Lana Del Rey

if i was interviewing LDR i would ask her what about this vaguely lynchian persona/shtick holds so much appeal for you that you want to go "in character" as it across a whole album.

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Friday, January 27, 2012 6:54 AM (1 hour ago)

hey robert smith what is it about this burton-esque gothic persona/shtick holds so much appeal for you that you want to go "in character" as it across a whole album?

(that was "I don't know where to put this.." but then I knew" xp

I don't understand how "she is so authentic" matches up with "she had lip injections to fit a marketing image"?

― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Friday, January 27, 2012 2:22 PM (23 seconds ago)

yeah there's a weird disconnect in saying "this character wasn't manufactured" - characters are always manufactured - I think what he's trying to say is this is *her* vision, it wasn't some focus group music industry spiel that was pushed on her

otm^ thats the thing i took away from the blockhead blog posts

to be fair gr80 that is something lex would probably like to ask robert smith

I actually suspect grady grew her in a petri dish, can you confirm or deny this rumor

the blockhead blog posts are blocked at my job otherwise I'd dig into them myself

blockhead, from jan 10 2010

A few months ago my manager called me with an idea: He was in contact with a, mostly unknown, female vocalist who was looking to sharpen her sound. Up to that point, she had been signed to a small indie label and made music that was an interesting mix between old torch songs and something kinda of Portisheadish. That’s actually a terrible description but, regardless, it was actually pretty good.

Basically, the idea of bringing her and I together was for her to get a different type of production that may help her get wider appeal and give her “An Edge”. This idea struck me kind of funny because it’s not like I’m a particularly mass appeal kinda guy, I make sample heavy underground hip hop. A sub-genre that never has equated to ‘wider appeal’ but upon, checking her music out, I figured why not.

I sent her some beats and she immediately started writing to them, apparently they were good for that. Within two days she had written like five songs, I saw this as a good sign, we made a date to go to the studio and just see what happened.

So, the day came and the plan was as such:
I would go to a studio and meet her, along with two other guys. The two other guys were engineers and musicians who also happened to own the studio we were using and it was their job to serve as middle men between the singer and I. Her voice, my beats, and them pretty much producing the track.

When I arrived I was greeted by one of the studio guys, he was friendly and had also grown up in NYC so we had some shit to talk about. The other studio guy showed up and he was very nice as well. The singer was running late so we started dumping the beats I had brought with me on to pro tools, just so we’d have something to work with. The studio guys bobbed their heads and complimented the tracks as everything was getting sorted.

Finally, the singer arrived, she was adorable. I think all three of us guys (who had never met her before) we all taken back. She was sweet and cute in a way that you would think anyone could make her a star. Since I’m an honest wifed up guy, my first thought when seeing her (which would normally be, ‘I would like to have sex with this person.’) was ‘This girl is insanely marketable.’ And, after I heard her sing, that thought only intensified. She was flawless on her takes and precise, her lyrics were even interesting.

I began to feel like we may be on to something and this chance I took was a great idea. Fast forward one hour and my mood had changed. Within that time period, the beat I had given them had been turned on it’s ass and sounded like a completely different genre. The only thing left from my original piece was a quiet sample of a guitar floating in the background (seemingly to appease me) and half of a horn loop being used completely differently then I had intended. The original drums had been mostly kicked to the curb in favor of live drums that sounded like lounge music played by a bar band. The majority of the samples had been replaced by soft guitars and rhodes progressions. Any edge I could have possibly brought to the table had been eradicated. All this was going on while the two guys working on the music were frequently turning back at me saying shit like, ‘Dude, awesome track..’ , as if my beat was even a part of what was going on in the song at this point.

