Lust for Life [CD]

A few pops on one song but overall really good

I loved! Thank you very much! A very satisfied customer! It arrived on time and in perfect condition! In love with it. Thanks

Really great album. Ive been listening to non stop since it came out. I listen to it in the car, when Im at home cooking/cleaning, and when Im at the gym. I rarely pay for music now since I pay for different streaming services but Im glad I bought this one!

amazingly wonderful lana is a great singer and this is a really good album so thanks, the record though had alot of skips.

With the release of 2015’s Honeymoon,’ her fourth album, it was apparent that Lana Del Rey had reached a creative dead end. Like Ultraviolence (2014), Honeymoon addressed the collapse of her romantic illusions and little else. Honeymoon, was, in fact, an album about almost nothing. Though it contained a few strong tracks—Terrence Loves You, Salvatore, Religion, Swan Song and 24—the album felt as if Del Rey had become bored with making it midway, which was probably true: in a July 2017 interview, Del Rey said that she felt she had lost her way during both the Ultraviolence and Honeymoon periods. On the autumnal ‘Swan Song,’ the last of her own compositions on Honeymoon, she sang, I will never sing again, with just one wave, it goes away, and seemed to mean it. Happily, Lust For Life (2017) shows the singer recovering her vision and equilibrium, moving in an almost completely new creative direction, attempting more than she ever has before, and, with the title track, the slight Love, Groupie Love, Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems and Tomorrow Never Came, offering the world something resembling traditional, commercially viable pop songs. Del Rey seems deeply connected to these songs in a manner she hasn’t been since 2012’s ‘Paradise,’ and the melodies are the strongest of her career. The shadow of the 1960s, in a variety of cultural and political aspects, haunts Lust For Life. There are interesting musical, vocal and thematic nods to acoustic guitar and the Folk Revival, the Beatles, early Marianne Faithfull, to the Shangri-Las, to the budding ecological movement. But war and the threat of nuclear war, drug overdoses and addiction, the Charles Manson murders and even a sample from Herk Harveys 1962 independent ghoul classic, Carnival Of Souls (I dont belong in the world...thats what it is...something separates me from other people) cast their shadows too. Some of the tracks address personal ethics and national politics with a fair amount of grace; and personal ethics haven’t been a topic Del Rey has ever concerned herself with lyrically. The persona the singer projects here isn’t one of hedonism driven by desire, as she so often did in the past, but one of a woman and individual experiencing something resembling a painful spiritual awakening. Del Rey is a self-acknowledged Democrat and non-supporter of President Donald Trump, but on Lust For Life, she conveys her political opinions subtly, unlike Tori Amos and some other liberal recording artists who tend to express them stridently. Nothing can ruin a song faster than bluntly-expressed propaganda, and on her first attempt in this arena, Del Rey passes with flying colors. Whether or not Del Rey is an astute observer of political matters, or has an advanced degree of insight into them, is another question. Roundly criticized in the recent past by the Left, Lorde and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon for her noncommittal responses on questions about feminism and for projecting an image of haughty glamour, Del Rey seems to have realized she had better show solidarity with the Southern California creative community and take a public stand against the sitting president. In the spring, Del Rey playfully announced to the press that she had cast a magical spell against President Trump, probably alienating some fans in the process, as not everyone familiar with her oeuvre would assume that Del Rey was a Democrat on the basis of her lyrics and elite Malibu lifestyle. Though Lust For Life reintroduces the upbeat, playful Lana Del Rey composition with Groupie Love’ and others, it is, unsurprisingly, the many tracks with a melancholy undercurrent that anchor it. Despite the sunny cover photograph of the smiling singer with flowers in her hair, the album is a grim affair. In its expressions of love sickness, self-loathing, isolation and despair, the album Lust for Life most resembles is Tori Amoss tortured Boys For Pele of 1996. Heroin, an ode to a dead friend or lover set at night in Topanga Canyon, is the albums desolate core, with the oddly detached and hallucinating narrator singing, “I’m flying to the moon again/dreaming about heroin/it gave you everything and took your life away.” Del Rey’s music has been called Hollywood Sadcore, and in keeping with that, the album includes multiple wistful ballads about troubled relationships, including Cherry, ‘White Mustang, In My Feelings, Heroin, Change, and the ghostly 13 Beaches, which may be the saddest song Del Rey has produced with the exception of Old Money, and which features the albums most impressive vocals. The strongest tracks are the gentle Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems, on which Del Rey duets with Stevie Nicks, God Bless America - And All The Beautiful Women In It, the volcanic In My Feelings, 13 Beaches, White Mustang, and ‘Heroin. While The World Was At War We Kept Dancing features some of Del Rey’s tenderest vocals to date. The breezy collaboration with Sean Lennon, Tomorrow Never Came,’ feels ready made for Adult Contemporary radio. Musically, the production and arrangements on the balance of the songs are startling, oddly structured, even messy. Perhaps Del Rey and Nowels were aiming for what they conceived as a loose, spontaneous, 1960s-style production, but more often than not, the sound recording, production and arrangements seem amateurish. Love and Lust For Life,’ both of which seem to belong to another album entirely, are crystal clear, but Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems sounds muffled and tinny, as if a first year college student studying sound engineering produced it. Change and Get Free sound like first-attempt demos, and not in a good way. If artists as diverse as Twenty One Pilots, Lorde, Anderson East, The Secret Sisters, Barns Courtney and Michael Kiwanuka can manage immaculate production on their own records, why does Lust For Life sound so bad? It is difficult to imagine what Del Rey and Rick Nowels were aiming for on some aspects of Get Free and Heroin--the shrieking about the weather, presumably intended to add verisimilitude, could have been better managed in a dozen other ways--or why Cherry was littered with demeaning expletives. Like some of the baffling phrasing on Coachella - Woodstock On My Mind, the profanities, which might have been clever in a different context, simply seem self-parodying or a poor attempt at bolstering a weak composition. Cherry, Coachella, Change and several other tracks seem only half written, and they and other songs are riddled with cliches (only the good die young, were the masters of our own fate/were the captains of our own souls, weve got to try, weve got to walk through fire) and lyrics that seem to have come too easily, as if Del Rey chose the first words that came to mind (change is a powerful thing/people are powerful beings”). It is unlikely that the Lana Del Rey of the polished Paradise era would have accepted such banalities. The hip hop-ish Summer Bummer seems woefully out of place, just as the rap by A$AP Rocky on Groupie Love feels pointlessly tacked on. ‘Lust For Life’ is an incohesive crazy quilt of an album, but the genuinely compelling songs validate it and make the weaker tracks easy to ignore. Despite having had the most unprofessional album rollout by a major musician in recent memory, it nonetheless provides ample evidence that Del Rey is more than capable of musical growth, development and maturity, even as each release reveals that Del Rey, who has been considerably lowering her mask in public lately, is in fact not the sophisticated vixen she initially projected herself to be. Though Ultraviolence (2013) and Honeymoon found the singer numb and stumbling, with Lust For Life, Del Rey corrects herself and offers the world a glimpse at a side of her talent it has never seen before.

