[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_code module_class=”custom-cat” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text module_class=”article-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”||||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#111111″ header_font_size=”68px” custom_margin=”40px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”intro-text” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_orientation=”center” custom_padding=”||0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Is Lana Del Rey \u2013 the Springsteen-approved laureate of LA darkness \u2013 lightening up? It’s 2021, and a new album opens a sunnier chapter in her controversial roman-a-clef<\/em>, and folk legend Joan Baez advocates her acceptance in the pantheon. But while serenity seems almost in reach, some wounds still burn and grievances rankle. \u201cFame can put you on the peripheries,\u201d she tells Victoria Segal, \u201cwhere the vultures can pick at you. It\u2019s dangerous on the edges.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/04\/GettyImages-1202162971.jpg” title_text=”62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards \u2013 Red Carpet” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Lana Del Rey attends the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards, January, 2020 in Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n IT’S MIDNIGHT IN Modesto in 2020 and Lana Del Rey has swung into the backyard, pulled up in her fast car. \u201cI told my boyfriend I was going to go out and sit in the car because I hate it when people listen to me talk,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m at his parents\u2019 farm, so we\u2019re in, like, the guest house. It\u2019s pretty idyllic: Northern California, pretty cold, 40 degrees and a little fireplace. We had a sweet little night singing all the old Disney and holiday songs \u2013 not what I expected after a long car ride, but everyone was in a good mood.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Tomorrow, Del Rey will hit the road back home to Los Angeles, preparing to spend Christmas Eve \u201cwith my sister and brother and just two girlfriends.\u201d After the holiday, it will transpire she fractured her arm while spinning on her \u201cbeautiful skates\u201d through the \u201ctwilight of the desert\u201d: that\u2019s why she\u2019s wearing a sling in MOJO\u2019s cover photograph.<\/p>\n Ever since she studied philosophy at New York\u2019s Fordham University in the late 2000s, there\u2019s been a question lurking in Del Rey\u2019s mind: what if something happened to make the world stop? \u201cSo when it did,\u201d she says, \u201cI was kind of shocked.\u201d The pandemic has inevitably hampered her movements \u2013 festivals cancelled, studio time with producer Jack Antonoff truncated \u2013 but it hasn\u2019t slowed down her creative jumps (or her willingness to crash into social media).<\/p>\n September saw the publication of her poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass. In November, she covered Summertime as a fundraiser for the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras; covering all bases, she also recorded You\u2019ll Never Walk Alone for a documentary about Liverpool FC.<\/p>\n The most significant landmark, however, was the completion of Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the album she has been promising (sometimes as White Hot Forever) since the release of 2019\u2019s Norman Fucking Rockwell! Bruce Springsteen, who knows a bit about the flipside of the American dream, loved that album: \u201cShe just creates a world of her own and invites you in,\u201d he said. The cover showed Del Rey standing on a boat, one arm around Jack Nicholson\u2019s grandson Duke, the other reaching towards the camera as if to save the viewer from the water. Behind her, the Californian coast is on fire. The Greatest, Norman Fucking Rockwell!\u2019s defining song, was the cover\u2019s aural analogue: \u201cHawaii just missed that fireball\/LA is in flames it\u2019s getting hot\u2026 Kanye West is blond and gone\/Life On Mars ain\u2019t just a song\/I hope the livestream\u2019s almost on.\u201d But where do you go after burning America down? Did she know what was next?<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d says Del Rey lightly. \u201cI felt totally fucked.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n YOU WOULD HAVE GOT\u00a0long odds, in 2012, on the internet phenomenon of the previous year\u2019s Video Games becoming the decade\u2019s most remarkable and provocative pop star. Back then, Lana Del Rey was more think-piece cipher than Boss-approved songwriter: \u201ca young fiction,\u201d sniffed the Los Angeles Times, \u201cdaughter of a domain-name magnate.