As the singer laid her vocals down perfectly and all the sequences started coming together, my initial disgust with what had gone down started to wane because I could see what was happening. My beat was just a template, she simply used it as a means to write a new song and the music itself was unimportant. These two engineer/musican guys were there to bring the pop feel to the table. As much as I didn’t like the music that came out of it, their musicianship could not be denied. They knew what they were doing and they executed it perfectly, I just wasn’t in on it. But, right then, I got it; this was the creation of pop music. I honestly had never given it much thought, it was taking something rough and shining it down to a dull glow. Finding a happy shmedium is key to making pop music; It has to be simple but not too simple, predictable but not too predictable, catchy is the most bland way possible, and, most of all, play towards the lowest common denominator.

Here was a girl with a great voice, style, and mind for what she’s doing and two highly skilled musicians with endless knowledge of music and music theory. And there you have me, a hip hop producer who plays no instruments, can’t read music and is completely removed from anything that’s been played on the radio in the last 5 years. Yet, if she and I had just recorded a song over my beat it would be more compelling then the song that came to be. Sure, the final product was amazingly produced and arranged. The attention to detail was immaculate; chord changes, breaks and layers of instrumentation unlike anything I’d ever worked on. Had the singer and I made the song, it would have been pretty simple, basic sequencing and song structure, but it would have sounded unlike anything else out right now.

For better or for worse.

In reality, the actual final product was not bad, it was just typical and it wouldn’t stand out. For as well as it was made and good as she could sing, it just seemed like it was coming off the assembly line. The bottom line is that the song was corny and no matter how good the ingredients are, if dinner tastes like shit, it tastes like shit.

This whole event got me thinking about music and how it gets made and why music is the way it is now. It’s pretty clear that regardless of skill or talent, pop music is gonna be pop music, major labels are not gonna take risks. The sad thing is, I feel like there’s lots of lesser known music that would be huge if just given the exposure. Plenty of indie acts make catchier music then any popular pop act with a production machine pumping the pistons in the background.

The problem is that radio and major labels would rather play it safe and simple. They know that if you push a song enough, it’ll catch on simply by not going away. It’s them that dictate everything we hear on the radio or see on tv. I’m the first person to admit that most people are complete and utter morons when it comes to music but maybe it’s not totally their fault. Maybe if they were exposed to shit that wasn’t so mind numbingly average, they’d actually like it. For every John Mayer, there’s gotta be a better yet lesser known version of him trying to make it. but when placed on a larger scale his music is deemed to far out there.

But says who?

Probably a focus group of idiots and a 65 year old white guy who runs a record label. What happened? In the 60′s and 70′s, we had people like the Beatles and Stevie Wonder on the pop charts; Ugly motherfuckers had a chance to make it in music simply based on the merit of their music. Now it’s pointless to even try to make it big in music unless you’re the total banal package and this all brings me back to this singer girl I worked with.

Talented. Beautiful. Marketable.

Yet, with all this working for her, I’m willing to bet it’s not gonna pan out. It has nothing to do with her but the machine simply doesn’t have the time, it’s got bigger fish to fry. Miley fucking Cyrus probably wants to make a rap album.

(little update: i wrote this a while back and since then, the girl singer was part of a label war, got signed to a good indy, that indy folded and now she’s back to the drawing board. shit is real, huh?)

blockhead from jan 25 2012

About three/four years ago, I wrote an entry for the Def Jux Blog (that I eventually posted here) about me working with a female vocalist. It basically just described the frustration of trying to make music with people when outside influence won’t let you do what you want. That girls name was Lizzy Grant. About a year or two after we had that studio session, I saw some new videos of hers pop up on youtube under the name Lana Del Ray. Flash forward to the present day and this girl is a huge star.

For a reference point, here’s the original story:
http://phatfriend.com/2010/01/12/it-might-blow-up-but-it-wont-go-pop/

I’ve been kinda wrestling with the idea of whether of not I should write this piece. Part of me feels like it’s cheap cause, now that this girl is famous (and notorious) , it’s seemingly just a cheap way to get readers. However, considering the bad press she’s been getting lately, I don’t think it would hurt to just shed some light on some things from my perspective.

