#eminem sepia

[my-chaos-radio]

Release: May 17, 1999

Lyrics:

I didn't hear you leave

I wonder how am I still here

And I don't want to move a thing

It might change my memory

Oh, I am what I am

I'll do what I want, but I can't hide

And I won't go, I won't sleep

I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me

And I won't leave and I can't hide

I cannot be, until you're resting here with me

I don't want to call my friends

They might wake me from this dream

And I can't leave this bed

Risk forgetting all that's been

Oh, I am what I am

I'll do what I want, but I can't hide

And I won't go, I won't sleep

And I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me

And I won't leave and I can't hide

I cannot be, until you're resting here

And I won't go and I won't sleep

And I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me

And I won't leave and I can't hide

I cannot be, until you're resting here with me

Oh, I am what I am

I'll do what I want, but I can't hide

And I won't go, I won't sleep

And I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me

And I won't leave and I can't hide

I cannot be, until you're resting here

And I won't go and I won't sleep

And I can't breathe, until you're resting here with me

And I won't leave and I can't hide

I cannot be, until you're resting here with me

Songwriter:

Dido Armstrong / Pascal Gabriel / Paul Statham

SongFacts:

"Here with Me" is the debut single of English singer-songwriter Dido. It was the first single she released from her 1999 debut studio album, 'No Angel'. The song was written about her then-boyfriend Bob Page. The single was released on 17 May 1999 in the United States but was not released in the United Kingdom until February 2001, serving as Dido's debut single in her home country. In other territories, it was issued as the album's second single, following "Thank You". Shortly after its release, "Here with Me" was used as the theme song for the American science fiction television programme Roswell (1999–2002).

"Here with Me" peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Dido's second consecutive top-five single, following "Stan", a collaboration with Eminem that incorporated, in sample form, the first verse of "Thank You". The single also became a top-five hit in France, Hungary, New Zealand, and Portugal, and it peaked at number 16 on the US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart in October 2000. In Australia, the track reached number one on the ARIA Hitseekers Chart following Dido's live performance at the 2001 ARIA Awards.

Two distinct music videos were produced for the selection. The first version was filmed in 1999, and released to the American market. The American version was directed by Big TV! and uses footage of the singer rendered in sepia tones. Dido later stated that she hoped to record a new video of the selection for international release.

The second version, shot in full color and directed by Liz Friedlander, was released in May 2000. This became the video released to the British & European markets; the music video for the international version was filmed in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

[lizzygrantarchives]

Wonderland, November/December 2011

The “Video Games” singer’s dilapidated, sepia-tinged glamour and heart-melting vocals have made her the talent to watch this year. For all you wannabe internet sensations out there: this is how it’s done.

Lana Del Rey and I are perched on the curb trying to light cigarettes with a novelty lighter shaped like a gold bar. Tiny, encased in a leather biker jacket and skintight jeans, her soft brown curls cascading over her shoulders, she finally beats the breeze with the diminutive flame that pops out the top.

It has been a whirlwind year for the 25-year-old NY native, who has been splitting her time equally between Brooklyn and east London’s Kingsland Road (couch surfing all the way). Like Willow Smith, SuBo and, er, Boo the dog, she has achieved that dubious accolade of “internet sensation” status and is in the process of turning her hit ‘Video Games’ – seemingly everywhere at the moment, from the Christopher Kane show this September to the latest episode of Made In Chelsea – into a proper chart topper.

To be fair, the song does its own PR pretty well. It’s one of those niggling tunes that lodges in your head, both because of its simplicity (the main refrain is just four notes, mirroring the slow march of the backing chords) and a more complex, displaced sense of nostalgia, full of odd contrasts. Lyrics like “I say you the bestest/ Lean in for a big kiss” have a sad, faded coquettishness to them, while the chorus (“It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you”) blaze with naïve sincerity. Then there’s the repeating full stop of ‘Video Games’ – which seems both weirdly out of place and suitably childlike in the midst of it all.

Del Rey’s heart-stopping voice – think Mazzy Star with Stevie Nicks’ vocal range and Nancy Sinatra’s fragile strength – stands a mile out from the other stuff in the charts. There’s no Auto-Tune or expensive video or banging remix. It’s just Lana, and some harps and a bit of piano, creating a spooky, swirling filmic atmosphere.

