The meter has once again been reset, and it has now been zero days since the last Lana Del Rey controversy. Previously, on This Shit: Del Rey released the cover of her new album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, along with a caption in which she wildly attempted to pre-empt criticism (?) by defending (?) the inclusion of women of color, noting that some of her best friends and boyfriends have been “rappers”—implying an equivalency between people of color and rappers. Oh, and she used last week’s failed violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to promote her album (and it really says something that this part feels like a minor quibble).
On Monday, Del Rey appeared on BBC Radio 1's Future Sounds to discuss her album and the topic turned to politics. Per Entertainment Weekly, Del Rey—who previously drew criticism online for dating a white cop—commented on Donald Trump’s role in the insurrection, saying, “He doesn’t know that he’s inciting a riot. I believe that.” Many people naturally took Del Rey’s comments at face value and felt as though she was defending Trump, prompting her (oh here we go) to defend herself on Twitter by deploying the good ol’ “out of context” defense:
She really is that one friend who stirs shit up and makes larger socio-political issues about herself and then gets all upset when she’s called out on it. You know, that one.
In the second tweet, Del Rey echoed a sentiment expressed in that same Future Sounds interview, in which she asserts that “the madness of Trump, as bad as it was, it really needed to happen”—an opinion most often shared by teenagers who doodle the anarchy symbol on schoolbook covers. Del Rey went on to share the damning results from her personal assessment of America:
We really needed a reflection of our world’s greatest problem, which is not climate change, it’s the problem of sociopathy and narcissism. Especially in America. It’s going to kill the world. It’s not capitalism, it’s narcissism.
It’s the lack of self-awareness for us, really.