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n The record states that Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was born in New York in 1985; as a baby, she moved with her parents upstate to Lake Placid. Music was around, but not unusually so. \u201cFrom what I was told,\u201d she says, \u201cI sang verses before I spoke words, but I don\u2019t think that necessarily meant I had to, or was going to be a singer.\u201d Much else in her supposed biography, she says, is misinformation.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople said I came from money,\u201d she recounts. \u201cIt was really tough to get over some stigma of this idea of having my dad buying my album and giving me a record deal and us being some rich white family when we fought over money constantly when we were young.\u201d Later, she says \u201cI was not from the right side of the tracks, period.\u201d<\/p>\n Sent to boarding school to address an alcohol problem \u2013 a period she captured in This Is What Makes Us Girls from her Born To Die album of 2012 \u2013 she \u201cwas made fun of mercilessly for being white trash. It was so hard, every minute of it was super-tough, not having come from Greenwich. Being super straight-edge in college was just, like, crazy. It\u2019s been the road less travelled the whole time.\u201d She has no interest, she insists, in properly telling her own story,\u201cbeautiful\u201d though she says it is: \u201cI don\u2019t give a fuck about people knowing [mocking little voice] my inner thoughts as a third grader.\u201d<\/p>\n Early detractors, chasing down a narrow idea of \u201cauthenticity\u201d, were bothered by her musical prehistory \u2013 stalled experiments and false starts that might once have been called \u201cpaying your dues\u201d. In 2006, she made Sirens under the name May Jailer, spindly alt-folk with a Linda Perhacs wobble that was never officially released. Her next \u2018first\u2019 album, Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant, was removed by her managers from the internet in 2010, preparing a clean slate for the post-Video Games era.<\/p>\n \u2028Yet as the plausibly deniable satire of Brooklyn Baby from 2014\u2019s Ultraviolence indicates (\u201cWell my boyfriend\u2019s in a band\/He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed\u201d), she put in the hours on New York\u2019s grottiest stages. In 2008, Del Rey was living in the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in New Jersey. She would also take the light rail to record with producer David Kahne on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District \u2013 sessions that would ultimately become her first EP, Kill Kill, and the since repudiated Lana Del Ray. She had a deal with David Nichtern\u2019s 5 Points Records; Lady Gaga\u2019s manager Bob Leone secured her some classes at the Songwriter\u2019s Hall Of Fame; her senior year of metaphysics at Fordham was ending. Odd little paths opened up: she auditioned for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the musical scored by Bono and The Edge, and \u201cmaybe thought about Broadway. You\u2019d get like a hundred dollars for singing background on records that would lead to nowhere. There was this company that emerged called The Orchard that was taking submissions for, like, toilet paper commercials and I probably did one, like, under a pseudonym. Definitely the happiest I\u2019ve ever been. Stay in the middle, no dog in the race, people would even hire me for background stuff. I tried to act so cool on every sofa I sat at.\u201d<\/p>\n It was only in 2010, when she met her current manager Ben Mawson at the CMJ Festival in New York\u2019s Chinatown, that gears shifted and she glimpsed a significant future for herself: \u201cThen I moved to London with him that week and he got me out of my deal that day.\u201d<\/p>\n Success was not immediate. \u201cI lived in a shitty flat with no heat, it was so awful \u2013 but they told me it was on Camden Road near where Amy Winehouse used to play at the Roundhouse, and I loved Amy.\u201d Her voice softens dreamily. \u201cI loved Amy.\u201d<\/p>\n Fed up with trying to write songs for other people, one day she \u201cjust said \u2018fuck it\u2019\u201d to her collaborator Justin Parker: \u201c\u2018I\u2019m going to write what I want to write now.\u2019\u201d In a Dolly Parton-style fit of productivity, within 72 hours she had Video Games, Born To Die, Blue Jeans and Ride. On July 23, 2011, just under a month after Video Games appeared on the internet, Del Rey was on a train to Glasgow when Mawson told her she had received her first review. \u201cI had 10 seconds of the most elated feeling,\u201d she remembers, \u201cand then the news everywhere, on all of the televisions, was that Amy had died on her front steps and I was like no. NO.\u201d She breathes in sharply. \u201cEveryone was watching, like, mesmerised, but I personally felt like I didn\u2019t even want to sing any more.