I expect her to be like her songs, a bit sad and introspective. She’s not. She’s giggly and full of beans. She jumps up to talk to various other people that walk past, proclaiming her love for them. She flutters her eyelids, which are thick with eyeliner and falsies, and twiddles with the tassels on her purple slippers.

Lana (born Lizzie Grant) started to make music when she was 18. “I was always writing little songs, but nothing I liked then. When I left school I wanted to do music because I thought I was good at it and I wanted to do something that I loved. So my uncle taught me to play guitar and I did these little shows, just me and my guitar, singing and playing the five chords that I knew.”

I mention how that’s quite punk, that Patti Smith famously only knows three chords, and she laughs, “I’ve got two up on you, Patti!” That might not be the only similarity either – Patti famously plugged away until the world sat up and took notice of her. “Yeah, there were so many times when I didn’t think ‘it’ would happen. I just carried on living my life, you know?”

Raised in Lake Placid, upstate New York, Lana listened to Eminem as a kid (“Everyone listened to him, it was the 90s”) until she discovered Bob Dylan, Nirvana and Frank Sinatra, “the masters of all genres. Does their music inspire mine? They inspire me in life and my life inspires my music, so I sort of think they have influenced my music.”

I’m trying to imagine how the Dylan/Cobain/Old Blue Eyes triumvirate permeates her life on a day-to-day basis – her hair is perfect, her face is perfect, she’s not wearing a suit or a holey old sweater: she looks like an escapee from Valley of the Dolls meshed with, as one blogger put it, a blow-up doll version of Natalie Portman.

Maybe it’s in her old-fashioned Hollywood pizzazz that so many aspire to and even more fail at. And this in turn might be the crux of some of the Del Rey backlash that has surfaced online – that her lips are fake and that she originally recorded under her own name. Neither things are new or surprising with many other pop stars, but with Lana it has caused a Marmite reaction.

“Yeah,” she sighs, “my mood changes about it depending on the day. In general, you don’t want anyone to say anything bad about you. I think when anything gets popular quickly there is always scepticism, but I don’t think that’s grounds for being rude or cruel. I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. I personally don’t believe in expressing a negative opinion, just because I’m not interested in it. Life is so short in general – the more negative energy you put into the world is just time-wasting.” She takes a long draw on her cigarette and adds, fixedly, “What other people think of me is none of my business, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt my feelings.”

The dilapidated glamour of Del Rey’s aesthetics is part of the reason we love her. Her DIY videos, made with her sister holding the laptop to film her, and spliced in with old clips from YouTube, are part of what has gotten her to this point. No marketing man or video director could have faked the naivety and enthusiasm she’s poured into them.

“Yeah,” she bursts, “I’ve made all the videos so far – it’s expensive and I had no budget to ask anyone else. I think when you really want to make your own world around you, you just do what you can with what you have. And I didn’t have that much. Building my visual world was something that I transitioned to because I had done everything I wanted to do sonically – I’d finished my first record and I needed to get the pictures around it and, again, I was just guided by my own intuition, for whatever that was worth.”

We shoot the breeze for a while, talking about boarding school (she went, she was an outsider, although she wouldn’t want to put it like that), stylists (she has one, it’s more of a gay-best-friend-who-helps-her-find-the-right-frock-for-events scenario), where to get the best manicures (she has huge acrylic nails) and where she’d like to call home (“New York. Or Paris. I don’t know.”).

Listening to Del Rey’s music, it seems incongruous that someone so chirpy could make such sad songs. “I’ve been happy and sad; I’m not sad anymore. It doesn’t have anything to do with the music; it has to do with enjoying life, on life’s terms, and finding peace with yourself. I’ve been happy for a real long time – seven or eight years.” Is she happy because she makes the music she wants to? “Yeah,” she beams before saying, dogmatically, that she believes “it’s important to walk along a path towards something that makes you happy career-wise. And if you’re not happy, you can’t tell yourself that you are.”

