[CharlieO]

It is officially released. I got it off iTunes. Amazing.

There is not one song I dislike.

Preferred the demo of National Anthem and This Is What Makes Us Girls though
Loved all the weird speaking and stuff on the original National Anthem

Summertime Sadness

[Fetch The Bolt Cutters]

radio

[Marc]

I am liking it.. but I do prefer some of the Demo's over the final pieces

[Marc]

Those LiveLounge performances are great she is good live.. I guess on JR and other shows she had a drink or few? That could have been the reason she sounded a bit off.

[Marc]

BTD single No.15 in Charts

Video Games No.20

[CharlieO]

I miss all the national anthem stuff from the demo

[Marc]

NA is all weird and different the demo is so much better that the now 'official' one

[CharlieO]

Diet Mtn Dew has also changed loads :/

Seems like the individually has been stripped from some of the songs.

[Fetch The Bolt Cutters]

Originally Posted by CharlieO

Seems like the individually has been stripped from some of the songs.

what

[Tom4784]

I actually prefer the album version of NA now to the demo, it's a grower.

[Shaun]

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's review, and a 5.5/10 score.
Cunts

[Shaun]

they also put Off to the Races in their "best new music" section, rofl. oh dear.

[Tom4784]

What a bunch of messes they are.

[Jordan.]

Dark Paradise

[Marc]

So what if the album doesn't adhere to reality? And that it's more of a fantasy.

I love that about LDR, she's a sort of enigma that captivates me, I don't relate her music to my real life, I sit here listening to her words and try to work out what her life is like.

Pitchfork can go ****** themselves. Yeah they get to have an opinion, but I'm here to tell them that their opinion is pure dog sh*t.

[CharlieO]

I just love it and I do not care what anyone else thinks of it. I don't want her to become the new GaGa/Adele I like her as she is.

[Tom4784]

I just think they missed the point of it really, they overanalysed it too much.

[Marc]

She's got fans because she's not like any of those. She's got an old sound and old traditions can really be felt in her songs. That's why I love it, I don't want all this feminist crap

[CharlieO]

Originally Posted by Marc

She's got fans because she's not like any of those. She's got an old sound and old traditions can really be felt in her songs. That's why I love it, I don't want all this feminist crap

I know I love her old feeling. I think she is like them at all. But I do not want her to get popular like they did. Like so overexposed that it ruins the feeling behind the songs.

[Shaun]

hmm. it's getting lukewarm reviews all around (except the Independent who gave it 5/5).

[nicole_burks]

Her song Video Games

I love it

[CharlieO]

Originally Posted by nicole_burks

Her song Video Games

I love it

Download her album. There is not one bad song.

[CharlieO]

Ok I really like the new bit in this is what makes us girls that whispers 'Take A Shot'.

[CharlieO]

The 'Digital Booklet' that comes with the iTunes download has not been updated with lyric changes from the demo. If anyone has the official CD check the printed one?

[Fetch The Bolt Cutters]

million dollar man sounds like a spice girls song but i cant remember which one