COMPLETE - The Indie/Alt Pop/Not-quite-'Mainstream'-but-still-accessible Girls 2017 Rate!!1
- Thread starter constantino
- Start date
He/Him
I just keep reliving dancing and singing and crying along to "Los Ageless" live and feeling that quintessential yet impossible to name feeling that drives why we go see live music
Her previous album (self titled) is the most similar to Masseduction so you may want to go for that one. Or if you want to start from the beginning, her debut (Marry Me) is really good and really accessible as well, but completely different from her recent output (it's more of a traditional indie pop/singer-songwriter album, similar to Fiona Apple for example). It's interesting to see how she developed her sound over the years though. Albums 2 and 3 are the least accessible/pop-y ones but all five of them are excellent.
I've come around to her quite a bit, but not when you stan Halsey you don't.
FYI I might have to postpone the next elimination for tomorrow, my mid-week timetable is ridiculous this term and I wanted to post the Masseduction and Lust For Life summaries first... ://
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2014
Staff member
you're getting boring now x
he/him
I'll take that as a compliment given the stiff competition here in the form of Lana.
NOT this thread falling to page 2 of Lists & Charts for the first time ever! I know I've been neglectful but y'all. These graphics take fucking ages because I have to re-upload them about 3 times before I get a version in which all the artwork is aligned and the usernames and song titles are spelled correctly, so you will get a set of half-assed summary paragraphs and a review written by another poster and you will LIKE. IT.
Despite the stans among you fearing for her life and proclaiming that she would be done wrong from the very jump, Lana kinda did that, huh? I mean...two songs in the top 10? 6 songs with 8+ averages and 16 with 7+ averages? No songs out for 14 eliminations? Not everyone has that. If the '4.' is confusing to you, just know that Masseduction, About U and Lust For Life's overall averages rounded up/down to 7.9, Lana just so happened to have an exact average that was only a tiny margin lower than the other two.
It is no secret that I love everything this women does (literally, everything) but this might just be the best body of work she has put out so far. Lust For Life is one long-ass album and yet it doesn't drag to me. There is structure and there is purpose to the sequencing and every song has it's place - from the hip-hop infused first half to the acoustica reflective 60s sheen of the second half; this is the first time Lana seemingly knows what she's doing and executes that fully. Gone is the girl singing about daddies in a red dress under a pale moonlight and here is a woman taking on the fucked up world we inhabit. And I'm so proud to see it.
I've spoken a whole lot about each song in each of the elimination posts, so rather than regurgitate those thoughts, I'll link @Kuhleezi's excellent review from the 2017 Calendar thread:
Despite the stans among you fearing for her life and proclaiming that she would be done wrong from the very jump, Lana kinda did that, huh? I mean...two songs in the top 10? 6 songs with 8+ averages and 16 with 7+ averages? No songs out for 14 eliminations? Not everyone has that. If the '4.' is confusing to you, just know that Masseduction, About U and Lust For Life's overall averages rounded up/down to 7.9, Lana just so happened to have an exact average that was only a tiny margin lower than the other two.
It is no secret that I love everything this women does (literally, everything) but this might just be the best body of work she has put out so far. Lust For Life is one long-ass album and yet it doesn't drag to me. There is structure and there is purpose to the sequencing and every song has it's place - from the hip-hop infused first half to the acoustica reflective 60s sheen of the second half; this is the first time Lana seemingly knows what she's doing and executes that fully. Gone is the girl singing about daddies in a red dress under a pale moonlight and here is a woman taking on the fucked up world we inhabit. And I'm so proud to see it.
I've spoken a whole lot about each song in each of the elimination posts, so rather than regurgitate those thoughts, I'll link @Kuhleezi's excellent review from the 2017 Calendar thread:
December 1st
Lana Del Rey - Lust For Life
Reviewed by @Kuhleezi
Graphics @NecessaryVoodoo
This is for @happiestgirl.