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/04\/Chemtrails-1.jpg” title_text=”Chemtrails-1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n TEN SECONDS OF ELATION\u00a0seems to be as much pleasure as Del Rey has ever taken from her press. When she covered Don\u2019t Let Me Be Misunderstood on 2015\u2019s Honeymoon album, it was not casually chosen: anger at the way she feels she has been misrepresented surges through her conversation, despite the four billion streams, the four UK Number 1 albums, and the validation of famous fans from Stevie Nicks to Courtney Love.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Even Norman Fucking Rockwell!\u2019s ecstatic reception was no antidote. \u201cI knew they were going to like Norman\u2026 because there\u2019s kind of nothing not to like about it,\u201d she shrugs. \u201cNorman\u2026\u2019s just cool, it\u2019s easy to cheer for that.\u201d She doesn\u2019t, however, believe people are cheering for her: in September, she declared she still felt like an \u201cunderdog\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019m in London I\u2019m reminded of what other people think of me in a great way. Being on the cover of MOJO \u2013 I fucking love MOJO. It\u2019s crazy to me, crazy to me, crazy to me that I could be on the cover of MOJO but it\u2019s a little different \u2013 ha! \u2013 over here,\u201d she says, ie, in America. \u201cI mean, I guess I\u2019ll never forget my first four years of interviews. They just fucking burned me.\u201d<\/p>\n There was the one where the journalist \u201cmade fun of me mercilessly, for like, five hours about how I adopted a New York City accent and that everyone knew it was fake, so just give it up. It was embarrassing \u2013 he humiliated me. So by the time he asked me about feminism, I said I just wanted to talk about aerospace travel.\u201d<\/p>\n A 2014 Guardian interview headlined \u201cI Wish I Was Dead Already\u201d is another thorn in her psyche. \u201cI didn\u2019t say I wanted to die because of the 27 Club \u2013 I said I was having, like, a fucking hard time. The way people talk about mental health in 2020\u201d \u2013 she makes the noise of an explosion \u2013 \u201cmind blown. Talk about a different world compared with five years ago. You said anything remotely like you\u2019re not feeling so good that day and it\u2019s like, \u2018Woah, you\u2019ve set women back like 200 years.\u2019 Or \u2018Witch!\u2019 It was super-hard to be a real person.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Del Rey continued to build her musical world, creating a reality nobody could dismiss. \u2018Evolution\u2019 suggests dramatic Bowie-like shape-shifts; instead, her six albums have been a process of refining her core material \u2013 the palette of upcycled hip-hop, vintage Hollywood glamour and Laurel Canyon classicism. But Norman Fucking Rockwell!\u2019s widescreen dazzle was a dead end of sorts \u2013 \u201cI had to turn back inward,\u201d she says \u2013 and Chemtrails Over The Country Club appears to reveal a more vulnerable Del Rey: lighter on the LA menace, more innocently emotional: \u201cWe did it for fun\/We did it for free,\u201d she sings sweetly on the song Yosemite, \u201cwe did it for the right reasons.\u201d It\u2019s an album that looks at the road ahead, but also, back to where she\u2019s come from, making her strongest connection yet with her antecedents.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been covering Joni and dancing with Joan,\u201d she sings on Chemtrails\u2026\u2019 Dance Till We Die \u2013 and it\u2019s all true. In October 2019, Del Rey duetted with Joan Baez on her 1975 song Diamonds And Rust at Berkeley\u2019s Greek Theatre; a night of non-stop dancing with the 80-year-old folk hero followed. And as promised, Chemtrails\u2026 includes a Joni Mitchell cover: For Free, from Mitchell\u2019s 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon. Reprising their October 2019 performance at the Hollywood Bowl, Del Rey shares the verses out with Arizonan singer-songwriter Zella Day and Weyes Blood\u2019s Natalie Mering. A bittersweet commentary on the value of art, Mitchell contrasts her \u201cvelvet curtain calls\u201d with a busker\u2019s purity \u2013 it\u2019s a song, says Del Rey, that means \u201ceverything\u201d to her.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way things started off for me in the way I was portrayed was that I was feigning emotional sensitivity. I really didn\u2019t like that,\u201d she says coldly. \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t even get famous \u2019til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn\u2019t give a fuck.