January 28, 201213 yr TBH I don't know how anybody can say that there are no songs as good as the four singles tracks yet. I have heard those tracks around a 100 times each at least. I have heard the album 4 times so far so of course nothing is going to reach those heights (yet). But a sign of the quality of the album is that there is no track that everyone is saying is amazing. People are finding that different tracks are their early favourites.
January 28, 201213 yr You see, this is not always true. The samey-ness can detract from the whole thing because your ears/brain gets fatigued with the spirit crushing inevitability of each song sounding the same. It can get frustrating. Had you actually listened to the album when you wrote this. Each song does not sound the same. Yes there is a consistancy in the sonics but there is also variation. The whole record is designed to showcase her voice and present it up front and centre. The only samey-ness I could criticise is in the lyrics which don't vary much from the doomed relationship tales presented on the singles. But who cares, because nothing sounds like this in the mainstream at the moment so thank f*** that this record exists as I am going to get hours and hours of pleasure out of it. Oh and BTW Popjustice was right in one way in that dreadful piece of shit that was posted, this is a big glorious POP record and is not really alt before. She's done the same sort of thing that artists like Little Boots did before, appeal to the blog writers/hipsters/alt. crowd before trying to make it mainstream except LDR has done it so much more successfully than anybody else.
January 28, 201213 yr Had you actually listened to the album when you wrote this. Each song does not sound the same. Yes there is a consistancy in the sonics but there is also variation. The whole record is designed to showcase her voice and present it up front and centre. The only samey-ness I could criticise is in the lyrics which don't vary much from the doomed relationship tales presented on the singles. But who cares, because nothing sounds like this in the mainstream at the moment so thank f*** that this record exists as I am going to get hours and hours of pleasure out of it. I was speaking in general terms about albums that are dedicated to one sound the whole way through - which Liam had implied by saying "if you like the singles then you're going to like the album. Maybe I should not have used the word The before samey-ness. Edited January 28, 201213 yr by tonyttt31
January 28, 201213 yr I've already decided I'm not going to like this album, so I'm not going to bother listening to it.
January 29, 201213 yr I think Lana is very over rated personally. I can imagine each song actually being very good but then the album just being nauseatingly boring just because everything I've heard from her sounds the same.
January 29, 201213 yr I really enjoyed the album to be fair. Definitely, lived up to my expectations and I was worried it wouldn't live up to the hype.
January 29, 201213 yr I think Lana is very over rated personally. I can imagine each song actually being very good but then the album just being nauseatingly boring just because everything I've heard from her sounds the same. TBH that's exactly how I feel about the Florence album. Great tracks separately but cannot take much of it as a whole. And no, I don't want to start a whole Florence is better than Lana row! I like both of them!
January 29, 201213 yr It is entirely down to personal opinion. I personally love Florences album, and from what I've heard of Lana, there is a completely different range of song on Florence's album to Lana. But as you said, this isn't a comparison thread.
January 30, 201213 yr Well she is storming the itunes chart in the uk, occupying the #1 and #2 position. If the single had been released earlier, I think it would have been a bigger hit. The single release was released too close to the album and it seems people just held out for the album.
January 30, 201213 yr Lana Del Rey Born to Die Interscope; 2012 By Lindsay Zoladz; January 30, 2012 5.5 What happens to a dream fulfilled? More specifically, an American dream fulfilled, rags turning to riches with the snap of a manicured finger, kissing James Dean in Gatsby's swimming pool, getting played on the radio. This is a central question animating Lana Del Rey's Born to Die. Our heroine has all the love, diamonds, and Diet Mountain Dew she could ask for, yet still sings, "I wish I was dead," sounding utterly incapable of joy. To paraphrase Liz Phair, if you get everything you wish for and you're still unhappy, then you know that the problem is you. Given the waves of hype and backlash over the last six months, it can be easy to forget that we're here, first and foremost, because of a song. "Video Games" struck a nerve not just because it was an introduction to Del Rey's captivating voice but because it seemed to suggest something as-yet-unarticulated about the way we live today. Whatever her intention, as a metaphor about disconnect and detachment from our own desires, "Video Games" felt frank, pointed, and true, and it had a chord progression and melody to match. The ultimate disappointment of Born to Die, then, is how out of touch it feels not just with the world around it, but with the simple business of human emotion. The singer born Elizabeth "Lizzy" Grant may have made her mark with a grainy homemade video that brought to mind other grainy homemade videos in the indie sphere, but