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Sirens is an unreleased demo album by Lana Del Rey, written and recorded in 2005 and 2006, under the pseudonym May Jailer. The album leaked on May 31, 2012, after much speculation about its contents by fans months before. Certain songs from the album also appear on the EPs Young like Me and From the End, and the mixtape The Phenomena of Lizzy Grant.

Background and composition

After learning six chords on acoustic guitar when she was 18 years old, Del Rey took up the challenge of writing as many songs with those chords as possible. The album was the result of her experimentation.[1] Almost all of the songs on the album fall into the same range, and many are in the same key. Every track is solely composed of only Del Rey's vocals and acoustic guitar, and often focuses on arpeggiated melodies using fingerpicking. Almost all tracks have Del Rey singing in a higher register with feathery vocals, except for "Birds of a Feather", which has heavy autotune. All songs were recorded in Del Rey's hometown, Lake Placid, New York, at the Jim Cushman Studio.[2] The producer of the album remains uncredited, although the producer may be Del Rey herself. According to his profile on LinkedIn, Alex Frizzell did the audio engineering of the album.[3]

Critical reception

"The songs on Sirens find Lana Del Rey singing tremulously over acoustic guitars, showing plenty of the languid mystique that would later come to define her but also displaying a different sort of fragile Lee Hazlewood narco-haze vibe."

Tom Breihan of Stereogum.

Many music journalists compared the album to Pieces of You by Jewel, due to its acoustic guitar fingerpicks and feathery vocals. Critical reviews of the album were highly positive, praising Del Rey's innocent vocals and the simplistic overtones. Becky Bain of Idolator commented that "though her vocals are often weak and shaky, her tone sounds delicate and sweet on all these simple tracks". Many critics compared the album to something they would hear in a small-town coffee shop.

Cross-references

Many of the themes on the album, including love lost, loss of purity, and coming-of-age were included in Del Rey's later work, especially Born to Die. The album does however lack the highly concentrated Americana references often included in her later recordings.

The focus of the record was K, both directly and inferentially. It mentions K further in songs like "Drive By" and "My Momma" and tells the tale of his passing in "Drive By". The song "Next to Me" was written by Del Rey about Bill and is likely the first song she has ever written about him.

Artwork

Although there's no official artwork cover known for the album, a TikTok user who owns a copy of the CD uploaded a video to the platform showing the copy he owned, which included a note by Del Rey (under her pseudonym at the time, May Jailer) and an orange-colored CD and black colored logos for 'May Jailer' and 'Sirens'.[4]


Track listing

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
1. "Drive By"  Elizabeth Grant 2:51
2. "Next to Me"  Grant 2:41
3. "A Star for Nick"  Grant 2:43
4. "My Momma"  Grant 3:25
5. "Bad Disease"  Grant 3:42
6. "Out with a Bang"  Grant 3:19
7. "Dear Elliot"  Grant 4:33
8. "Try Tonight"  Grant 3:35
9. "Peace"  Grant 5:48
10. "How Do You Know Me so Well?"  Grant 3:59
11. "Pretty Baby"  Grant 3:39
12. "Aviation"  Grant 3:11
13. "Move"  Grant 4:13
14. "Junky Pride"  Grant 2:52
15. "Birds of a Feather"  Grant 2:46
Total length:
53:17

Scrapped tracks

Certain songs from Sirens also appear in the EPs Young like Me and From the End, but also, these works include songs that weren't included in the final tracklist of Sirens. It's speculated that these projects were entirely made up of songs recorded during the Sirens sessions, so it's likely that these extra songs were originally intended for Sirens, but didn't make the cut.

No. Title Writer(s) EP Length
1. "For You" Elizabeth Grant From The End 4:16
2. "Wait" Grant From The End 3:34
3. "Blizzard" Grant Young Like Me 3:39
4. "You, Mister" Grant Young Like Me 3:45
5. "There's Nothing to Be Sorry About" Grant Young Like Me 2:53
6. "More Mountains" Grant Young Like Me 2:35
7. "In Wendy" Grant Young Like Me 2:32
8. "Fordham Road" Grant None 3:46
9. "You're Gonna Love Me" Grant None 3:52

Title disputes

Sirens originally surfaced when a blogger, who had ordered the original CD online in 2006, mentioned owning a "record by Ms. Grant that you will never hear". However, there was no metadata on the CD and the tracks were labeled simply as "Track 1", "Track 2" etc. No titles could be confirmed except "Junky Pride", "A Star for Nick", "Out with a Bang", and "Bad Disease" as they were streamed on various other platforms online under these titles, the rest were simply assumed by fans. When From the End and Young like Me were leaked online during January 2014, they contained many duplicate tracks that changed and confirmed some of the titles in Sirens, leaving only "Next to Me", "My Momma", "Pretty Baby" and "Birds of a Feather" unconfirmed.

References

  1. TrailerParkDarling (September 29, 2012). "LANA SLEUTHING". LanaBoards. http://lanaboards.com/topic/540-lana-sleuthing/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-9147. Retrieved June 26, 2023. "At age 18, her uncle taught her how to play guitar, beginning with basic chords: “It was G, C, A, D minor, A minor and some diminished chord as well. Some trick, some shortcut,” May recalled. “I realized I could probably write a million songs with those six chords, so I moved to New York and I took a couple of years to just write whatever I wanted. ” She began performing in clubs while living in the city."
  2. kristoffrable (June 26, 2012). "Record Review: ‘Sirens’ by May Jailer". Team Hellions. Archived from the original on April 9, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180409073852/http://teamhellions.com/2012/06/26/record-review-sirens-by-may-jailer/. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
  3. "Alex F.". LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexfrizzell.
  4. Kristoffersen, Rob (December 18, 2020). TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@ourstrangeskies/video/6907694673935076614. Retrieved January 9, 2024.


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