\u201d<\/p>\n For one, Natalie Mering doesn\u2019t doubt Del Rey\u2019s investment in For Free. \u201cI think the verse that Lana sings \u2013 \u201cMe, I play for fortunes\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s her story too,\u201d she says. \u201cShe understands the ephemeral quality of music and that it can\u2019t be completely commodified, even though she\u2019s done such a great job of doing that. I think Joni is very similar.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n BAEZ\u00a0 AND MITCHELL, Del Rey says, are \u201clike unicorns\u201d. \u201cJoan, Bob, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, it\u2019s less the albums and more the songs \u2013 the single perfect songs. Like Diamonds And Rust or Woodstock.\u201d She rummages on You Tube to find a \u201cstaggering\u201d 1962 coffeehouse performance from Baez. \u201cI see a lot of people now wanting to be like other people \u2013 and hey, it\u2019s not like I don\u2019t want to be like other people too \u2013 but I think there were so many less options to look at in the \u201960s, so you kind of just got what you got. You got a Janis or you got a Joan or you got a Jimi \u2013 it wasn\u2019t like there was Jimi One, Jimi Two, Jimi Three. When I\u2019m producing things alone, it\u2019s impossible for me to sound anything other than a singer-songwriter. Actually, that\u2019s not true,\u201d she corrects herself. \u201cI\u2019ve got my own little ways about me.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Mering, comparing Del Rey to Peggy Lee \u201cif she was, like, I\u2019m just going to write everything myself,\u201d agrees. \u201cShe\u2019s very free and she\u2019s loose. What she goes for in terms of when she\u2019s writing and working, it\u2019s very magical and intuitive and it\u2019s not very calculated \u2013 even though I think maybe she\u2019s been accused of that in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n That looseness \u2013 a willingness to wander \u2013 feels more present on Chemtrails\u2026 than previous albums, yet she insists it has been \u201cso much harder than any other record I\u2019ve made.\u201d Covid separated her from Antonoff \u2013 also a collaborator with St. Vincent and Taylor Swift \u2013 in the final stages of recording and she missed him. \u201cEverything that could be terrible is hilarious in Jack\u2019s world. I think that\u2019s why he does so well. It\u2019s a rare quality for a man to have that softer kind of side \u2013 all hilarity and no inappropriateness.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she finds listening to the new album \u201ca fight\u201d, conceding that she\u2019s offering a pre-emptive critique. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so much that I thought the songs fantastically fit together with like seamless, sunkissed production \u2013 but you know, there\u2019s a life lived in there.\u201d<\/p>\n Del Rey has long used Los Angeles to colour and contour her songs. But Chemtrails roves further \u2013 Tulsa, Nebraska, Florida \u2013 a fitting backcloth for a record about freedom in a world where everything has a price. Not All Who Wander Are Lost \u2013 a song whose sky-high trill reminds Del Rey of \u201cCinderella in the movie where she\u2019s holding the bluebird\u201d \u2013 romanticises wanderlust. Wild At Heart and the title track (\u201cI\u2019m not unhinged or unhappy\/I\u2019m just wild\u201d) hint at something untameable. If For Free is the record\u2019s presiding spirit, you can also feel the vibrations of Mitchell\u2019s Cactus Tree, a song that acknowledges the hard work of \u201cbeing free\u201d \u2013 shedding compromise, swerving control.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a struggle Del Rey maps onto her folk and country influences, most explicitly on Breaking Up Slowly. A mournful lament riffing on Tammy Wynette and George Jones\u2019s notoriously turbulent relationship, it was written with Tennessean singer-songwriter Nikki Lane, who supported Del Rey in 2019. In a hotel room, Lane mentioned that somebody told her she was \u201cbreaking up slowly\u201d. Del Rey immediately sang \u201c\u2026is a hard thing to do\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the most incredible things about being around her is like, she is a song,\u201d says Lane of Del Rey. \u201cIt\u2019s just coming out of her at all hours of the day.\u201d They have written four more originals; there is also, says Del Rey, \u201ca cover album of country songs\u201d and one of \u201cother folk songs\u201d. Del Rey expects \u201cscepticism,\u201d but explains her father and uncle Phil Madeira (one of Emmylou Harris\u2019s Red Dirt Boys) exposed her to country music in her youth. Her tastes are \u201cstark and blue, somewhat outlaw\u201d: Hank Williams, Bobbie Gentry, Patsy Cline, Wynette. \u201cWith a little Marty Robbins and Johnny Paycheck. I went back and listened to Ride [from 2012 EP Paradise] and Video Games and thought, you know, they\u2019re kind of country. I mean, they\u2019re definitely not pop. Maybe the way Video Games got remastered, they\u2019re pop \u2013 but there\u2019s something Americana about it for sure. So let\u2019s see how these things come out \u2013 I\u2019m not going to have pedal steel guitar on every single thing, but it is easy for me to write.