Has having four million hits and counting on ‘Video Games’ made her happy? “I am happy with the way things are,” she says, “but I was happy with the way things were. I could be doing anything but I am doing what I love, and not doing things I hate.” There must be parts she doesn’t favour? She grins. “When I thought it was never going to happen, I stopped doing it and just lived my life. I haven’t been on stage for two years… so I’m not too sure how that is going to work – I’m not a natural exhibitionist.”

This much was evident during Del Rey’s recent appearance on Later… With Jools Holland. Dressed all in white, with huge hoop earrings, she shuffled uneasily from side to side, her eyes cast down and her voice perhaps even more fragile than usual. But somehow it ended up being all part of the charm – the rapt silence in the room was palpable.

She lights another cigarette and stirs at the gravel with her toe, hands neatly folded in her lap. What will happen next to the girl who reminded us that pop can be crafted and beautiful, whose favourite records are Lil’ Wayne and the American Beauty soundtrack? Whose big hit that was made at home on her laptop went viral quicker than you can say “Bieber”? “This afternoon I’m off to work with Bobby Womack,” she laughs. So, she’s right. There’s something to be said for gentle persistence.

Originally published in the November/December 2011 issue of Wonderland with the headline Miss November.

[shakingthesewalls]

What the hell is this twilighty picture you've put to this eminem lyric? It doesnt make sense and it doesnt fit. As someone whose been listening to him for almost 20 years and love this last album, I can honestly say... what? WHY? Why some girl in a meadow? Its just so random that you think its artsy or something? Like a 2007 girl taking a picture of a lawn chair and adding a sepia tone and pretending like its art. I really dont mean any hate, I just dont get that shit, coz it doesnt make sense.

um wow super sorry about that! i really didn’t mean to make it seem that way and i’m in love with his music for as long as i could remember and i didn’t realized it offended people. his latest album was very good to me too that’s why i used very lowkey lyrics. i’m more than happy to change the picture though.. 

[hautefrankenteen]

Two of the biggest legends in one, sepia-based photograph! Bruce Lee, and Chuck Norris! ❤️ If you recall those Chuck Norris jokes back between 2009 and 2010, my favourite was one that involved Eminem: "Eminem: I'm not afraid! Chuck Norris: …I love the way you lie 😏" I'm personally on team Norris -what about you lot? ❤️

[lizzygrantarchives]

Oyster, December 12, 2011

It was only in August this year that Pitchfork’s “Hollywood sadcore” darling Lana Del Rey put her first single, ‘Video Games’, up on YouTube, but apparently that’s equivalent to a century in Internet time. Millions of pageviews later and I’m being subjected to ‘Video Games’ or ‘Blue Jeans’ playing from my housemate’s iPhone on a daily basis, but that’s not why I wanted to interview LDR. She has that haunted, retro, sepia-toned sultriness thing down to a T, and I wanted to see if she could keep it up for a 20-minute telephone conversation. We only ended up speaking for 17 minutes because she became very keen to stop the conversation early due to my interesting “vibe”, but all of those minutes were very, very strange.

Hi Lana, how are you?

I’m good, how are you?

Good! I don’t know whether to call you Lana or Lizzie, can I call you Lizzie?

Sure. You can call me whatever you want, honey.

Have you changed your name legally, or are you still Lizzie to your friends?

Oh, that’s a good question. No, I went down to the courthouse and I don’t know — I don’t have that many friends, so it depends… Some of them call me Lana and some of them call me Lizzie.

Why don’t you have many friends?

No, I do have friends; I have really good friends… yeah, I do. Some of them call me Lizzie, some of them call me Lana.

You probably get asked this all the time, but… are your lips real?

Yes, they are.

Wow. Would you ever get plastic surgery?

Maybe.

What would you get?

[Laughs] What would I get? Ummm, I don’t know.

How important do you think it is as a pop star to have a complete look — outfit, hair, video aesthetic?

It just depends on what you like, I guess. It depends on who you are. I was a writer for a long time and then I started singing. And then when I was 18 I started sort of editing different visuals together, splicing my face into them. So, I think it really depends on the person.

Is that when you moved to New York? When you were 18?

Yeah, that was when.

What was that like?

