Lav's Music Corner

Lana Del Rey is a pop star who really needs no introduction. Occasionally controversial but beloved by tons of dedicated fans Lana is entering a prolific streak in her career with this being her 3rd studio album in the last 3 years, which also featured the release of a spoken word poetry album last year. Blue Banisters  follows Chemtrails Over The Country Club  and 4 singles earlier this year and features tracks that date all the way back to her early career.  Review By Lav: I am incapable of hiding my love for Lana Del Rey's music, the numbers just speak for themselves. I've been a vocal fan of her first two records Born To Die  and Ultraviolence  then once I started reviewing albums I had nothing but more praise first for Lust For Life  and then dropping a 10/10 review for her 2019 masterpiece Norman Fucking Rockwell . I even ended up enjoying the spoken word poetry album she followed it up with, if you're a Lana fan and you've never heard Sportcruiser ...

Lorde is a New Zealand based pop singer who became extraordinarily famous at a young age when her single Royals  became one of the biggest hits of the 2010's. Since then she has become an almost mythical pop figure who is prone to disappearing completely from the public eye for extended periods of time between album cycles. Adding to this mythos she emerged earlier this year with a lead single denouncing technological dependence accompanied by a music video featuring some slightly cult like imagery. Review By Lav: I'm a Lorde bitch. I was a Lorde bitch when I left middle school during Pure Heroine 's commercial domination. I was still a Lorde bitch when I graduated high school during a great critical renaissance surrounding her follow-up Melodrama . Now 4 years later I was still incredibly excited to get emails from Lorde about her trip to Antarctica and this was one of my most anticipated albums of the year. After a trio of singles that admittedly have massive meme potenti...

St. Vincent is the stage name of versatile singer and songwriter Annie Clark. She first gained notoriety with early indie and art pop records during the late 2000's and early 2010's. In 2014 she released her self-titled and most critically acclaimed project to date pivoting to a harsher more synthetic sound. We last heard from Annie in studio album form in 2017 with her glam rock flavored MASSEDUCTION .  Review By Lav: There are very few singer-songwriter types who have flexed both the sonic versatility of the St. Vincent project as well as the incredible vocal charisma of Annie herself. While I am still a bit iffy on some of the earliest St. Vincent work she was 3/3 with me in the last decade highlighted by her excellent 2014 self-titled record. I has no reason not to be excited for Daddy's Home  as it seemed like Annie was making something that was both personal and heavily stylized, plus I liked all of the singles. While there are some minor issues I have here and there ...

Lana Del Rey is the caliber of pop star who really needs no introduction. She first emerged with a hugely successful album full of hit singles on her 2012 debut Born To Die  and in the decade since has been responsible for numerous critically acclaimed albums culminating in 2019's Norman Fucking Rockwell . Review By Lav: It's no secret that I've dished out quite a bit of critical acclaim in Lana's direction over the years. I called Born To Die  one of my favorite pop albums of the decade last year, I wrote a very positive review for Lana's spoken word album Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass  and the most recent 10/10 review to that I've given was back in 2019 to my eventual album of the year, Norman Fucking Rockwell . Given her versatility as a singer and a creative as well as her strong cast of collaborators and rewarding songwriting there is always reason to be excited about what Lana is doing next. Turns out Chemtrails  is Lana's most stark effort yet ...

Taylor Swift is a pop artist who at this point needs no introduction. After racking up a decades worth of hits and massive commercial success in the late 2000's and 2010's Taylor finally reached a place of critical success earlier this year on her indie inspired Aaron Dessner produced 8th studio album folklore . Just a few months later Taylor is following this up with a second album in a similar vein. Much like it's predecessor evermore  is an indie folk inspired record with a similar set of collaborators that was also surprise announced and dropped with no singles. Review By Lav: I have never been a big fan of Taylor Swift, see my Lover  review here . While her first few records are just as utterly intolerable today as they were when they first came out she has had a few points where it felt like she was moving slightly in the right direction. 2012's Red  was easily her best album to date but she followed it up with the middling mediocre 1989 . 2017's Reputation  w...

Lana Del Rey is a California based pop singer who needs no introduction at this point. After a decade of critically acclaimed and commercially successful pop records she continued to push her sound to even greater heights on her most acclaimed release to date, last years Norman Fucking Rockwell . Now she is reaching into a new venture entirely releasing a book of poems paired with spoken word recordings of her readings backed by compositions from frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff. Review By Lavender: Of the 200+ albums and EP's that I heard in 2019 I only rated one of them a 10/10. Norman Fucking Rockwell  was an obvious shoe in choice for my album of the year last year and that meant that whatever Lana was going to do next I would be looking forward to it. Even after getting into some hot water over word choice regarding double standards in the music industry earlier this year she delivered on a promise that raised the eyebrows of many pop fans when she first made it last year, ...

Taylor Swift is a Nashville based pop superstar who began early on in her career fusing country into contemporary pop music before slowly transitioning to a more synthetic pop sound over the next decade. Less than a year after her 7th studio album Lover  she surprised announced and then dropped without any singles  her 8th record, folklore .  Review By Lavender: I was worried about this record. I have never been a big Taylor Swift fan but even after her first three records nauseated me I thought she was improving leading up to my favorite of her projects 2017's Reputation . The improvement slowed to a halt however on last year's Lover  which wasn't a total disaster of a record but featured far more misses than hits. The 2nd thing that worried me was that Aaron Dessner, the man responsible for two of the 2010's most boring indie records (The National's Trouble Will Find Me  and I Am Easy To Find ) was responsible for much of the songwriting and production on the ...