What’s more powerful than a smile? It can show gratitude to a loved one, be used in a diplomatic way to get what you want, or even make you happier if you forcefully put one on, as some studies show. Somehow, Lana’s smile on the cover of Lust For Life is a combination of the three, and then some. This is the girl whose song titles include “Born To Die”, “Pretty When You Cry” and “Sad Girl”. And there she is, open smiling at us. It almost feels like she is laughing at us, as if she was amused by the mountain of expectations we’d been piling over her for all these years. We’d come to expect Lana in a certain way, sombre, depressed, bored to death, so why the hell is she smiling at us? Is this happiness? Has she finally released a happy album?
The answer is both yes and no. Lust For Life is definitely happy compared to what has come before. Even though her universe is more or less the same, her perspective has radically changed. The abusive relationships, the drugs, the melancholic swaying alone are all there, but the focus has dramatically shifted. Long gone are the days she wished she were dead, here her lust for life keeps her alive.
Keeps us alive, to be more precise. And indeed, this album is where Lana learns to expand her universe and include other people than just herself. That shows in the presence of many features throughout, at a superficial level, but also in the themes she addresses. She’s always been an insular artist, her vision revolving around her persona like a planet orbiting around a particularly bright star. Though her previous endeavours in the Honeymoon album (with the theme of the sightseeing bus in West Hollywood) had already hinted at an expansion, it’s with this album that she finally manages to look over her shoulder and successfully acknowledge the world surrounding her. Take the first song and lead single “Love”: it’s no coincidence the very first line in the album is “Look at you kids with your vintage music”.
That isn’t to say Lust For Life is a selfless album. Rather, it’s a very classical album in the sense that it explores the conflict between the self and the world. How can one find happiness in a world at the brink of turmoil? Is it right to be happy in a world at the brink of turmoil? What is our role in all this? These are questions that don’t find a definitive answer within the album, but Lana asks them anyway because they are legitimate concerns felt by many millennials in this particular period of time. It’s not difficult then to see why this is her most inclusive album to date: it needed to, given the themes explored.
This particular path to happiness is something not only specific to millennials, but also Lana as an artist. Lust For Life is a brilliant album on its own, but it’s even more satisfying bearing in mind the context of her whole journey: from the bleak gloss of Born To Die and Paradise, to the near-overdose experience of Ultraviolence, to Honeymoon and its caleidoscopic languor, to Lust For Life and a new hope arising, it’s un upward spiral, so coherently executed that you almost get the feeling she had planned it all already. As a matter of fact, the album itself is a wonderful journey, thematically, but also sonically.
After the first two tracks and singles, that serve as mission statements for the following hour or so, the first half of the album finds Lana in familiar territory: there’s a man and there’s love and this man is bad and this love is devastating. These elements are taken to their natural extremes: she’s never sounded so disheartened with love as in songs like “13 Beaches” or “Cherry”, or so cold-heartedly furious with her lover as in “In My Feelings”, all this without neglecting her trademark languor, deceptively apathetic, that wraps everything up in a thin veil of irony and disillusion. This is also the half where she takes her hip-hop fascinations to the extreme: bar Ultraviolence, there were always some bits here and there on all her albums, but it’s on Lust For Life where she finally gives us a taste of the “muddy trap” she talked about for Honeymoon. “Groupie Love” and especially “Summer Bummer” are hip-hop made through Lana Del Rey’s lens, and they’re coincidentally the songs where she suspends disbelief, where she pretends she can have a fun love story. Needless to say, a happy ending is clearly not going to happen.
Don’t let the lackluster reaction to “Coachella (Woodstock In My Mind)” fool you into thinking it’s not essential: standing in the middle of the album, it serves as a perfect bridge between the two halves and is maybe the most representative of the album as a whole. Its setting is obviously the fashionable music festival, with Lana finding herself thinking about the next generation’s well-being in these times of political uncertainty. She’s also hit by the realization of her role, and that of music itself, in some of the most stunning lines in the record: “Maybe my contribution could be as small as hoping / But words could turn to birds and birds would send my thoughts your way”. The role of art as a moral guide and a source of relief is nothing new, but it’s the clarity it’s presented with that’s so striking. For Lana to reclaim this role in such a simple and plainly understandable way is even the more impressive, considering the aura of mystery she’s usually surrounded by.
