Lana Del Rey accuses people of making her Instagram post a "race war"
Lana Del Rey has sent “a couple of final notes” about an Instagram post that has courted controversy after she named female artists to hit back at claims her music “glamorises abuse”.
The singer has denied fans and journalists’ interpretation of her note as an attack on the artists she named, most of whom were women of colour, including Cardi B, Kehlani, Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé.
“I’m sorry that the folks who I can only assume are super Trump/Pence supporters or hyper liberals or flip-flopping headline grabbing critics can’t read and want to make it a race war,” she wrote in a fresh message shared today (May 23).
In the original post, Del Rey said the aforementioned artists, as well as Doja Cat, Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello, “have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating etc”. She then asked a rhetorical question: “can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money – or whatever I want – without being crucified or saying that I’m glamorising abuse??????”
Now, the songwriter has attempted to clear up any misinterpretation by issuing new comments. “I want to say that I remain firm in my clarity and stance in that what i was writing about was the importance of self-advocacy for the more delicate and often dismissed, softer female personality, and that there does have to be room for that type in what will inevitably become a new wave/3rd wave of feminism that is rapidly approaching,” she wrote.
Del Rey added that the issue was “with *female critics and *female alternative artists who are disassociated from their own fragility and sexuality and berate more sexually liberated like myself and the women I mentioned.”
She went on to accuse her detractors of wanting “the drama” and that is “nothing new here in your reactions.” You can read Del Rey’s statement in full below:
Elsewhere in the post Del Rey revealed the title of a second poetry book arriving next month: Behind the Iron Gates – Insights from an Institution. In her original Instagram post, she mentioned she is working on two different poetry books.
It’s one of two books she is releasing ahead of a new album, the follow-up to last year’s ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’, on September 5.
Yesterday (May 22) Doja Cat responded to Del Rey’s post with a series of unclear comments.
