Song: ​themayjailer
Artist:  Genius Users
Year: 2021
Viewed: 70 - Published at: 2 years ago

lunaseraphine420: Alrighty, welcome to the Lana stan program!! ‘Tis I, your friendly neighborhood tea-sipping frog, Grouchy Grammarian, and flying lawnmower lunaseraphine420, and I’m here to interview the one-and-only spectacular themayjailer. Go ahead and introduce yourself, May!

themayjailer: Yo yo yo! It’s May here, and I’m somewhere buried in Lana vinyls and Cool Ranch Doritos while getting ready to have a very lively conversation with Genius' resident verbal jouster, lunaseraphine420! The party is about to get started!

Luna: waves around verbal lances excitedly Mind if you pass me some of those Doritos? And we need a soundtrack for this interview convo – which Lana album do you wanna put on?

May: Soundtracks are obviously the most important part. Since where I am, the clouds are raining down as if their lives depended on it, let’s liven the mood with Luna’s personal favorite and my honorable runner-up, Honeymoon. And while we’re at it, why not play “High By The Beach”? What an empowering track.

Luna: chomps on Doritos Oh yes, as a matter of fact, looping Lana’s albums during gloomy weather is one of my favorite things ever. And of course, “High By The Beach” is such a banger – all I wanna do is get high by the beach, get high by the beach, get hiiiigh. As a fellow Lana stan, I’m quite curious: what album was so fantastic for you that Honeymoon became a runner-up? I’m simply astonished, as even I have trouble deciding on Honeymoon as my fave Lana album. ;-;

May: Being a Lana stan is so hard because you have so many masterpiece albums that you have to choose from to call your favorite. The way I went about listening to all the albums was borrowing the CD versions from the library and listening to them in the order that they came. For me, it was as follows:

Born To Die, which I bought actually and got really hooked on

Lust For Life, which really made me get into Lana

Paradise, which technically doesn’t count as an album but who cares

Honeymoon, which was my favorite for a while, but you know, seasons change!

NFR!, which I absolutely love. Honorable third mention.
Ultraviolence. This is what sealed it. I couldn’t get over how many good songs were on UV, and it’s now my favorite.

Best for last really came in there! From that fateful day, I’ve listened to it at least once a day.

Luna: Now that’s some impressive dedication right there. My first song from Lana was her hit “Summertime Sadness”, but I have this phobia of getting into new music and I didn’t realize how large her discography was, so it took me a good 4-5 years and an accidental listen to “Born To Die” to really push me into scientifically investigating Lana’s music. I’m antiquated enough to still own a metallic blue iPod mini and I just convert all my music from YouTube to Mp3 and spend horrific amounts of time organizing all the metadata on desktop iTunes. This was way back when I hadn’t realized I could organize album names and artworks etc., so everything was just one jumble and I collected this enormous playlist of Lana songs and shuffled it randomly every day. The funny thing was, until I eventually figured out how to make my probably illegal albums look official, I put “Swan Song” on Lust For Life. Le gasp. It took me another year or two to really get into all her music, and though I haven’t quite mined Lana’s unreleased collection, I can proudly say I’m a huge fan. Ultraviolence is a grand album for sure. I can never get enough of all those era changes Lana goes through across her discography – baroque pop on AKA, grand orchestra on Paradise, even hip-hop influences on Born To Die and Lust For Life, moody echo-y 70s rock on Ultraviolence, and back to baroque and chill on Honeymoon, NFR!, and Chemtrails. Now I’d be putting you on the spot here, but what elements about Lana’s production are you most drawn to – and top tracks off UV??

May: I think how much thought process went into Ultraviolence really amazed me. Lana went an extra mile for every track, and the guitar/west coast/50s Hollywood vibe that comes from it makes my heart explode. I really like BTD and Lust For Life’s trap beats, and also Honeymoon’s orchestral backing, but UV combines them both and creates an excellent blend of music and sadness.

Luna: You’d be right on that! We stan a versatile and unpredictable queen. I’m sure we must be losing some people on this – I can just picture y’all sitting there. Is UV some kind of sunscreen label? Is BTD some kind of rip-off BTS? Well, nope. We’re just two Lana stans getting a lil too overexcited, because who wouldn’t? If you could recommend one track off Ultraviolence and one random song from Lana to a person who’s never heard any of her music before, which would you pick?

