THIS IS WHAT MAKES US GIRLS

Blood in the Snow, Snow on the Blood. A completely Live, totally unplanned DJ mix FEAT TAYLOR SWIFT AND LANA DEL REY. By Vivian V.

I really want to figure out what I don’t trust about Jack Atanoff. He’s just one of those people that is always going to be really popular, and I’m always going to wonder why and be jealous, because I’m not a “PEOPLE PERSON.”

But as I learnt from a 17-year-old Taylor Swift, and I’m paraphrasing slightly -

You just got to accept you are different, or you are going to get really dark and angry.

And I did.....but then I came out of it.....but what a waste of time. God.

AN WYAY

These are mixed completely live and unplanned.

(I have another mix feat Kanye West and Leonard Cohen poetry and music, down the line of podcasts somewhere. There’s a picture of Ye with Leonard Cohen moulded in with his face as the picture ha).

But I know right, you are thinking, who fucking cares about a DJ mix with Taylot Swift and Lana Del Rey. But I insist you lisen to it, even if you aren’t a big fan of either, because you will find it’s not necessarily your typical Lana and Taylor mix you would think it would be. I think when I do these mixes they tend to become conceptual rather than mixes based around loving the artist or not that I’m mixing. Of course, I do love the artists Im mixing, ha, but it becomes less about them and more about a story I’m trying to tell with their art. Like a collage of music, or like smapling. I used to be a very low grade sampling music maker, I’ll link you to my old bandcamp. I was called Foxy/Moron (there’s the slash again, I blame the indie music scene in Brisbane for these weird grammar beauty obsessions). I was heavily inspired by Sailor Moon, German sample artist Burial and film. Film used to much more inspiring to me than music, but that did change as I matured which is weird. Music has been my life since the change though, but maybe that’s shifting to thought now. I feel a shift.

Anyway, these mixses are always super fun to make and scary to make because you really got to be workign that Pre Frontal Cortex in decision making, fast and good decision making. Work that PFC. But it can be fun to pick the artists you choose to play around with and it never comes out as you thought it would which is cool. it’s a fun time and I insist you try it. It’s like Freud’s free associsation, but with music. You can learn about where your head is at. The fact that religionn comes into this mix is always where my head is at, for my entire life. Even though I’m an athesist I seem to get alot of inspiration whether negative or positive from religious symbolism, misogony and the Old Testament. I do also muse what I hate these days, or I have tended to in the past. So that could account for this inspiration lol.

But Lana and Taylor’s art is what I use to tell this stroy that has ended up being about religiion and misogony, and when you are sampling Taylor Swift you can’t avoid that misogony take, because it’s really all she ever talks about. She has struggled with this concept all her career, because I believe she was struck pretty harshly with misogony from a young age, entering into the music industry at some ridiculously young age of 12 or something? Crazy. She would have gone through things with men that I didn’t go through hevaily until I was 20. So that’s quite a headstart, no wonder she has such great philosophical insight on being “different” at such a young age. I wish someone had taught me that when I was 12. Consequently, there is a obligation to take these storyline paths when sampling her.

Lana Del Rey, in a totally opposite way took some what a similar route, except Lana tends to balance the responsibility between men and her more equally, if anything, she takes the blame completely which is the way it should be. We are all responisble for our own life choices. Lana takes the blame honestly and quite brutally at times, I believe her second album paints her as a really bad person that at the time I 100% related too. Which I at first tbh, resented her for. However, now I’am extremely grateful for Lana as my music mother, it’s a true blessing and life saver. Thank god for Lana Del Rey, I don’t know what I would have done without the lessons she has taught me through her music, they are always so multi-faceted and change as I change, and Video Games remains my favourite song ever written for these reasons. I rememeber the day I realised that song, and it was so profound, being around six years after I first heard it.