Well, I was born there, and I moved to the country when I was really young. So I was ready to get back to New York — it’s definitely the love of my life and I consider it my home. I’ve been there for about eight years now.

It’s an amazing city.

It’s so beautiful.

What did you do for work while you trying to break into singing?

I did a couple of things, I did a website called Craigslist and I would just sort of look online for $100 jobs. Like, people will pay you $100 to do different things around the house or drive someone to New Jersey.

That’s pretty brave. You can find some fucked-up stuff on Craigslist. How did you know which ones were legit?

I mean, you often don’t know until you get there.

Did you ever get into trouble with that?

[Laughs] If I did, I wouldn’t tell you! Let me ask you a question, do you like my music or not?

Well, I like the video for ‘Video Games’. I mainly I just find you very interesting.

I’m just trying to get your general vibe.

Cool. What sort of music do you like?

Well, I like only a couple of things. I’ve pretty much listened to Nirvana ever since I found them, which wasn’t until I was about 18. I like Eminem, I like sixties music, and I have a couple of movie soundtracks that I really like listening to — just, like, sound scores.

Which movies?

I like Thomas Newman’s scores, so American Beauty…

American Beauty is fantastic. And you like Eminem?

Yeah, I like Eminem. I’ve just been thinking about him more because people always ask me about hip hop, so… I don’t know.

It might have something to do with the “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” thing.

I mean, I never said that to anyone. It was just on my YouTube page and people found that and started using it, so…

Is it still there, or did you delete it? Ummm, I don’t know. I’m going online right now to look at it. Let’s see… No. It just says “dope” [laughs].

OK, so you’re not “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” any more. Just Lana Del Rey.

Yup.

Do you like Kreayshawn?

I’ve only heard ‘Gucci Gucci’.

Do you think you’re similar in that you like making your own videos for YouTube?

She makes her own videos?

Yeah — well, she probably had some help, but she edited videos for other rappers and stuff before she was famous.

How old is she?

She’s, like, 21 or 22 [Kreayshawn is 22].

Oh. That’s cool.

So, do you like “gangsta” music?

I like hip-hop, but I don’t know if I’d call it gangster music — I mean, I don’t want to get shot. I like hip hop the same way everyone else does.

What about your own brand of music? You originally called it Hollywood sadcore. Is that like emo?

I don’t know, what’s emo?

You know, the kids with eyeliner and black hair.

I don’t know — I feel like you’re going to write a really fucked-up article about me. I’m a little nervous.

You’re nervous? What’s the worst thing anyone’s ever written about you?

I don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff out there.

What would you do if I did write something really mean?

Nothing… I dunno [laughs] — come to Australia and kill you?

But surely everyone would find out, because you’re famous! And now I have it on a recording, so you can’t anyway.

Nice.

So what about your newer songs? After ‘Blue Jeans’ you did ‘Kinda Outta Luck’ and ‘Born to Die’, and there are some really dirty lyrics in there — like, “Let me fuck you hard in the pouring rain.” Would you have put stuff like that in your original songs?

Well, my first songs were pretty autobiographical, so it’s not that big a jump for me. I talked about a lot of stuff in my first record, so it’s not a big departure.

I always thought you were innocent! Maybe it’s your big eyes.

I think that depends on what you consider to be innocent.

What about other new music? Are there any other artists that you really like right now?

I really like a band called Kassidy, from Scotland, and I like this band that are sort of my friends — well, they are my friends — called Carney. That’s just two contemporary bands… But I like a lot of different kids of music.

What about dubstep?

[Laughs] No.

Any electronic music?

I guess if I’m dancing.

Do you go out a lot, or do you try to keep it low-key?

Actually, I haven’t been to a club since I was about 17. I don’t go out a lot. I don’t know, I’m getting an interesting vibe from you, I feel like you really don’t like my music.

Don’t you think it’s a good thing that your music causes a bit of contention?

Well, that’s a good question, but I don’t really know the answer yet.

I think you should have a few people that are on the edge.

I mean, I’m not a very controversial person in my own personal life, so it’s not something I’m personally interested in. I think we should just end this because… I don’t know. I feel like you don’t really like it.

OK then. Thanks for your time.

Thanks.

Originally published on oystermag.com.