May: What a hard question. When people ask me for Lana recs, it’s always “Well, what kind of music do you listen to?” It really depends on what your go-to genre is. If you’re more into folksy 70s vibes, Chemtrails and NFR! are for you, and like we said, LFL and BTD for our fellow hip-hop lovers. If I were to take it out of my own interest, I would have to say “The Other Woman” from UV, which makes me cry every time I hear it, and just overall, for a newbie Lana stan, “Summer Bummer” with A$AP Rocky & Playboi Carti. That one’s got a little blend of everything, so a good first pick.

Luna: Fantastic picks for sure. I can confirm that “The Other Woman” is heartbreakingly beautiful—that part, The other woman will always cry herself to sleep, chills every time. And “Summer Bummer” got the thumbs up from our resident Persian Cat Guardian Sage ScopeY, so guys, whatchu waiting for? Dive right in, and maybe this very brief crash course in Lana will convince ya to check out her other stuff. May, I’m guessing Lana was what got you into editing on Genius. What would you say about the state of Lana Del Rey Genius, now that you’ve blessed her pages with your presence at a highly impressive No. 3 on the leaderboard??

May: You guessed right! I’ve always been the competitive type, with sports and academics alike, so I knew I was down to get first place for Lana. Like you said, I happen to be in the big three for Lana, and I’m hoping the release of Blue Banisters on the fourth of July, and if you know anything about Lana, she’s the Lady Liberty of American alternative, will help me get bumped up. I know you and I have discussed this before, but there are certain things that come with working heavily on a non-verified artist, one of them being the profile picture. We all know Lana serves us with her goddess looks, but the fact that any contributor can change the profile really irks me. one time, there was one user who was so, so set on having this one pic of Lana from a Vogue Australia shoot from like 2013, and we were in a constant battle of changing the profile picture back and forth and back and forth. It was quite chaotic.

Luna: Yess, at my modest place at No. 12 I’m cheering you on, girl! I can’t wait for Blue Banisters too, and I’m super excited to see what Lana will serve up this time; the release date, the alliterative title, and the aesthetic of that album cover are already looking promising. And yes, Lana’s eyeliner do be on fleek always, but I hope Lana decides to appear randomly and get verified on Genius one day so her artist profile is protected. I participated in that battle more times than I care to count – I’m not sure if it was the same person, but they were adamant on using a monochrome of Lana smiling and a filter image of her in a white dress instead of her official NFR port photo. After literal milliseconds of me fixing it, BAM, the official photo disappeared. I’ve checked Lana’s page recently and I’m happy to report that Lana at the port is safe and intact for a week now, what a relief. Besides Blue Banisters, what plans do you have for fixing up Lana’s other pages? I’ve surveyed her older albums and there seem to be a lot of GIF-heavy/outdated tates. Shall we rally up the Lana stans?

May: Originally, for this month’s CUC, I chose Lana because she’s my go-to and it was my first CUC. The twist changed my artist to Madonna, who literally defines childhood nostalgia for me, and Lana went to thebreakup. I’m also really excited to see more Lana stans popping up and following me, like thisismecrying10 who DMed me and said she loved Lana! As for my own fixing up, I was planning on doing some sort of run through to see how all of Lana’s old pages were doing, but you know how it goes! Get distracted from new releases, doing your own thing, stuff like that.

Luna: That’s fantastic, I was actually wondering how your CUC was going! I’m taking a break myself, but best of luck to your team. We’ve got all eternity to work on a fave artist, so of course, there isn’t any hurry, unless Blue Banisters drops early. Expect to see the flying lawnmower nyooming with the collective Lana stan horde to the scene. And don’t whack me, but I’ve never really sat down and listened to any Madonna songs before. How the turn tables, would you mind recommending me some Madonna to start with?

May: For me, Madonna is really a singer much like The Weeknd where a lot of her mainstream stuff is exactly what you’d expect from an 80s pop culture icon, but when you delve deeper into her discography you find more personal stuff. Her voice is also very unique, with the cursive elements like Halsey and Gwen Stefani. For you, I’d start with Like A Prayer and True Blue, especially “Like A Prayer” and “La Isla Bonita”. Both very iconic and insanely catchy songs.

Luna: Thanks for the recs! It looks like I’ll have plenty of new moosic to check out. :D If you could describe your music aesthetic/listening habits using five adjectives, which would you pick? I’m noticing a theme here with vintage, alternative artists – Lana, Madonna, MARINA??
May: My music taste is more than meets the eye on Genius. I started Genius because of Lana, but I’ve had a ton of people who follow me on Spotify hit me up and say, “What the heck are you listening to??” Like I said, I grew up on people like Madonna and Irene Cara, then bands like Metallica, Black Sabbath, and Nirvana, but then also 60s stuff like the Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival. To describe the genre-ish thing I listen to though, I’d say alternative, grunge, vintage retro, and sometimes 50s. Crazy, right? I just adore 50s music and listen to it way too much.