Much of Lust For Life feels like Lana Del Rey coming out of her shell and breaking free from her demons. This is even more evident in the second half, which sees a drastic but perfectly executed transition into more acoustic and folk sounds. The atmosphere is sparser, the mood chiller, the scope larger. It’s here that her focus grows bigger and bigger, encompassing her compatriots (“God Bless America – And All The Beautiful Women In It”), humankind (“When The World Was At War We Kept Dancing”), then our planet at large (“Beautiful People Beautiful Problems”). The clear standout of this section is “When The World Was At War We Kept Dancing”, a three-chorus wonder of a ballad, whose core message reads as equal parts reassuring and sardonic: while on the one hand her solution to times of political turmoil, dancing the problems of the world away, sheds a ray of hope, as it shows us we’ve already been there and the world hasn’t ended, it also highlights how non-existent our worries are, how uneffectively we act in solving the greatest issues of our times, and how priviliged we as first-world citizens are in having the possibility to just shake our concerns away.
This duality is also present in later cut “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems”, a duet with living legend Stevie Nicks: “We get so tired and we complain / ‘Bout how it’s hard to live / It’s more than just a video game / We’re just beautiful people with beautiful problems” she coos entering the first chorus, in her unmistakable way of sounding both harrowingly heartfelt and light-heartedly ironic. Is it really worth asking whether she is being serious or not when it’s probably something of a grey area in the middle? That’s one of Lana’s greatest gifts, managing to effortlessly straddle the line between intense and facetious. The only drawback is that by doing so she may give off a rather aloof and insincere vibe: it’s no coincidence critics often misunderstood her (especially in the beginning) and the general public is quick to dismiss her as “depressed” and “too slow” while worshipping the very ground the many Adele’s and Sam Smith’s walk on. Lust For Life is even the more incredible because she manages to keep this element of hers, but at the same time be very upfront about her motives and character.
The tracks near the end seem to tackle her very persona, and how it’s progressed and changed over the years. One of the most striking things you immediately notice about Lust For Life is that Lana’s own Americana mythology has taken a backseat. There’s no sign of Marylin, or Elvis, beat poetry is nowhere to be seen, and neither is T.S. Eliot. An odd mention here and there is still recurrent, some even making it to the title of a song, like “White Mustang” or the very title track, but their role isn’t nearly the same as it was before. While they once carried a meaning, these idols of a past era are now empty shells, paling in comparison to the technicolor present world all around her. There’s a notable exception, of course, and that is the devastating “Heroin”, which is also, not coincidentally, an Ultraviolence throwback through and through. Here Lana seems to really give in to past self-destructive patterns: the angst, the drug addiction, the awful man. In a sense, all this is calming and quite comfortable for her. Something like Charles Manson, that completely freaks her friends out, is totally her element. It’s what we’ve known her for for years, right? And then, she nonchalantly drops the news: “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sick of it”. She feels a change in the outside world, and she suddenly feels the need to a change in her inside world too.
Change is the key-word of the last few minutes of this record. The aptly-titled “Change” tackles one of modernity’s most urgent problem, climate change, from the perspective of an individual. “Lately I’ve been thinking it’s just someone else’s job to care / Who am I to sympathize when no one gave a damn?” It’s hard not to feel this way when we’re faced with such huge problems. Once again, Lana turns something universal into a very personal situation, calling for a change in herself first, and then predicting one on a global scale. Because change is inevitable, she says, and ready or not, we’ll have to face it when it comes.
Lana herself is a very changed person by the end of this album, so much so that it’s quite hard to remember the days of a fatalist girl willing to bear with anything destiny would throw at her. Rather, her attitude is what has made a 180, and final track “Get Free” perfectly shows that. It’s the lightest track on the album, with a chorus that soars over the stratosphere. It’s a declaration of intents: Lana has decided to have a more positive approach to life. “I wanna move out of the black into the blue”, she sings, chants, at the very end straight-up shouts, mantra-style, surrounded by seagulls, in what is most likely a very picturesque early-morning port. Even her idols have been left behind: she declares she’s doing it “for … and for …”. Maybe it’s because she wants everyone to choose how to fill in that space, maybe it’s to express the dissolution of her myths, which had been her main guidance until now, and now she must only do it for herself.