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/04\/2_Die.jpg” title_text=”2_Die” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n A YEAR OR SO AGO, Del Rey attended a party with Jack Antonoff and St. Vincent at the house of Guy Oseary, manager of Madonna and U2. \u201cSomething happened,\u201d she says, \u201ckind of a situation like \u2013 never meet your idols. And I just thought, \u2018I think it\u2019s interesting that the best musicians end up in such terrible places.\u2019 I thought to myself, \u2018I\u2019m going to try my best not to change because I love who I am.\u2019 I said, \u2018Jack, it\u2019s dark.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Well, it\u2019s dark \u2013 but \u2028I mean, it\u2019s just a game.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n The incident inspires a song on Chemtrails\u2026 Dark But Just A Game mixes Portishead, Ricky Nelson\u2019s song Garden Party and Allen Ginsberg\u2019s poem Howl (\u201cThe best ones lost their minds\u201d) into a potent statement of defiance.<\/p>\n \u201cDark But Just A Game is so her to me,\u201d Antonoff will tell MOJO: \u201cfly down the rabbit hole and smile in the same breath.\u201d<\/p>\n The game, however, takes its toll. As Del Rey talks, it frequently feels as if she\u2019s dusting herself down from past humiliations, brushing off old slights.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are constantly inferring that I\u2019ve done so much to myself, when I\u2019ve never even been under anaesthesia or whatever,\u201d she says unprompted, apparently still stung by 2012 speculations over the size of her lips. Occasionally, she makes grand statements: \u201cI wanted music to change in the early 2000s and I wanted it to be better than it was. I think it is and I genuinely think I had a hand in it for female singer-songwriters.\u201d They don\u2019t land like shots from a weaponised ego \u2013 more the affirmations of someone who still feels as if she doesn\u2019t say it, nobody will.<\/p>\n On a Chemtrails\u2026 song called White Dress she sings in a breathlessly rapt whisper of being \u201conly 19\u201d, working as a waitress, listening to The White Stripes and Kings Of Leon. \u201cLook how I do this,\u201d she sings with trembling innocence, \u201clook how I\u2019ve got this.\u201d Then comes the fall: \u201cIt kind of makes me feel that I was better off.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure the grass is always greener,\u201d Del Rey says, looking back on her waitressing days, \u201cbut I had a lot of fun dreaming about what was going to come next. Also, I really liked being of service and I still do \u2013 I do lots of little things in my spare time that put me back sort of in that service space. How I kind of grew up was to be a man amongst men and a grain of sand on the beach and I preferred to stay in the middle of the boat in that way. Sometimes I feel, with fame, it can put you on the peripheries, where the vultures can pick at you. It\u2019s dangerous on the edges.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that I aspire to be the girl next door,\u201d she says later, \u201cbut it\u2019s just that I actually was and I think what some people don\u2019t understand is that the girl next door has things going on, too. A lot of these other people who I see portraying that image are not that way at all \u2013 they\u2019re like the biggest bitches who live in, like, insane mansions and who rip people off. This is not bitterness speaking at all. It\u2019s literally just kind of just the facts, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n In May 2020, Del Rey posted a \u201cquestion for the culture\u201d on Instagram. In it, she expressed her belief that artists including Beyonc\u00e9, Cardi B and Kehlani were applauded for portraying their sexuality in all its messy complexity, while she was accused of \u201cglamorising abuse\u201d in songs like Ultraviolence, where she quoted the title of The Crystals\u2019 Goffin & King classic He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss). The culture\u2019s answer was not sympathetic: Del Rey was held to account for appearing to single out artists of colour, and criticised for asking feminism to save a place for \u201cwomen who look and act like me\u2026 the kind of women who are slated for being their authentic, delicate selves.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t saying white like me,\u201d she insists, emphasising that the women she mentioned are artists she loves. \u201cI was saying people who are made a joke of like me.