Luna: No such thing as listening too much to genres you love! Keep on grooving, girl. As someone who listens to a lot of genres, I can definitely relate to the unpredictability factor. I’ve somehow managed to reconcile most of my music on one playlist, but I still see-saw between genres every time I hit shuffle. Are you also one for organizing playlists?

May: That was exactly my problem for years! I would have one HUGE playlist with over 2,000 songs in it but they ranged everywhere from like murder rap to classical music and I could never find exactly what I wanted. That was up until about six months ago, when I finally decided to commit to try to find a way to organize. One insane website I found that really helped me out was Organize Your Music. It organizes your music by the most minute genre and gets exactly want you want and pretty much does all the heavy lifting for you! Short answer, yes. I have tried to cut down my growing number of playlists, so I have a few that I put on rotation like washing machines.

Luna:I’ve never heard of that website before, but it sure sounds like a life-saver for us with our overwhelming genres. And I love that comparison you’re making there – like HMM, will it be the every-day Lana T-shirt wash cycle? I try to limit the number of tracks on my main playlist, but it’s been pushing at 50 songs now, and it’s literally jam-packed with EDM sub-genres, Indie/Alternative, and Rock. I suppose you could call me the crazy playlist frog, because I have a loooot of playlists I organize on the basis of atmosphere and some stupider ones centered around specific titles. I really tried at the start of this year to make a playlist with only Indie/Alternative songs on it, but it’s pretty dead, and I just keep my main playlist cycle on infinite loop each day. Like socks, songs I grow a lil tired of are sucked into the background until I rediscover them a week or month or two on. What are some songs you’re really feeling at the moment?

May: One thing most people don’t know about me is that way back when quarantine was really strict in my state, I was a huge underground artist lover. Nowadays, I’d say a lot of my music taste is mainstream, but I’m happy to report that during that time I discovered a plethora of amazing music by, at the time, little known artists. Right now, I’m really digging Halsey’s hopeless fountain kingdom. I, personally, am not really a fan of Halsey’s voice, with all the cursive elements, but the poetry and angst that comes with that album is really intense and amazing. Some miscellaneous music I’ve been putting in the musical washing machine lately is “Hey Jude” by The Beatles, which has a really special meaning to me, “Let Me Follow”, by Son Lux for the Disappearing of Eleanor Rigby soundtrack, which was heartbreakingly sad. Finally, my most streamed song of this week is “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” by Joji. What. A. Masterpiece.

Luna: Ooo, that looks like a fantastic cycle. I’ve listened to a few tracks off hopeless fountain kingdom, and I think “Strangers” was one that stood out to me. I love how Lauren Jauregui and Halsey’s voice intertwine on that track, and being someone who loves instrumentals, the synth backings are gorgeous. And “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” is such a raw song. Which underground artists have you really fallen for?

May: Speaking of washing machines, back when Mitski could still be considered an underground artist, I was a huge supporter of Retired from Sad, New Career in Business and was absolutely over the moon for Be The Cowboy, which is for sure her best work so far. “Washing Machine Heart”, “Me and My Husband”, and “Nobody” are by far some of my favorite lyrical tracks, which is for sure saying something. I would say my favorite still-underground artist would be Angel Olsen. Her debut EP, Strange Cacti, really sits with me as something worth keeping to myself. It’s so heartbreaking and wonderfully happy at the same time and I love it so much. My favorite sad song ever, “Some Things Cosmic”, comes from that EP. Also, the song I mentioned before, “Let Me Follow” by Son Lux, is part of a virtually unknown soundtrack that is immensely close to my heart and amazing. In case you can’t tell, I love a lot of really, really sad music. xD

Luna: Wow, I don’t think I’ll be at a loss for what new music to check out next when I’m feeling adventurous! And of course, the funny thing is, I don’t think I could be happy if I didn’t listen to at least one sad song every once in a while every day. I hope we haven’t bored our patient readers to death yet, but thanks, May, for all the fascinating insights into your love of Lana Del Rey and your moosic trends! And I’m sure everyone will be able to pick up a dozen song recs from this entire transcript!! That’ll be it for the Lana Stan program today, and in the wise words of Lana on “The greatest”, I guess we’ll be signing off after all.

( Genius Users )
www.ChordsAZ.com

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