A Best of the Rest of Lana Del Rey Part 4


When A Best of the Rest of Lana Del Rey Part 3 was published back in August 2013, it followed on from Part 2 by a mere four months and now nearly four years later we have Part 4.

I did add a couple of tracks to Part 3 back in 2015, as I then thought that there would probably never be a Part 4, but here it is and I am pleasantly surprised at how well it has all fitted together. Much of the material is still from the very productive time between her Lizzy Grant debut and Born to Die, and is similar in style to the mainly poptastic Part 2. I do think she may have been writing with other singers in mind at this time, as the likes of She's Not Me aka Ride or Die Bitch, Girl That Got Away or the now charmingly retro BBM Baby (from those innocent days when Blackberry phones were used for sexting, manipulating markets and organising riots) are more examples of top pop guilty pleasures that could have been worldwide hits for various pop princesses.

There is only a couple of more recent songs, one being the opener Your Girl, which is said to be an Ultraviolence outtake. I don't think it is the definitive version, it was a track that was initially leaked as a couple of snippets, which one fan did an excellent job of stitching together, and highlighting the great organ sound and the wonderful Bollywoody vocal ending. I do hope it does get a proper mix and release at some point as I think it is one of her finest tunes.

Like Part 3, it as also pretty diverse with 2 more tracks from the Sparkle Jump Queen era - All Smiles and Super Movie, an early version of On My Way. There is also another version of Motel 6 and  Children of A Bad Revolution is  a demo which I think is far better than the overdone studio version leaked previously. I have rarely been impressed by remixes of Lana tunes but the Brooklyn Baby one featured is an exception and just as brilliant as the original but very different. There is also a remix/mashup of the Part 2 track Paradise, which improves it and also manages to successfully incorporate a bit of Missy Elliott.

Finally, there is a couple of covers - Smile is a Nat King Cole lyric from 1956 based on a 1936 instrumental from a Charlie Chaplin Movie, and it ends with her wonderful version of Daniel Johnson's Somethings Last A Long Time, which is featured in the film Hi, How Are You Daniel Johnston.

I doubt there will be a Part 5, or at least not for many years, as the material from pre-Born to Die must now be exhausted. It may be that, like Ryan Adams, she is allowed to release a lot more non-album material through official channels, as she apparently has recently with the track Coachella - Woodstock In My Mind.  I do hope she does, as having all this material officially unreleased is ridiculous.

As with Parts 1-3 etc the playlist below is embedded using the BTNT player.
It should work on PC, Tablet or Mobile. It does not expand to show all 21 tracks but you can scroll through and click on each track to play them, and the bottom left had box will play and pause the playlist. If you double click on the timer bar, it will FW or RW.

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