Lana Del Rey

lana listening to the silver jews while stuck in hollywood traffic taking selfies on a busted phone pic.twitter.com/okCnyzZmOc

— alana (@slowdaysfast) May 14, 2023

That was that Primitive Radio Gods single, right?

Apparently, a new version of an old song called "Say Yes to Heaven" – which dates from the Ultraviolence days, and has been considered for a bunch of albums since – is being released tonite.

It’s out. I somehow missed this unreleased song and I thought I’d heard most of it. Its extremely good. I guess this is actually the original version as recoded in 2012 and not a subsequent remix which has leaked and was what people were using on tik tok. I gather she did this to capitalize on that, which means people should now start using Driving in Cars With Boys so we can get a properly mastered version.

It’s kind of bewildering the high quality of a lot of the unreleased stuff. Imagine thinking this song was a dumper

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

I read about the TikTok thing last night; somehow I’m always surprised by it being the reason for something like this (you’d think I’d be used to / understand it by now!)

It’s kind of bewildering the high quality of a lot of the unreleased stuff.

The Lanapedia entries for some of those songs (including this one) says that fans somehow got ahold of “stems” of earlier recordings, and emailed them to well-known producers — pretending to be Lana, asking them to produce a finished track and email it back… which they somehow then do(??) It’s totally insane.

lmao what the hell

the leaked stems were probably from a google drive getting hacked or something i guess

Having (re-)listened to several of the early versions – mindful that some fans seem to think she has “ruined” the song – I feel like the new/official version probably is the best. I think it may be a somewhat “mid” song from her, but in any event, the new recording is nice and I think it has a good atmosphere.

Damn, this is good. Her work with (professional hack) Rick Nowels is perhaps less mindbendingly bizarre but consistently some of her most listenable stuff.

I’m surprised she does so many Born to Die-era songs… I would have thought they have so little in common with her now:

https://twitter.com/lanadreyonline/status/166260628241790566

LANA DEL REY - 2023 FESTIVAL SETLIST

— Lana Del Rey Online (@LanaDReyOnline) May 27, 2023

it's still by far her most successful album so that's her playing the hits

that's a boring ass setlist and a short set too, so if that's what she's doing at Outside Lands this summer I'm happy to miss it. Wish she'd just do a headlining tour again; the NFR show was excellent.

20 songs is not a short set. What are you expecting, some kind of Cure/Springsteen-style marathon?

Surprised that even her 2019 setlists don't have "Mariners Apartment Complex" or "hope is a dangerous thing," even though both of them might be hard to pull off in an arena. And now no "Let Me Love You Like A Woman."

These probably got a lot more love on ILM than IRL

oh I kind of glanced over how many songs that was, for some reason I thought it was only 10. that said, I could do without so many BTD tracks. anyway I am interested in seeing how the new songs sound live.

I wonder if she enjoys performing those old songs… she’s evolved so much artistically since then.

It's almost like she should do more of a theater tour to do the last four albums' songs.

i would prefer that.

IMO much of this set is ooof

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9gm4vqlGN8

Impressed wow @ tear running down fan’s cheek as she begins “The Grants”

These fans are amazing… singing along with every line of “Norman Fucking Rockwell”… etc.

Anyone made a decent/personal "Best of" on Spotify or similar?

Don't know much about her aside from liking "Videogames", "Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd" and "A&W".

This is my Best Of playlist (I stopped after Chemtrails, cuz the next few albums are so perfect I didn’t feel like choosing).

(I also don’t really know how to pick individual tracks from NFR!… it’s a very holistic album)

I had never heard “Flipside” before… the bridge melody (“So you think you're in charge, do ya? / Actin' like a big shot, I'm sure”) sounds remarkably like an antecedent of “The Grants” pre-chorus (“Do you think about Heaven? Ah, ha / Do you think about me?”…).

She is really taking this Grants stuff seriously – new release “Hollywood Bowl” today with her father on keys for his second(?) solo album: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lana-del-rey-joins-dad-rob-grant-hollywood-bowl-1234766405/

It’s nice on first listen. Follows another collab of theirs that was released last week called “Lost at Sea.”

Yeah, both songs are really nice, particularly the new one.

I didn't listen to these yet but this reminds me that when BTD was coming out the backlash was that she was a nepo baby in some manner and ironically enough, it seems like her dad is the beneficiary of the nepotism now

https://www.gq.com/story/gq-hype-rob-grant

This Rob Grant record is great! Not at all what I expected. “Deep mice an swells” sounds like an Eno track from side 2 of Before and after science. She should do an entire album with him.

Eheh he looks like… Mike Love (and plays like Billy Joel) !

Might be conversation about this elsewhere but as someone who really likes a few tracks but doesn't really know her music ... the Glastonbury show was very cringey, wasn't it?

The dancers seemed less interesting than a bad evening of The Masked Singer (or whatever it is called).

I didn't listen to these yet but this reminds me that when BTD was coming out the backlash was that she was a nepo baby in some manner and ironically enough, it seems like her dad is the beneficiary of the nepotism now

Lana Del Rey hitting a fan’s vape at her show in Dublin tonight 💀 pic.twitter.com/9i7PbkH7aH

— Lana Del Rey Online (@LanaDReyOnline) July 7, 2023

She’s announced a small US tour, focusing mainly on the South. I assume more dates will come later…

this is fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPIJk0MKSWM

Interview with some interesting (if somewhat vague) remarks on her career, etc.: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/lana-del-rey-billie-eilish-olivia-rodrigo-critics-waffle-house-1235593189/

I bought Lust for Life on CD (I’ve only ever streamed her first four albums)… I enjoy listening to it in the background while I work, so I thought it may be a good candidate for really bumping in the car.

It’s not, unfortunately… for all its 2017 chart-pop affectations (Max Martin on one track; features by The Weeknd & ASAP Rocky (twice)), the album’s almost as dreary a listen as the two before it.

There are a few bright spots, particularly the Sean Lennon duet (I really like that song). But the songwriting’s not strong overall, and Lana’s still singing in that voice that sounds like she’s half-awake… zzzz

In that interview I linked to above, she credits Antonoff as the driving force behind her artistic shift that started w/NFR! —

I give credit to Jack Antonoff. I think that his production style has such an intelligence to it that vocals have a better chance of being read correctly. There’s a little more room to process it. It was that record (Norman Fucking Rockwell!) where all of a sudden things were really different.

(To be more precise, she credits Jack A. with her change in critical fortune… although it seems like Lust for Life was pretty well-received)

Blue Banisters is her (un?)intentional Joni Mitchell masterpiece.

it's odd that BB holds together as an album as well as it does considering it's mostly (all?) outtakes

It’s about half outtakes, and yeah it’s still my absolute favorite (even allowing for Tunnel’s greatness), and speaks to the power of serendipity (or whatever). As a side note, Antonoff didn’t happen to touch that one…

yeah I think he deserves some credit but she's selling herself short, she also became a better singer and songwriter by the time NFR happened.

The interviewer in that THR piece brings up songwriting in the next question, but Lana sort of brushes it off…

Big new Harper’s Bazaar feature (I haven’t read it yet)

She released music first under her own name, as Lizzy Grant. But when that failed to chart, she chose a stage name and a new look

this isn't quite accurate, but whatevs

Blue Bannisters is an underrated album

Huh, I guess she's not engaged anymore(?) It sounds like she's not in a relationship. Anyway, not much about music in the profile.

Pretty poor article, all ‘what is her game, this is all a facade type bs”. She looks great in the photos though.