As the album ends, Lana is not living happily ever after, all her past problems and worries magically cured, as she’s “happy” now. You can’t switch happiness on at your will, nor forget all your baggage. Being happy doesn’t 100% depend on ourselves, we’re immersed in a certain environment and certain external events can inevitably bog us down. Being happy doesn’t mean forgetting you’ve been hurt and hopeless and miserable either. Happiness is a complex combination of factors, and the best we can do is have a positive outlook on life no matter our past experiences or the situation we’re living in. The best we can do is never renounce our love, our strive, our lust for life.
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He/they
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Guess I better get a move on with the Masseduction graphic and #4 elimination, huh?
Any guesses/hopes?
Any guesses/hopes?
He/they
My hope would be a Lorde song - preferably Green Light - but I have a feeling that this is MUNA’s last day in the rate.
If it's any consolidation, you were #7!
bump because I'm impatient
This took over an hour and it STILL looks horrible so imma just chuck it out, along with a revamped version of my Masseduction review from the calendar thread ddd
Like Lana, Miss Annie kinda did the damn thing despite my prior fears and concerns? Snatching the second-highest album average in the rate? Talent always wins. A 9.8 might have been...a lot but I honestly couldn't find a flaw on this album from a rater's perspective - even Fear The Future is an 8 to me. Not only did Annie give us quality and consistency in the music, she also reflected this with the visuals - I had such a blast making the artwork you see above, even though typing out and formatting every line of text to match the typography of the era was a bitch ddd.
Without a doubt, Masseduction is Annie’s most polished album to date; everything about the campaign from the music videos, the album visuals (yes, even the cover) and the promo imagery as well as the production and vocal mixing feel more refined and expensive than ever before. This was all to be expected (sis is a Grammy winner now, don’t ya know?), but what took me by surprise when first delving into this album was how this is also her darkest project to date. The three pre-released tracks ‘New York’, ‘Los Ageless’ (NOT ‘Los Angeles’) and ‘Pills’ all had a certain lightness and tongue-and-cheek feel to them (mainly the latter two), which I thought would carry throughout the album but oh, how wrong I was. Nah, this is some dark shit, to the point where I’m not sure I could handle it being any longer than 39 minutes by the time the double punch of Slow Disco and Smoking Section roll along.
From a purely sonic perspective, the sequencing of the album fascinates me more than any other release this year. Masseduction is defined by its sonic peaks and troughs; the measured and stoic approach taken in the opening track ‘Hang On Me’ then thrusts you into a run of the album’s biggest bops, followed by the beautiful and tragic ‘Happy Birthday, Johnny’, onto more bops in the form of the explosive ‘Young Lover’ and hook-laided ‘Savior’...only for it to come crashing down with the devastating closing tracks. If the bondage-inspired visuals didn’t tell you already, Annie is a dom top and she wants us all to suffer. That said, she’s still a giver at the end of the day, giving us all a cheeky reach-around every now and then to keep us satisfied - moments such as the melody from Los Ageless popping up during ‘Sugarboy’ and her orgasmic whistle note towards the climax of Young Lover. Annie truly snapped’t. Wig flew to Asia, etc.
So yeah, this album is a trip and a half. Two things remain constant throughout, though - the melodies and insane and wonderful, and the lyrics remain depressing as fuck no matter how catchy the track is. When Annie isn’t talking about addiction and manic lifestyle habits (Pills, Los Ageless), she’s singing about emotional abusive relationships (Savior, Happy Birthday, Johnny, Sugarboy), oh, and death (Slow Disco, Smoking Section), can’t forget about the inevitability of death (thanks, sis)! Funnily enough, the most uplifting and reaffirming moment to be found on this bleak-ass record is New York, which after being just ‘okay’ to me at first, took on a whole new life within the context of the album. It’s just...so pure? Sonically it harks to the show tunes sounds that she toyed with on the self-titled, mainly the wonderful ‘Severed Crossed Fingers.’ On an album full of hidden meanings and deception, New York is a sweet little ditty in which Annie pays homage to her favourite city and actually talks about a relationship that seems fairly healthy - her adorable and highly shippable relationship with Cara Delevingne (RIP Cannie). Yay, I guess? It might actually be my favourite song of the year; as I write this review, I’m still debating whether to give it my 11, so stay tuned.