Lana Del Rey isn’t afriad of expressing the damage caused to her by the Patriarchy though, but she just shows she is just as evil as the Patirachy and therefore doesn’t play the victim probably ever. Which is a much more positive yet complex message to portray via song lyrics, even though her music seems more pessimissitic than Taylor’s, it just how that tale has to be told. In a honest way, which is Lana’s gift, story telling that many can relate to regarding a very complex institution.

These two artists may seem like a obvious COMBO to choose to mix, but I like obvious! As long as the artists are obvious great, but sometimes the most cliche artists are the most complex, which is why popular culture forever interests me. And Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift are the greatest pop stars in the last ten years. Lana is the a more complex writer, but what Taylor lacks in complexity, her writing is just as good, Taylor is really good at getting hurt and dumpd in a relationship and just being so honest and wrting that she got hurt and she got dumped and fuck that hurt. Lol. And that isn’t easy. It takes alot of humility and maturity and enlightenment tbh. This is what most people love most about her. She is also a genius at manipulating the music industry to work in her favour.

(Most of the time she wins but not always. but at least she takes risks. She took on Kanye West and lost, but you got to give it to her, she had the balls to take him on in the first place at 19 years old lol. And we can’t say he didn’t deserve it ha).

She naviagtes through the music industry slaying the popstar game. Taylor, like Lana, is evil and ruthless, underneith it all. But in a way, being evil is necessary for a woman playing video games in a “man’s world.” As a woman you are an instant target when you step onto the Hollywood scene or American music industry spotlight. Your every move and performance is scrutinized to find inconsistencies that the patriarchy can spot, pull that thread and watch you come undone.

It’s very hard to beat them when they decide to do this to you, but where character and success is born, is from those who rise from the dead over and over and over again. Most women stay in the grave unfortunatly, and some literally end up in a grave R.I.P Whitney & Amy. However some, against all odds do come back, even under the most traumtic circumstances, and they just continue to make art aka Yoko Ono is the best and most extreme example of this. (<3 <3!! God.).

And now at the gates, guarding the souls that didn’t make it, you have to get past Taylor and Lana, and good luck because they aren’t going away anytime soon.

I will take you through now, how I believe they have got to this position. After studying their success for many years now, I have some pretty solid theories that both have some evidence to only hinted evidence and can go down seemingly unrelated rabbit holes sometimes like Jarad Leto, lol. None of this information is necessarily 100%, but the likelihood their success was born from something along these lines, is almost certain. There is more guessing coming from Lana’s side, because Taylor Swift is very open and obivous about her evil success building endeavours. Lana’s if true, seem alot more evil and revengeful though, but she does it so quietly and very fasciously. You would never notice if you weren’t observng the right facets of her life carefully.

Pictures above from left, Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift and Lana Del rey.

I have this idea that Lana has some weird relationship with Harvey Weinstein where she knd of controls him a little, for some unknown reason. Maybe she is black mailing him? But I know she knew him well and if you a woman in Hollywood who is going to the French Canne Film Festival with Harvey when Lana was relitively unknown at this point, you are fucking him. No doubt. Done deal. Lana was fucking him. But as she sings in a song about him:

“You taste like the 4th of July, I love you and I don’t know why”

Also

“I guess you can call it textbook, I was looking for the father, I wanted back. So then I found him, in Brentwood.”

And of course, in the track now slashed from Lana’s live repotoire since #metoo, which Lana seemed to support very quietly and minimally (mostly to not offend or annoy anyone too badly being a person who was just finally getting things going in the world of pop with her Jack Atanoff Grammy award nominated (or winnner idk? pfft who cares, its the grammys lol, no one cares anymore) album called Norman Fucking Rockwell. Lana is no fool, she just stopped playing the song with the direct Harvey referenced lyrics and continuted promtoting her album. Which was the best choice.

Lyrics from the now slashed song from live sets Cola were/are:

“My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola…..

Cmon baby let’s ride, we can escape to the great sunshine. I know your wife, and she wouldn’t mind….

Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds and it’s making me crazy.”

I get the feeling from the progression of the Harvey themed tracks, which I thought stopped after Honeymoon, only...