Lana Del Rey defended her new album artwork, seemingly in anticipation of criticism over lack of diversity in the picture that features her and her friends. It did not go well.
The singer posted the artwork for her soon-to-be-released album, “Chemtrails over the Country Club,” to her Instagram account, where she also left a comment explaining that the people pictured on the album cover along with Del Rey are her friends, and that several of them are people of color.
She then went on to write “In 11 years working I have always been extremely inclusive without even trying to. My best friends are rappers my boyfriends have been rappers. My dearest friends have been from all over the place, so before you made comments again about a WOC/POC issue, I’m not the one storming the capital, I’m literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table 24 seven. Respect it.”
The comment has since been deleted, but that didn’t stop people on social media from jumping on her case and criticizing the singer for the way she seemingly used the fact she dated rappers (presumably code for black men) as a defense against possible accusations of racism.
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Then came a separate social media dust-up: Del Rey gave an interview to the BBC in which she talked about what is going on at this moment in politics in our country. Complex then wrote an article based on Del Rey’s interview with the BBC, which it titled, “Lana Del Rey Doesn’t Believe Donald Trump Purposely Incited Capitol Riot.” The article inspired a raft of similar pieces that piled on Del Rey some more.
The Complex article attempted to sum up the singer’s position with lines such as, “Del Rey believes Trump is a symptom of a larger sickness in the United States: an epidemic of myopia, selfishness and rage. As the avatar of all that, she doesn’t think the president can see far enough beyond himself to know his speeches might have consequences.”
The article pulled select quotes from Del Rey, writing that she said, “The madness of Trump… as bad as it was, it really needed to happen. We really needed a reflection of our world’s greatest problem, which is not climate change but sociopathy and narcissism.”
The Complex article also quoted Del Rey as saying that Trump didn’t know he was inciting a riot: “You know, he doesn’t know that he’s inciting a riot and I believe that.”
Del Rey pushed back on Tuesday for what she said were incorrect inferences made in the article by directly responding to Complex on Twitter. She wrote, “It’s fucked up. You know I’m real. You know I voted for Biden. I’m super steady in everything I’ve ever said. You probably listened to my entire interview. So whoever wrote this is a genuine piece of shit. I am the one helping bringing the problem with narcissism to light. Gfys.”
She also took umbrage with a separate tweet from another account that accused her of being tone deaf, saying, “I’m not actually tone deaf, I don’t think there’s anything tone deaf about responding to questions about why there are only white women on a album cover when that’s just not the case. I’m not gonna let people say some thing that is what it isn’t. You’re jealous I get it.”
In another tweet, Del Rey clarified her comments in the BBC interview by saying that “what I was describing w the bbc was that Trump is so significantly impaired that he may not know what he was doing due to his significant lack of empathy and the wider ranging problem is the issue of sociopathy and narcissism in America.”
She then again criticized publications that distorted her comments. “I’ll say it again I don’t appreciate the larger magazines taking my well-intentioned and believe it or not liberal comments out of context. It’s actually what I sing about quite often. It’s what I’ve been condemned for saying. You can listen to the entire interview,” Del Rey said.
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