Fave Five: Lana Da Poet!

OK, I know I’m utterly obsessed with Lana Del Rey and her music and I’ve always from the first time I heard it considered it to be poetic. I have recently come to love her intros and outros to songs. I only get to hear these when watching the music videos as a large chunk of them are not encompassed on her albums, they delight me and get me thinking about the reinvention of poetry.

When I was younger, every Tom Dick and Harry street-smart enough to rock a bandanna used to praise the poetic qualities contained within Tu-Pac’s music. To this day I still fail to see this poetic genius.  I for one think when equated to the Franks, Janelles and Lanas of today, Pac fails to compare (queue the average black person hurling insults at my tastes). In all honesty though, lyrics such as “More than an adversary I'm very quick, I'm ready to hit 'em with this gift, I'm equipped to kick” come second when placed against Lana’s lyrics from songs such as ‘Carmen’ and ‘This is What Makes Us Girls’ to name but a few.

Any who, this post was not intended to diminish Pac’s body of work, or any other artist for that matter… I just wanted those of you who have never been privy to Del Rey’s work to experience first-hand its wonder.
Here is a list of my Fave three snippets from Lana Del Rey intros and outros. I felt it would be a tad disingenuous to list five intros and outros as I honestly am obsessed with just these three, so you’ll excuse this month’s fave five…

Hope you like it either way!

3.            Outro from National Anthem

“And I remember when I met him, it was so clear that he was the only one for me. We both knew it, right away. And as the years went on, things got more difficult - we were faced with more challenges. I begged him to stay. Try to remember what we had at the beginning.

He was charismatic, magnetic, electric and everybody knew it. When he walked in every woman’s head turned, everyone stood up to talk to him. He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn’t contain himself. I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him. And in that way, I understood him and I loved him.

I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.

And I still love him. I love him.”

2.            Outro from Ride
Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people, and finally I did on the open road.
We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art.
Live fast. Die young. Be wild. And have fun.
I believe in the country America used to be.
I believe in the person I want to become.
I believe in the freedom of the open road.
And my motto is the same as ever:
"I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself I ride, I just ride."
Who are you?
Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies?
Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them?
I have. I am fucking crazy.
But I am free.

               

1.            Intro from Ride
“I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer.
At night I fell asleep with visions of myself, dancing and laughing and crying with them.
Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour, and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times.
I was a singer - not a very popular one,
I once had a dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken.
But I didn't really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I'd been living, they asked me why - but there's no use in talking to people who have home.
They have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people - for home to be wherever you lay your head.
I was always an unusual girl.
My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean...
And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I'd be lying...
Because I was born to be the other woman.
I belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone.
Who had nothing, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it, and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.”

If this isn't poetry, I clearly have no concept of what poetry is…