There will be plenty of other artists with the same attitude but not quite the same foot-in-mouth problem.
#Lana del rey controversy album series#
Even harder to believe that nobody close to her would have advised her otherwise, after her series of racially insensitive posts in the summer. Lana’s latest comments are so astonishingly tone-deaf that it’s hard to believe she’s not being intentionally antagonistic. But it only takes Jennifer Aniston hanging a ‘My First Pandemic’ Christmas tree ornament and Kim Kardashian’s escape to normality on a private island, to remember the inherent distance and obliviousness that seemingly defines the rich and famous. She has always actively courted controversy because it suits her imagined vibe: a wild, yet sheltered, daughter of 1960s New England Senator. “She’s playing five, six, seven dimensional chess with us all!” Lana Del Rey’s persona, like Lorraine Kelly’s before her, is just that: a persona. “It has to be intentional,” we wonder, out of sheer disbelief. Or is it? It’s become customary to debate whether each move a celebrity makes is a bluff, a double bluff or – heaven forbid – completely earnest. Lana’s attitude feels distinctly behind the times and for once, it’s not due to deliberate nostalgia. Anti-racism is a collective responsibility and requires an ego check at the door. The past 12 months have presented the long-overdue need for everyone to interrogate their unconscious biases and privilege, to listen to the perspectives of those who have long been silenced rather than resorting to rash defensiveness and dismissiveness. It’s especially jarring to see this attitude in 2021, to see how indicative it is of a white fragility we are all trying to retire. But this cannot be the bar for any and all criticism. Lana’s not completely wrong: she hasn’t loudly endorsed the fascist-in-chief unlike a number of high-profile artists in the music industry and despite baseless speculation to the contrary, it’s clear she didn’t vote for him either. While out of context pull-quotes have the tendency to paint an unfair picture, I don’t think you could reasonably argue that here. Respect it” less than 24 hours prior is quite the hoot. We’re not the ones storming the Capitol” and best of all, stated that “our world’s greatest problem is not climate change or capitalism but sociopathy and narcissism.” Hearing someone claim that narcissism is the root cause of society’s ills when that same person wrote “I’m literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table 24 seven. She soon took on the Trump presidency: “As bad as it was, it really needed to happen” implied that you’re above criticism just as long as you’re not actively staging a coup: “we voted for Biden.
“I’ve got a lot of issues and inclusivity just ain’t one of them,” Lana proclaimed. It made for an entertaining listen until the whimsy became decidedly less cute and Lana began to pontificate (and chaotically veer away from Annie’s questions in the process). Everything about this live interview, which she conducted whilst eating a popsicle for breakfast, had the air of curated whimsy: from the revelation that she recently broke her elbow rollerblading through to the impromptu arrival of her chimney repair guy.
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And all this before the lead single had even been released.įor that, Lana headed to the airwaves for a chat with Annie Mac on Radio 1. But the execution? Not really up for debate. Lana – who got into hot water last year over some deeply questionable remarks – was already ready to go, anticipating a controversy that had yet to exist and where better to defend your own honour than the Instagram comments section? “My boyfriends have been rappers” is the kind of wince-inducing line that feels a touch too trite, even in parody (would Lana have voted for Obama for a third term if she could?), and she continued to exhibit an elementary school understanding of racial politics as she name-dropped her “diverse” friends like witnesses for the defence. A post shared by Lana Del Rey the artwork, which featured Lana and her ‘longest-term’ friends laughing around a table, did attract minor criticism because the lighting had managed to literally whitewash the diversity at the table, the immediacy of her defence was likely a symptom of something else.