I’m not gonna go into the individual tracks just yet because I’ve done extensive analysis of each track for their respective elimination posts, which you are all gonna have to wait for. But this album is 100% all killer, no filler. Like, I even bop to ‘Dancing With A Ghost’ despite it being 40 seconds of white noise with some distant baroque strings. Talent! My favourite track changes with every fresh listen, but at the moment of writing this review, ‘Smoking Section’ gives me everything I need and sums up this record perfectly - taking us to the very edge in every sense...only to slowly pull us all back in before it’s too late. A few people have mentioned that it’s a little too overwhelming and I totally get that, but the sound of a woman literally talking herself of a ledge over the possibility of experiencing the sensation of love again is just so beautiful to me, as much as it is haunting.
As far as bangers are concerned, I have a dark enough sense of humour that I can still get my life to Young Lover, which depicts the scene of Annie stumbling upon her toyboy having a fucking overdose on what was meant to be a cute lil Parisian weekend getaway. I would be pissed off too, sis. She said it herself on Sugarboy - “I’ve got a crush on tragedy.” Along with the genius of the album’s sequencing, I am fascinated by how Annie has been simultaneously candid and secretive when discussing the macabre lyrics. This is shown in the hilarious and vital reading that is the track-by-track interview she did for Bitchfork, excerpts from which I included in every Masseduction track's write-ups. Most of her responses to questions digging into the darker lyrics on the album were met with ‘it’s up to the audience to interpret my words, they change meaning the moment the record is out of my hands’, which is equally brilliant as it is frustrating. Annie has always been a bit of enigma who keeps her private life closely-guarded, but there are cheeky flashes of ankle (c’mon Victorian references!) to be found here, namely her former sugargirl Cara contributing vocals on Pills. The gay agenda always wins!
In finishing, Masseduction is an album worth your time, energy, money and wigs. And by hosting this rate I coerced 62 people to listen to it, with some of y'all deciding to stan forever, and hopefully most of you exploring her back catalogue (if you haven't already). And for the hateful whores in the lowest scorers list?
credits to @LE0Night
Like Lana, Miss Annie kinda did the damn thing despite my prior fears and concerns? Snatching the second-highest album average in the rate? Talent always wins. A 9.8 might have been...a lot but I honestly couldn't find a flaw on this album from a rater's perspective - even Fear The Future is an 8 to me. Not only did Annie give us quality and consistency in the music, she also reflected this with the visuals - I had such a blast making the artwork you see above, even though typing out and formatting every line of text to match the typography of the era was a bitch ddd.
Without a doubt, Masseduction is Annie’s most polished album to date; everything about the campaign from the music videos, the album visuals (yes, even the cover) and the promo imagery as well as the production and vocal mixing feel more refined and expensive than ever before. This was all to be expected (sis is a Grammy winner now, don’t ya know?), but what took me by surprise when first delving into this album was how this is also her darkest project to date. The three pre-released tracks ‘New York’, ‘Los Ageless’ (NOT ‘Los Angeles’) and ‘Pills’ all had a certain lightness and tongue-and-cheek feel to them (mainly the latter two), which I thought would carry throughout the album but oh, how wrong I was. Nah, this is some dark shit, to the point where I’m not sure I could handle it being any longer than 39 minutes by the time the double punch of Slow Disco and Smoking Section roll along.
