Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019)

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.

Pretty mesmerizing listen throughout

Yeah this is something else. Love the seemingly semi improvised touches throughout and how the vocals are recorded.

In the hands of another producer there are many parts of this that would have been autotuned (for effect) and I"m grateful that didn't happen.

so the way she sings 'most definitely' in Doin'Time is the cutest thing ever.

can't decide if this make me miss Los Angeles or never want to go back

Speaking of b-sides/extra tracks, this meme directed me to an excellent Ultraviolence bonus track I was unfamiliar with

pic.twitter.com/JoCnEexO7d

— Adam Moussa (@adamjmoussa) August 30, 2019

i can't take 'happiness is a butterfly' out of my head.
loving this album.

A Lana Del Rey stan just DM’d me to ask that I give the new album an 8.8 on Pitchfork, so it bears mentioning that I am not reviewing the new Lana Del Rey album for Pitchfork

— Larry Fitzmaurice (@lfitzmaurice) August 31, 2019

Fair rating imo

stans only want justice

Lana fans will be ready to riot when it only manages 8.3

Definite 8.6

Watch them pull a massive 180 and give it a 7.7

I mean iirc that would put it pretty much in line with her previous records

It’s very obviously going to get the best score of her career. I’d gamble 8.8-9.0

we should actually have a pitchfork scores betting thread (actual pfork writers banned)

Stunning album. So many great production details and some of her best lyrics. As others have said, her vocals have come a long way. I love some of the things she does with her voice here. How she belts out the chorus to The Greatest, the way she sings "Malibu" in Next American Record, and especially that stutter in Bartender. I can't get that out of my head.

Agree with everyone saying this is her best album. I've enjoyed all of them, but this is the first one where I wouldn't change a thing. Lust For Life and Honeymoon needed trimming, Born To Die should have swapped out Million Dollar Man for Without You and I could never get behind Cruel World as an opener on Ultraviolence.

That Billboard ranking of her songs piscesx posted upthread is an interesting read. Can't really argue with any of the songs in the top 10, but there's some low placements for some of my favourites. The Blackest Day (80), Swan Song (56), Radio (46), Dark Paradise (45), Tomorrow Never Came (43) and Sad Girl (33) would all be much higher on my own list.

loved Video Games, didn't care for some subsequent singles, liked several subsequent singles, didn't hear various subsequent singles, flipped for Mariners and Venice a year ago, have never listened to a whole Lana album.

this album a) fucking rules and b) feels exactly like a good album by the eight-years-older writer of Video Games

if the production on the vocals here is as different as ppl are noting, that's really heartwarming to read - this captures her weaknesses and idiosyncrasies in a really sensitive and supportive way.

we should actually have a pitchfork scores betting thread (actual pfork writers banned)

― Simon H., Saturday, August 31, 2019 7:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Please let’s not do this, thank you

Anyway, the cover art is fantastic

art's fine, "NFR!" sucks

Although I'm really loving most of this, I find that the album sags a bit in the middle, between "Love Song" and "California", where songs get kind generic. Maybe I just need to spend more time with those songs. One thing that bugs me with her vocals is a certain tendency, esp on choruses, to shoehorn lyrics which don't really fit the melody (eg "If you come back to California, you should just hit me uuuuuup" or the stuttering on "Bartender").

yeah, I ended up snipping "California" and "Next Best..." in my edit not because they're bad songs but because they don't really add anything to the record texturally or conceptually

oh Next Best is one of my favorites

I like it, but it feels like it could have slotted in too easily on one of the previous records (which makes sense as it's been kicking around a while), and imo it drags a bit

also it's been bugging me, but I finally figured out who "Looking for America" most reminds me of: Marissa Nadler, esp the harmonies near the end

After spending some time with it over the weekend, I'm still not familiar enough will all the songs but overall it is great (and arguably better than UV indeed).
I could maybe do without "Love Song" and "Happiness is a Butterfly" (not that they are bad but they didn't hit me as much as the other ones).
"Doin'Time" sounds a bit out of place but I like it and it brings some variations.
At this point, the album is basically two parts for me : from the beginning to "Love Song" (the I-know-these-songs-already part, which is also a bit more varied musically) and the rest which is more piano-ballads driven.
Although the 1st part is great, I might actually prefer the second one (the run from "Cinnamon Girl" to "Bartender" is fantastic).
Also fwiw, it's only 5min shorter than Lust For Life.