After Lana Del Rey herself the internet’s lightning rod by sharing a Instagram post that copped a heap of controversy and backlash for being a tone-deaf take on feminism in pop music with dashes of racial insensitivity, the singer has apologised for her remarks.
And by apologised I mean doubling down on her original stance and digging herself into an even deeper hole. Best go to the toilet first because this is a long one.
Speaking of drama involving female artists, the GOAT team talk about all the attention Adele has gotten on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
Having shared a follow-up to her OG Instagram hot take on feminism, Lana Del Rey has followed that up with an apology video that firmly sits on the “I’m saying sorry but I don’t really mean it” side of the “celebrity apologises” spectrum.
Titled “Nobody gets to tell your story,” Lana Del Rey kicks off her latest attempt to address the controversy and backlash with a redundant “Hey, so I don’t want to beat a dead horse and I don’t want to go on and on about this post thing” before talking about what she meant when she said “there has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me”:
“When I mention women who look like me, I didn’t mean white like me, I mean the kind of women who other people might not believe because they think, ‘Oh, well look at her, she f*ckin’ deserves it,’ or whatever.”
Lana then goes on to talk about “the women she mentioned” and says that while she views them as “friends, peers and contemporaries,” she feels like they get more leeway for artistic interpretation than she does:
“The difference is when I get on the pole, people call me a whore, but when [FKA] Twigs gets on the pole, it’s art. So, I’m reminded constantly by my friends that lyrically, there are layers, complicated psychological factors that play into some of my songwriting, but I just wanna say that the culture is super sick right now, and the fact they want to turn my post, my advocacy for fragility into a race war, it’s really bad.”
She then apologises for not adding one “100 percent Caucasian person into the mix” of women she named, before completely undermining it by playing the “says more about you than me” card:
“You can call me whatever. I’m sorry that I didn’t add one caucasian, 100 percent caucasian person into the mix of the women that I admire. But you know, it really says more about you than it does about me.
“And I think that what’s interesting, it’s the very first time that I decided to tell you anything about my life or the fact that I’m writing books that chronicle that fragility, that 200,000 hateful, spiteful comments come in, and my phone number leaked, and — comments like, ‘You f*cking white b*tch.’ It’s the opposite of the spirit of an advocate. It’s what pauses fragility. But it’s not gonna stop me, period.”
Oh and Lana also managed to shoehorn the title of her new album in there: Chemtrails Over The Country Club. Say what you will, you got to admire that hustle.
To cap off her six-minute non-apology apology Instagram video, Lana Del Rey then reiterates that she isn’t the “enemy” nor is she a “racist” but if you don’t like her post or her stance on feminism in pop music, you can go “f*ck off.”
“But I’m not the enemy, and I’m definitely not racist, so don’t get it twisted. Nobody gets to tell your story except for you. And that’s what I’m gonna do in the next couple books. So God bless and… yeah, f*ck off if you don’t like the post.”
How… nice.
If you got the patience and stomach for it, here’s Lana Del Rey’s video in full for your viewing pleasure(?):
There’s a lot to unpack here about Lana’s decision to double down on her original Instagram post, most of which is how she completely missed the point.
But you know what, let’s not *checks notes* “beat a dead horse” as she said by dogpiling on her (again) because it’s clear that Lana hasn’t learned a damn thing and dumping on her will just be a waste of energy. She’s made her bed so let her lie in it.
The one thing I will comment on is Lana Del Rey’s PR team isn’t getting paid enough to deal with this sort of mess.
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