From a purely sonic perspective, the sequencing of the album fascinates me more than any other release this year. Masseduction is defined by its sonic peaks and troughs; the measured and stoic approach taken in the opening track ‘Hang On Me’ then thrusts you into a run of the album’s biggest bops, followed by the beautiful and tragic ‘Happy Birthday, Johnny’, onto more bops in the form of the explosive ‘Young Lover’ and hook-laided ‘Savior’...only for it to come crashing down with the devastating closing tracks. If the bondage-inspired visuals didn’t tell you already, Annie is a dom top and she wants us all to suffer. That said, she’s still a giver at the end of the day, giving us all a cheeky reach-around every now and then to keep us satisfied - moments such as the melody from Los Ageless popping up during ‘Sugarboy’ and her orgasmic whistle note towards the climax of Young Lover. Annie truly snapped’t. Wig flew to Asia, etc.
So yeah, this album is a trip and a half. Two things remain constant throughout, though - the melodies and insane and wonderful, and the lyrics remain depressing as fuck no matter how catchy the track is. When Annie isn’t talking about addiction and manic lifestyle habits (Pills, Los Ageless), she’s singing about emotional abusive relationships (Savior, Happy Birthday, Johnny, Sugarboy), oh, and death (Slow Disco, Smoking Section), can’t forget about the inevitability of death (thanks, sis)! Funnily enough, the most uplifting and reaffirming moment to be found on this bleak-ass record is New York, which after being just ‘okay’ to me at first, took on a whole new life within the context of the album. It’s just...so pure? Sonically it harks to the show tunes sounds that she toyed with on the self-titled, mainly the wonderful ‘Severed Crossed Fingers.’ On an album full of hidden meanings and deception, New York is a sweet little ditty in which Annie pays homage to her favourite city and actually talks about a relationship that seems fairly healthy - her adorable and highly shippable relationship with Cara Delevingne (RIP Cannie). Yay, I guess? It might actually be my favourite song of the year; as I write this review, I’m still debating whether to give it my 11, so stay tuned.
I’m not gonna go into the individual tracks just yet because I’ve done extensive analysis of each track for their respective elimination posts, which you are all gonna have to wait for. But this album is 100% all killer, no filler. Like, I even bop to ‘Dancing With A Ghost’ despite it being 40 seconds of white noise with some distant baroque strings. Talent! My favourite track changes with every fresh listen, but at the moment of writing this review, ‘Smoking Section’ gives me everything I need and sums up this record perfectly - taking us to the very edge in every sense...only to slowly pull us all back in before it’s too late. A few people have mentioned that it’s a little too overwhelming and I totally get that, but the sound of a woman literally talking herself of a ledge over the possibility of experiencing the sensation of love again is just so beautiful to me, as much as it is haunting.
As far as bangers are concerned, I have a dark enough sense of humour that I can still get my life to Young Lover, which depicts the scene of Annie stumbling upon her toyboy having a fucking overdose on what was meant to be a cute lil Parisian weekend getaway. I would be pissed off too, sis. She said it herself on Sugarboy - “I’ve got a crush on tragedy.” Along with the genius of the album’s sequencing, I am fascinated by how Annie has been simultaneously candid and secretive when discussing the macabre lyrics. This is shown in the hilarious and vital reading that is the track-by-track interview she did for Bitchfork, excerpts from which I included in every Masseduction track's write-ups. Most of her responses to questions digging into the darker lyrics on the album were met with ‘it’s up to the audience to interpret my words, they change meaning the moment the record is out of my hands’, which is equally brilliant as it is frustrating. Annie has always been a bit of enigma who keeps her private life closely-guarded, but there are cheeky flashes of ankle (c’mon Victorian references!) to be found here, namely her former sugargirl Cara contributing vocals on Pills. The gay agenda always wins!
In finishing, Masseduction is an album worth your time, energy, money and wigs. And by hosting this rate I coerced 62 people to listen to it, with some of y'all deciding to stan forever, and hopefully most of you exploring her back catalogue (if you haven't already). And for the hateful whores in the lowest scorers list?
credits to @LE0Night
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Just finished watching MUNA's livestream in celebration of About U's one year anniversary because I missed it when it was live. The acoustic version of If U Love Me Now was so good. All the songs they did were good but that one and Everything were the standouts for me. It would be a shame if I Know A Place left now but I feel like it's time might finally be here.