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Shortly after speaking to MOJO, Del Rey issues another pre-emptive social media strike, pointing out the new album\u2019s artwork \u2013 a photograph of the singer surrounded by her friends \u2013 does feature women of colour. Three days after that, she posts a video railing against magazines suggesting she told Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac that she didn\u2019t believe Donald Trump meant to incite the Capitol riot. In fact, she says, she was accusing him of sociopathy \u2013 a subject, she tells MOJO, she studied for six years, along with \u201cpsychopathy and narcissism and delusions of grandeur\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Trump became President, I was not surprised,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause the macrocosm is the mirror of what goes on in our bedrooms. In our inner lives.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the things I was writing [songs] about, people shamed me for,\u201d she continues, \u201cbut I like to think now I was actually writing about what thousands of housewives were experiencing and no one ever said a thing from Brentwood to Boca Raton. I just dyed my hair black and talked about it and I got a lot of shit for it.\u201d<\/p>\n She declares that \u201cIt takes a more dignified-looking person with a better reputation to call out the world, or the President or some guy who runs a restaurant. I\u2019m going to be the person who corroborates that story, the blonde at the end of the bar\u2026 The reason why I can\u2019t be a person who starts certain movements is because of what people have written that isn\u2019t true. And that\u2019s too bad \u2013 because I know a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Does she feel she\u2019s been discredited?<\/p>\n \u201cI was discredited for seven years,\u201d she says, her voice rising so fiercely it\u2019s briefly unclear whether she\u2019s laughing or crying. \u201cThere\u2019s no other way of looking it.\u201d<\/p>\n In the poem SportCruiser from Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, Del Rey wonders if learning to fly could help her navigate life, if learning to sail would show her which way the wind was blowing. Then she realises writing is all the adventure she needs.<\/p>\n \u201cI certainly have to circumnavigate the globe quite a few times to come back to the fact that what I do is that I write, that I live here in LA, that I know who I am,\u201d she says. \u201cI think I\u2019m very hopeful that I\u2019ll feel more and more serene, because that is an objective for me. I just like the idea of waking up peacefully, rather than waking up in a sweat, throwing my feet down on the ground and being like, \u2018Oh, what\u2019s going wrong today!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Talking earlier about her whispery vocal on White Dress, Del Rey said it was not only close to unedited \u201cjournaling\u201d but \u201calso, not too afraid about being kind of stupid. The way I sound in the chorus \u2013 because I know it\u2019s\u2026 not great, you know,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n It sounds perfect for the song, though \u2013 trembling, awestruck. The voice of somebody on the brink of something. She agrees \u2013 not because it catches her teenage perspective, but because it speaks to her now.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually said to a friend the other day I feel something brewing,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the first time in a long time. I have no idea what it is. But I know that it\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n This article originally appeared in Issue 329 of MOJO<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wild At HeartIs Lana Del Rey \u2013 the Springsteen-approved laureate of LA darkness \u2013 lightening up? It’s 2021, and a new album opens a sunnier chapter in her controversial roman-a-clef, and folk legend Joan Baez advocates her acceptance in the pantheon. But while serenity seems almost in reach, some wounds still burn and grievances rankle. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-mojo-interview"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cNever meet your idols. It\u2019s interesting that the best musicians end up in such terrible places.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Lana Del Rey<\/h2>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very free and she\u2019s loose. Very magical and intuitive and it\u2019s not very calculated.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Weyes Blood on LDR<\/h2>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very hopeful that I\u2019ll feel more and more serene. I just like the idea of waking up peacefully, rather than waking up in a sweat.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Lana Del Rey<\/h2>\n