So, I’m still “friends” with Lizzy on facebook. It’s not like we ever speak but you know how facebook friendships are. There are people on there who you met once at a drunken party that, because of befriending them, you know what their kids look like. Anyway, the other day, Lizzy Posted an urgent plea to all her Facebook friends to please not accept any interviews from people trying to dig up dirt on her. This was shortly after the Saturday Night Live debacle and, honestly, I can’t imagine what kinda hell this girl was going through.

Yes, the SNL performance was fucked up. I was extremely surprised. Once that aired, it would seem like shit hit the fan. I mean there was a fucking front page article on Yahoo.com about “Worst SNL performance ever?!” (Did they forget the existence of Ashley Simpson?). Suffice to say, coming from what I knew , I felt like Lana Del Ray was getting an extremely bad rap.

Now, I can only base this on my brief experience with her, but there is no doubt in my mind that that girl is talented. I’ve worked with all sorts of people over the years and she was one who stepped into the studio with a game plan and the ability to knock it all out in one take. All I can guess is that she’s got terrible stage fright or something. Cause I know, for a fact , she can sing. Not to mention, I realize her inflated lips are strange. They certainly weren’t around when we met. In fact, she was way hotter without them. But, in a way, I gotta think it was all part of her plan. “Lana Del Ray” was a character and those lips were part of that plan. The thing is, I’ve read a ton of shit about people saying this character was manufactured but that’s bullshit. Sure, it’s not her real name but the idea behind that person was in Lizzy before I even met her. Hell, just how she was dressed coming into the studio was enough for me to know that. She looked like a pinup model straight out of the trailer park. She always seemed to have to idea of this throwback Nancy Sinatra meets “Madmen” meets current white trash thing as her entire theme. She was obsessed with images of swimming pools, drinking tab soda and just a certian low brow elegance that wasn’t common in music. Even on the song we did (That I’ll be getting to briefly), her lyrics were trying to paint a picture of something very similar to where she eventually went with her new music. So, to be clear, all the detractors saying she’s some made up by the machine pop star are full of shit. While it’s impossible to keep the businesses hands out the pop when creating a pop star, the roots of where this all comes from are firmly inside of Lizzy Grant.

When I first got word that we were gonna do music together, I did some research. She had tons of youtube videos (which have since been taken down). The videos were made up of old stock footage cut up with shots of her singing…that was her thing. It created a very specific mood of nostalgia. Lo and behold, when the official video for “blue Jeans” dropped, it was the same thing

My point in this being, she had a vision of how she wanted to present herself and her music far before the foreign press was licking her ass or before anyone put her on SNL.

Anyway, I write this not as a “Leave Lana Alone!” manifesto. Nor as any sort of “Lana Del ray EXPOSED!” cause, honestly, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about her. I feel the anger towards her is unjust (especially in a era of super stars like Rihanna who can barely sing in tune without a studio to fix it) I figured now, more than ever would be a great time give you guys further insight into the music we made.

In my initial post, I wrote that Lizzy had picked beats and wrote a bunch of songs to them. She then came to a studio , where she, two engineers/studio musicians, and me planned to make those songs. If you read the earlier post, you know how they turned out in my eyes. But, hey, I’m one man and maybe too involved in it…So , I figured maybe I’d let you judge for yourself…

Here’s the original beat that she choose to write to:
http://limelinx.com/files/d7ef38314ee7626b8fe78aeb24e81e28

Now, to be honest, I always though this beat was pretty mediocre. But, it had a certain ruggedness to it that I thought could work well with some singing on it (if not rapping). She picked it, and wrote something cool to it, so we went with it.

Here’s the song that came out of that:
http://limelinx.com/files/e4e9d9fd01a1f682af18539c053aef22

This is a rough mix but you get the idea. A little different, huh?
Here’s where I get a little bitter. The idea of bringing me in to work with her was to hear her sound in a different light. At the time, she was signed to a small indie label and still trying to find her sound. I can 100% accept that I was not the right sound for her. But it definitely bummed me out that we went into work on some shit that could have been interesting and it came out to a very typical , almost “bar band” kinda vibe. All that was left of my beat was a fading horn, a little of the guitars and a simple bass line. The rest was replaced with corny drums sounds, lame rhodes progressions and some guitars riffs. I realize this sounds like I’m shitting all over the other two dudes who did all the instrument work but I’m not. They did they’re job. They made it a more pop friendly song. Those dues are far more talented musicians than I’ll ever be, we just have a different take on music, that’s all. I think I just under the assumption that’s what we weren’t there to do. I figured Lizzy and I were bought in together to try and see what happens when a girl like her sings over beats like mine. But, to really the fault of no one involved, it just didn’t happen.

