Lana

shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
this week we are going to keep reducing the IQ of dissensus. i want to talk about lana del rey.

i am going to start by saying that she is the inheritor of the artistic and cultural space that kanye created.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I am reminded of something Allen Ginsberg wrote about Arthur Russell. That he was obsessed with transmitting Buddhist dharma through the colloquial language of America, bubblegum pop.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I think Born to Die is under-respected because the critical apparatus didn't understand how to listen to it yet. If you look at Pitchfork's reviews for LDR each album gets better and better scores, but it's not because the albums are improving, it's because Pitchfork's coming around to poptimism.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
She is the epitome of all the ideas Eliot discusses in "Tradition & the Individual Talent." She is that great synthesis of 20th C high modernism and its 21st century antithesis, poptimism. She has dissolved her personality as "Lizzy Grant" and taken on that impersonal, cultural constellation of desire that is the American psyche, embodied it and turned it into ear candy.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
We had a thread about 'Born To Die' (the single) when it came out, and AFAIR someone said something like "I think she knows her time in the sun isn't going to last that long, but she's clearly making the most of it while she can", but here she is, over a decade later, looking a lot like a permanent fixture of pop culture.

My wife is a big fan, verging on devotee.
 
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shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member

the bleak middle bit of the second album she did is when i paid attention. the female mirror of my beautiful dark twisted fantasy. mining the same ego territory. the confessional spirit
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If it's lowering the collective IQ we're after, how about this nice counterpoint to 'Steven Seagull':

llama_del_rey.jpg
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Mr. Tea said:
We had a thread about 'Born To Die' (the single) when it came out, and AFAIR someone said something like "I think she knows her time in the sun isn't going to last that long, but she's clearly making the most of it while she can", but here she is, over a decade later, looking a lot like a permanent fixture of pop culture.

My wife is a big fan, verging on devotee.
Click to expand...

Lana's top songs have similar Spotify play counts these days as Tay-Tay & Queen Bee

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sus

sus

Moderator
Yeah, her last three big albums (2019, 2021, 2023) all went top three on Billboard
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
lana del ye / lanye: they're both fully in collaboration mode, drawing everyone else in, gathering the pieces together, assembling the crew, famous magpies with access to everyone and everything. both of them have that superstar ability as a solo artist unrestrained by a fixed band or group to draw in all the production elements that they want, with their vision and aesthetic at the core
 
V

version

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
lana del ye / lanye: they're both fully in collaboration mode, drawing everyone else in, gathering the pieces together, assembling the crew, famous magpies with access to everyone and everything. both of them have that superstar ability as a solo artist unrestrained by a fixed band or group to draw in all the production elements that they want, with their vision and aesthetic at the core
Click to expand...

Didn't Bowie do that decades earlier?
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
but more importantly, what they're doing is in the confessional mode. there's a sense of them both navigating the world and trying to explain something about it. they both have a lightning rod thing going on and a certain bravery. with kanye really the thing that sets him apart is that he's not conservative, no interest in treading over old lyrical territory. weirdly despite the invocation of the 60s that lana's doing she's the same.
 
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