you get from "Hope is a dangerous thing..." is "ig vacation photos" I recommend ears

Ppl can make ~profound~ ig vacation photos

I’m not saying her music isn’t about shit just that it’s all very monochromatic musically, feels basically static ... that song may be deep but it’s still breathy vocals, slow tempo, & vaguely sounding like a melody derived from “wicked game”

Idk, I’m not saying it’s objectively bad obv, just the lack of musical dynamism is something that really doesn’t appeal to me ... you know what you’re going to get from a Lana del Rey song and I guess that’s part of the appeal for some but I like to listen to artists who might surprise you once in awhile

I think Venice Bitch counts for that, but tbh gradual refinement can be just as satisfying as curveballs

From Tom’s review

Del Rey has been slowly letting its songs out into the world for almost a year now, and together, they sustain a mood even more than her previous records have done.

Phew another mood sustained

Tom sez album of the year

Is the string interlude a cover of the theme of the movie “attack of the 50 foot woman”? It’d be awesome.

'the greatest' is a jam

she's straight up summoning beth gibbons in the bridge of cinnamon girl

thanks to spotify I now notice the thread title is missing an exclamation mark

I have some news about the MIA and Quentin Manson murder movie threads, but you might want to sit down

?

On a side note: For a minute there I thought the Folgers actress in “once upon a time in hollywood” was Lana.

sic is just saying there are other threads w titles that need updating for accuracy. I just find the punctuation amusing tbh

now that this is out I can feel a little less weird presenting my preferred sequence, which is much less radical than the changes I'd make to the last two

Norman Fucking Rockwell
Cinnamon Girl
Doin' Time
Love Song
How to Disappear
Fuck It, I Love You
Happiness is a Butterfly
Mariners Apartment Complex
Bartender
Venice Bitch
Looking for America
The Greatest
Hope is a dangerous thing...

https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/columns/pop/8528500/lana-del-rey-best-songs-ranked

Pretty decent ranking, I agree that Hope Is A Dangerous Thing is her best ever tune

in the case of the MIA thread it's that 972 of the posts are about a different artist but yeah

Makes a lot of sense that “dangerous woman” is (rightly) her fav Arianna grande song

I've only started to listen to the album so too early to say anything except that one little problem with already knowing so many songs off the album is that I have to skip the HUGE part between "NFR" and "Love Song" to get to the new stuff !

she's said she's already written a bunch of songs for her next album which she's calling White Hot Forever and hopes to have out sometime next year. she really doesn't stop at all

which is amusing to me cause in that linked interview you don't get the sense that she's a workaholic at all

otoh this is......concerning

Del Rey also says she’s writing the music for a retelling of the Lewis Carroll novel Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland: “It’s more about the story of the author and the real-life Alice back in Cambridge. I have to learn a lot more about it, but the songs are really sweet.”

Because she got Cambridge and Oxford mixed up?

California is a great song, such a great tune and arrangement; and her phrasing really really sounds like Cat Power

I can’t think of too many artists with this short a career with the massive backlog of unreleased recordings; I do t know that she’s a workaholic but she’s amazingly productive and I suspect that songs is just very easy for her. Nice problem to have.

I can’t think of too many artists with this short a career with the massive backlog of unreleased recordings

thug, future, many many other rappers

i don't think that sort of huge amount of unreleased recordings is really that unusual for an artist working in the pop world like her - the difference to most is that she's just had a lot of them leak which is how we find out about them in the first place.

i kind of took a break from her for a while so i hadnt had much exposure to any leaks or even the released singles, so it sound pretty fresh to me. loving it tbh

i just noticed the very quiet one sided phone conversation that closes out the album. weird touch.