It’s funny to hear where Lizzy went with her style cause it was so far from both my sound and the sound of that song we made. She choose wisely. I don’t know what the future holds for her and really hope the SNL debacle doesn’t bury her. I’d imagine she’s got a full length album dropping soon and I’m definitely curious to hear it. I think both “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games” are really good songs so it gives me hope that she’s committed to moving forward in that direction and we won’t be hearing her do any dance songs full of bad synths and triton drums anytime soon. I suppose we’ll see. regardless, I wish her good luck and think motherfuckers need to let her breath a little.

what was the indie label she signed to that folded?

five points?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lana-del-rey-to-re-release-first-album-20120127

"My publicists, in their long career, say they have never seen someone be more fictionalized," she griped

oh the irony

that album is pretty good, not sure yet but as a whole i might like it better than born to die.

the drums do my head in

"Miley fucking Cyrus probably wants to make a rap album."

would buy. or borrow from chuck.

something deeply gross about the endless, fascinated tearing at LDR's persona, appearance and authenticity. say this as someone who's been involved ITT this thread and is as guilty as anyone. not sure why, but the more the story builds and the more people position and reposition themselves relative to the artist and image, the more repulsive it all becomes.

So the previous record is "Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant" not "Lana Del Rey"? That's some Bri/yan McFadden shit

its just gossip and stuff. just some gals talking. what's the big deal?

x-post

Lana Del Boy

if you can't pick on semi-celebrities who the hell can you pick on?

something deeply gross about the endless, fascinated tearing at LDR's persona, appearance and authenticity. say this as someone who's been involved ITT this thread and is as guilty as anyone. not sure why, but the more the story builds and the more people position and reposition themselves relative to the artist and image, the more repulsive it all becomes.

― his hands are a dirty fountain through which lives spurt (contenderizer), Friday, January 27, 2012 3:04 PM

some of the more interesting discussions are related to this imo - she has positioned herself in a way that forces ppl to talk about this shit

if you don't want to talk about persona, appearance, and authenticity maybe you shouldn't be in a thread about a youtube pop star on ilm?

that said you are always welcome contendo and I'd like to hear yr thinking cap applied to LDR if you can successfully combat the disgust

that said you are always welcome contendo and I'd like to hear yr thinking cap applied to LDR if you can successfully combat the disgust

― the star of many snuff films (Edward III), Friday, January 27, 2012 12:13 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

posted quite a bit upthread. popstars represent ideals, and those ideals are often sexual and/or romantic. so it's natural that people respond to them on that level. but i kind of agree with judith (way upthread) that there's a particular narrative of initial interest followed by unmasking and finally by disgust with the expose/ruined object that attaches itself to "sexy" female popstars. that understanding makes me queasy about all the endless bickering about who she really is, why she's chosen the imagery and character she has, and whether or not she deserves the interest/acclaim she's received.

with all that in mind, i wonder whether it might suit the marketers of female pop artist to present her as "pre-ruined", so that a narrative of unmasking, shame and derisive contempt are built into her initial pop offering. you could even write it into the lyrics of a song...

i really think that nitsuh wrote about this on his tumblr / nymag better than anyone

I dunno man, you just described the hype/backlash cycle, that doesn't seem to be unique to "sexy" female stars

ideas/ideals of the feminine are deeply rooted in what she is doing, the coda song of her (by all accounts, exquisitely crafted) album is called "this is what makes us girls", even if you restrict the conversation to talking about her music and not the marketing it's something that's gotta get addressed

xp

oh and look, nitsuh starts his nymag article talking about said song

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2012/01/lana-del-rey-lurching-toward-vegas.html

so, what lessons did we learn from this entire phenomenon?

jeez louise, queasy? you are on an internet message board. on the internet! plus, a lot of what you described are things that make the whole damned thing interesting. how people react to things. i think its interesting. kinda. plus, it's friggin' january. i mean come on.

x-post

so, what lessons did we learn from this entire phenomenon?

