Pop star Lana Del Rey, in an extensive interview for Interview magazine, said there is “no way in hell” the Black Lives Matter movement is going away, likening it to the #MeToo movement, which she said was “not just a passing movement.”
The “Cinnamon Girl” singer discussed a variety of topics during a Q&A with Jack Antonoff, the producer of her upcoming album Chemtrails Over the Country Club. Del Rey, who has come under fire from critics for supposedly “glamorizing abuse” in her lyrics, spoke about the impact the Chinese coronavirus has had on individuals, sparking them to explore their emotional and mental health.
“It’s a real test of our emotional resilience. If we can get this right culturally, we can open up a few decades of the greatest music and the greatest dance and the greatest theater and the greatest human interaction,” Antonoff said — an assessment the NME Award winner agreed with.
“There’s no way we’re going to get it wrong. We’re really on the right path. The #MeToo movement was not just a passing movement. Black Lives Matter, no way in hell that’s going away,” the singer said. “People talking out about mental health, there’s no way they’re not going to seek even more genetic testing to find out what they’re predisposed to.”
She added that the “scariness and worriedness and disappointment at the same time is like being in a big rocket that is shooting us into a new emotional place, and we’re going to come out of it and be like, ‘I don’t want to go shopping. I need to go talk to somebody about something.'”
Del Rey does not necessarily fit in the mold of a classic Hollywood progressive. While she criticized Kanye West for publicizing his support for President Trump in 2018, she later said was “grateful to be in a country where everyone can have their own political views” and explained that she does “not necessarily identify as a liberal.”
“I’m really not more of a liberal than I am a Republican — I’m in the middle,” she told the New York Times last year. “But it was more like the mood and the vibe around, Yo, this man is the greatest! Really? The greatest? It hurt me. Did I have to say anything? No. But it’s more just a line that represents a lot of things.”
Earlier this year, Grammy nominee came under fire from progressives who smeared her as “racist” over an Instagram post, in which she questioned some of the absurdities of modern-day feminism, wondering why some female artists can sing about “being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating, etc.” while critics accuse her of “glamorizing abuse” in her music:
“Let this be clear, I’m not a feminist, but there has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me — the kind of woman who says no but men hear yes — the kind of women who are slated mercilessly for being their authentic, delicate selves,” she said as part of the lengthy post. That wording — “for women who look and act like me” — triggered SJWs, who assumed she was referring to race.
“When I mentioned women who look like me, I didn’t mean white like me,” Del Rey said, adding that critics “want to turn my [Instagram] post, my advocacy for fragility into a race war.”
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