Better Red Than Dead

Lana Del Rey released a couple of new songs earlier this year, and it had me listening to her quite a bit. It got me thinking of the special cover edition of Chemtrails Over The Country Club that I picked up last year, and I had the itch to add another record of hers to the collection.

Born To Die is probably my favorite Lana record. Sure there are probably other songs that I like more, but as a complete album, this is the one for me. When I started looking into which album I wanted to pick up, I knew it had to be this one. I was hoping for another limited cover, but with Born To Die it seemed like we didn't have any fun options like that, so instead I just went for an affordable colored vinyl.

The red vinyl with the OBI strip was a Target exclusive.

Tough

No matter how fun it was for me to pick up the alternate cover for Lana Del Rey's Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the floodgates still haven't fully opened for me to chase down a bunch of her records. Still, I didn't hesitate to order her latest single.

I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this latest song, Tough. It's a collaboration with some hip hop artist that I'd never heard of before, Quavo, and I kind of expected it to be a bit underwhelming. I mean, how far was I expected to push my musical boundaries, and how much could I take?

Fact is that after a couple of listen, I really liked this song. Maybe it was the timing of it, because I'd just started reading Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove book shortly after the song was released, and the opening song lyric of "Tough like a scuff on a pair of old leather boots" really set the mood for reading that 800 page epic. I ended up realy loving Lonesome Dove (one of my favorite books that I read this year), and Tough is my soundtrack to that reading experience. The two will forever be tied together in my mind.

I'm not sure if this song is going to appear anywhere else, or if it is considered a Lana song featuring Quavo, or a Quavo song featuring Lana...whatever... I'm just happy to own this song on vinyl and it didn't end up as a digital only release.

Chemtrails Over An Alternate Cover

I've posted some questionable things on the blog before... most notable was my brief obsession with Japanese singles for those early 80's MTV hits. Those records, however, were very much a comfort for me during a period where America's political climate had me angry and depressed a lot of the time, so I felt justified posting them here. But with this latest record that I picked up, I wasn't so sure if I should include it on a blog that mostly focuses on hardcore and metal. When I saw the post that Marcus did for Olivia Rodrigo a couple of months back, it cleared my head of this doubt. Even though this falls outside of what I normally buy for records, it is very much a snapshot of where my head is at... plus if I've learned anything over the past year it's that I won't limit myself to the restrictive musical views I've held in the past. This is my mind wide fucking open.

Last year, my friend Sarah introduced me to Lana Del Rey with her song West Coast. I found it somewhat interesting upon first listen, but it wasn't something that I expected that I'd really spend much time with. It was way outside of what I typically listened to, but it provided a nice break in my routine, and after hearing it a handful of times it really started to work its way into my brain. Soon after, the song would pop up on a random shuffle and as soon as I'd hear those funky opening notes my ears would instantly perk up and I'd be like, "wait, who is this again?", and I started to be interested in checking out what else Lana had to offer. Through the Fall of 2023, I started making a personal playlist on Spotify for Lana Del Rey songs that I found interesting, and before too long I was really enjoying it and revisiting those songs daily.

Yeah, I was shocked as well... but still, I figured that I was really only going to get into some of her songs, and she wouldn't be a full album artist for me. That changed this year, as I started takind a deep dive into Born To Die... and then when that wasn't enough I started repeat listens of Norman Fucking Rockwell, and Chemtrails Over The Country Club. I don't know, man, there is just something about her voice that is melancholic and sad, and it gets me every fucking time.

Look, if you've been a long time follower of this blog, you know that I'm a sucker for alernative artwork for records. I can't resist a special limited cover... and Lana Del Rey has a number of those for her albums. So while I was thinking about buying my first Lana album, and checking those different covers, it only fueled the fire to want to get one into my collection. I'd been listening to Chemtrails a lot recently, and the album has a couple of my favorite songs from Lana with Let Me Love You Like A Woman and Dark But Just A Game, so finding the red vinyl special cover for that album, at a really reasonable price, had me adding it to my cart and checking out. Writing this has me checking out other alternate covers for her records, so who knows where this will lead me, but I kinda want more.