New board description

I don't think this stuff is gross or weird, and I don't think LDR should read her press instead of weighing it. Most of the articles on her are less actually about her than about the other people writing about her. Meta music journalism run amok, replete with fast fields of strawman controversies. She just happens to be the lightning rod in the center of it all.

so, what lessons did we learn from this entire phenomenon?

never give up on your dreams. it may take years and years of work to get a chance to suck on SNL, but no one can take your ILM singles poll ranking from you.

except azaelia banks

I'm not surprised she's rereleasing the first album, it would go a long way toward dispelling the idea that she can't sing at all, it's very pretty in places; it's not as 'adventurous' and it's hardly a pop masterpiece but it has some really great stuff on it.

christ this thread

well that lovefest for frogbs
this morning ended quick
video games

imma ruin you cunt
imma ruin you cunt
video gaaaames

ha

"I think people really throwing hate her way are threatened by her and her DSLs"

2nd comment on Nitsuh's piece in NY Mag

I dunno man, you just described the hype/backlash cycle, that doesn't seem to be unique to "sexy" female stars

i dunno. my response here was personal and perhaps not too sensible. something crystallized in my head when dan contrasted getting lip injections for the image with being "authentic" and bateau followed up with that depressing "sex doll at the piano" photo (which may have some subtext i'm missing, i dunno). i just got the heebie-jeebies. and i don't really mean to accuse anyone in particular.

thing is, and though i'm as fucked up about it as anyone else (see my first post itt), i have a very hard time with appearance-based criticism when it's directed at female pop stars. the demands placed upon them are so elevated, so grotesque and so internally conflicted. i'm just amazed that anyone survives it.

and it's the internet and it's january and i'm an overearnest dork, i know, but every once in a while, i just hit the wall. no one's fault but mine, and i probably should have just gone back to that delightful racism thread.

Is this much different than say Vampire Weekend going from blog sensation to backlash over perceived lack of "authenticity" once their privileged backgrounds got more press attention.

imma ruin you cunt
imma ruin you cunt
video gaaaames

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Friday, January 27, 2012 5:11 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hah

Me will mek yuh run out a mi house
Inna half ah frock
video games

running from the cops
in our black bikini tops
LAST FRIDAY NIGHT

i really think that nitsuh wrote about this on his tumblr / nymag better than anyone

― guilt is a useless emoticon (D-40), Friday, January 27, 2012 3:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no offense to nabisco but why don't you just save us some time and only tell us when you DON'T think he wrote the definitive article on a subject

I'm enjoying the album a fair bit more than I'd expected to, although several of the tracks sound a lot more like Britney than I'd have guessed.

saw this via ann powers/facebook:

http://amyrebeccaklein.tumblr.com/

saw this also via facebook:

http://flavorwire.com/252898/just-the-music-an-experimental-review-of-lana-del-reys-born-to-die

Recently, the author Sara Marcus told me something surprising: Femininity’s dictionary definition is nothing more than “having qualities traditionally ascribed to women, effeminate, and womanish.” I looked it up to confirm, and it turned out that she was right. In other words, femininity, when you look it up in the dictionary, is entirely vacant of meaning—nothing more than a signifier for itself. Isn’t it strange that no part of “the feminine” says anything about what women really are? It strikes me as significant that the word “femininity” is a mirror of itself, endlessly reflecting our own beliefs.

for fuck's sake

masculinity (noun): possession of the qualities traditionally associated with men

oh man that quote. has marcus ever looked at a dictionary? b/c there are a million words defined that way.

recursively i mean.