the slick sound and sentiment of "Radio", Born to Die's most straightforward statement of purpose ("Baby love me 'cause I'm playing on the radio/ How do you like me now?"), places it firmly within the realm of big-budget chart pop. Born to Die was produced by Emile Haynie, whose credits include Eminem, Lil Wayne, and Kid Cudi, and the album's impressively lush atmosphere might be the one thing that will unite its detractors and apologists. The album's recurring themes ooze out of every note: sex, drugs, and glitter hover in the yawning atmosphere around Del Rey's breathy vocals. There are strings and trip-hop beats and bits of 1950s twang, and the melodies, assembled with assistance from hired-gun songwriters like Mike Daly (Plain White Ts, Whiskeytown) and Rick Nowels (Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth") are built to stick. But for an album that aims for fickle radio listeners, many of its pop signifiers feel stale and ill-fitting. On "Million Dollar Man", Del Rey drawls like a highly medicated Fiona Apple, and "Diet Mountain Dew" and "Off to the Races" aim for chatty, sparkling opulence, this singer doesn't have the personality to bring it off. The album's point of view-- if you could call it that-- feels awkward and out of date. Whether you take a line like "Money is the reason we exist/ Everybody knows that it's a fact/ Kiss kiss" with a 10-carat grain of salt is up to you, but even as a jab at the chihuahua-in-Paris-Hilton's-handbag lifestyle, it feels limp and pointless (unlike, say, Lily Allen's mock-vapid but slyly observant 2008 single "The Fear"). Still, the dollar signs in its eyes aren't an inherent strike against Born to Die: Even in the wake of an international debt crisis and the Occupy movement, it was hard not to fall for Watch the Throne. But that's because Jay and Kanye made escapist fantasy sound so fun. Del Rey's gem-encrusted dreamworld, meanwhile, relies on clichés ("God you're so handsome/ Take me to the Hamptons") rather than specific evocations. It's a fantasy world that makes you long for reality. And speaking of fantasy: The conversation surrounding Lana Del Rey has underscored some seriously depressing truths about sexism in music. She was subjected to the kind of intense scrutiny-- about her backstory and especially her appearance-- that's generally reserved for women only. But the sexual politics of Born to Die are troubling too: You'd be hard pressed to find any song on which Del Rey reveals an interiority or figures herself as anything more complex than an ice-cream-cone-licking object of male desire (a line in "Blue Jeans", "I will love you till the end of time/ I would wait a million years," sums up about 65% of the album's lyrical content). Even when Del Rey offers something that could be read as a critique ("This is what makes us girls/ We don't stick together 'cause we put our love first"), she asks that we make no effort to change, escape, or transcend the way things are ("Don't cry about it/ Don't cry about it.") In terms of its America-sized grandeur and its fixation with the emptiness of dreams, Born to Die attempts to serve as Del Rey's own beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy, but there's no spark and nothing at stake. The critic Ellen Willis once wrote of Bette Midler: "Blatant artifice can, in the right circumstances, be poignantly honest, and she expresses the tension between image and inner self that all of us-- but especially women-- experience." But Born to Die never allows tension or complexity into the mix, and its take on female sexuality ends up feeling thoroughly tame. For all of its coos about love and devotion, it's the album equivalent of a faked orgasm-- a collection of torch songs with no fire. - Pitchfork Not quite sure how to comment on this though.
January 30, 201213 yr The album is OK, but nowhere near as good as I had hoped. Everytime I hear "Dark Paradise" I'm CONVINCED it's Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing it.
January 30, 201213 yr I am in love with video games and born to die and hope to purchase the album in the coming days.
January 30, 201213 yr As much as I loved Born to Die (the song) I knew that that level of despondent pain and resignation could never be sustained over a whole album. I probably don't think I could have coped if it had have been. It would be too uncomfortable a listen. It works fine for the duration of a single track though.
January 30, 201213 yr I think some reviewer mentioned somewhere that this would be the ideal soundtrack to Less Than Zero. Probably a complete coincidence that I am currently reading the collected works of Bret Easton Ellis.
January 30, 201213 yr Not quite sure how to comment on this though. What the hell is that supposed to be? I'm guessing it's supposed to be clever?
January 30, 201213 yr What the hell is that supposed to be? I'm guessing it's supposed to be clever? just a bit ~ I think Pitchfork review is spot on, which makes a change. They were willing to give the album a chance and focused on the imagery of the music rather than just writing crap about her. It's incredible how everyone is seriously divided on her though, especially when the album is mediocre at best and fairly uninteresting.
January 30, 201213 yr I find the album to be quite good. It's far from amazing but it has quite a few decent moments... and that is all I ever look for in a pop album, anything more is a very rare bonus indeed.
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