It came in excellent condition one of my favs from lana but the only thing was it didn’t come in the explicited version. But besides that’s very good album.

Crazy good if your into the style!

My girlfriend wants to go see LDR. So, I bought tickets and 3 of her CDs: Lust For Life, Ultraviolence (which I owned previously and like) and Born to Die. Well, this CD should be titled: Been There, Done That, as it just seems to me to be the same rehashed sound. Honestly, I barely distinguish any song (other than where she has a guest rapper on Groupie in Love) on this album from the others. Im guessing that after seeing her next week, Ill be asking, Did she play that last night? If you love Lana Del Rey, you will likely love this, as its more of the same of her signature sound. Note to Lana Del Rey: You might start writing some lyrics which are not so insipid. Lana in concert: Never been so bored during a concert. Worst of all, shes not even singing what youre hearing. She might be singing, but shes got a recorded track blasting alongside her live version. How do I KNOW? She moved the microphone from her mouth, stopped singing, yet the singing continued. You could see the, I screwed up on her face.

I was so excited to receive this package, upon opening I saw that it looks… like it came from a library. A LIBRARY!! are you kidding me?! What kind of Amazon seller takes CDs from libraries and sells them! I am severely disappointed with my order and I do not like the packaging, it feels cheap, fake, and bootlegged, if this CD wasn’t as cheap as I got it for I would demand a refund. But I shouldn’t be complaining since I did get the CD for very very cheap. still, regardless of the price that I received this for my disappointment is immeasurable and immense.. if you really want the CD please don’t go with the cheaper option just go with the option that Amazon recommends to you, because then you will get a real license CD. Not a CD from a library

I have all the previous albums (love them all) from this great artist but I was disappointed with this release. Lana doesnt need anyone to be featured in her songs and I was so upset that she collaborated with the Weeknd (Ugh!) on the song Lust for Life, he just ruined it for me. On Summer Bummer and Groupie Love she had rappers on it and it was horrible, thats not what I expect on a Lana Del Rey CD. Ill listen to the few songs that remind me of her previous releases and skip over the rest. I expected better, maybe next time.