Lana del Rey has a new album – Norman F–king Rockwell – which is already out, and it already has two singles. I’ve listened to the singles and I’m not into them right now, but I usually have to listen to her stuff a few times before it grows on me. I like Lana more as time passes – I think it’s good to have someone in the music scene who’s a little bit affected, witchy and vintage-y. She cracks me up, honestly. Anyway, in one of her new singles (“The Greatest”), Lana has this lyric: “Kanye West is blonde and gone.” This is a reference to last year’s MAGA mess with Kanye, where it got so bad that even celebrities like Lana and Chris Evans were challenging Kanye’s MAGA delusions during a particularly bad break with reality (for Ye). At the time, Lana wrote to Kanye: “Trump becoming our president was a loss for the country but your support of him is a loss for the culture.” In a new interview with the New York Times (via High Snobiety), Lana talks about the lyric.
Whether she’s heard from Kanye: “No. Gratefully, no. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to elicit a response. You never feel better for having written something like that. But Kanye just means so much to us. And by the way, I’m grateful to be in a country where everyone can have their own political views. I’m really not more of a liberal than I am a Republican — I’m in the middle. 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.”
On Trump and Obama: “I was there when Obama got elected in Union Square. Under that administration, it felt like a dream had come true-ish and we could focus on the arts and it was a time of reprieve and we didn’t have to talk about certain things. But of course there was a lot going on. One portion of the dots that people are connecting is: ‘Is it possible that this presidency is engendering this idea that it’s O.K. to be more violent?’ And a lot of people are saying yes. Someone who says ‘grab ’em by the p–sy,’ that does make someone else feel a little bit more entitled to bring his rifle to school. If there wasn’t a time for protest music, there absolutely is now.”
“…It was a time of reprieve and we didn’t have to talk about certain things…” I agree with that – during the Obama administration, there wasn’t a toxic blend of celebrity/political news in which gossip blogs like this one felt the need to join the f–king Resistance. We could just gossip and talk about fashion and celebrities and not how the government is putting babies in cages. She’s sort of right about how Trump has led to a more violent culture too, but it’s not just about “grab ‘em by the p-ssy,” it’s about the toxic masculinity that permeates our culture and political world, and Trump representing that and feeding off that, and feeding INTO it too.
As for what she says about Kanye… what’s clear is that she was a fan of his art and it drives her crazy that he’s MAGA.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red and WENN.
Her new album is a masterpiece. I wish she won AOTY. It’s crazy that she has 0 Grammys.
I haven’t heard the album, but I LOOOOOVE her version of Doin’ Time. She does her thing very well. I’m definitely going to download the album now!
Her new album is fantastic. I could listen to Venice Bitch all day.
The title track kills me. It’s like the Lana version of Truth Hurts, about how men are garbage. Love it.
Ugh it really is! ”Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news” OUCH!
And it just sounds so heavenly too.
@Miley_Serious
Pathetic trolling attempt. Bye! 👋
This new album is her best since Born to Die (a classic to me). My boyfriend is an audiophile, and I am SO EXCITED to blast the whole thing on his amazing speakers this weekend.
I have a hard time understanding her. Might be because English is not my first language, but it reads like word salad to me.
@Wilma, you’re right. English is my first language and my profession, and she’s not very articulate. I still like her, but she doesn’t sound very knowledgeable about politics, which is why she sounds so word salad-y.
She uses what we call signal words like ‘but’, but then she doesn’t say something that needs ‘but’.
lol! I think thats the perfect way to describe her approach with words. Even in her songs she injects random words that don’t really fit.
She’s just SO artsy, you know. lol
Lanas new album is actual the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. Definitely her best work so far. Especially ’The Greatest’ which has the Kanye line.
I also appreciate the growth shes had considering she used to bash feminism and call politics ’non-interesting’. Now her music and attitude is much more mature and there is actually quite a bit of social commentary in her songs.
I still feel like she, and a lot of other people, portray the Obama years inaccurately. Perhaps it’s because I live in L.A., but the Obama administration faced a lot of criticism for its treatment of immigrants. It too went after immigrants who hadn’t committed serious crimes but began to scale back after serious criticism. The Obama years were just “meh” in my opinion, and I’m a black woman who was, of course, excited to see him become president. Obama was criticized for drone strikes, for talking down to the black community and not really improving outcomes for the marginalized. I am not saying his administration was at all on par with Trump’s, but it wasn’t great or glorious in my opinion. He was pretty much a centrist and, given the fierce amount of racism he suffered, he got even less done than he set out to do.
Oh Obama was definitely not perfect. And there were/are legitimate criticisms about his administration and policies. But at the end of the day, I felt he was trying to do his best, and was trying to do what was best for the country. I think he is an example of someone who has all these ideals and then when hit with the reality of being in the Oval Office, realizes that not all those ideals are going to happen. (And then of course factor in the extreme opposition he faced from Rs.)
In some ways, it reminds me of what we often say about Meghan Markle. There are reasons to criticize Obama, but Republicans were so busy turning every moment into a scandal that it was hard to take the legitimate criticism seriously.
And I think Obama’s legacy is also very much helped by Trump – in that, we do remember it as a better time, mainly bc we weren’t arguing over sharpies on weather maps. But that kind of stuff will shake out over time and his legacy will even out, so to speak.
“who I guarantee, has had very minimal impact (if at all) on their lives.”
LOL yep, definitely a troll.
Obama wasn’t perfect, but he did a LOT of good. The Presidency has so much power, and he used his for legitimately good purposes. It’s hard to take critiques of his immigration policies seriously when you don’t factor in DACA. He couldn’t stop immigration laws from being implemented, he couldn’t change the laws without Congress, but he did restructure the priority of deportation. He gave over half a million undocumented people the ability to breath easier because they didn’t have to fear deportation. He never advocated for open borders, and that may be disappointing to some, but I find it to be a reasonable position.
If you look at what he did for the environment, the judiciary and the SCOTUS, the way American funds are used to help women around the world with their medical care, Obamacare, etc., he did do so many positive things.
When you look at the big picture, Obama’s presidency was a very good thing for our country.
Listening to the album now. I know people gave her a lot of grief at the beginning of her career, but I like the dreamy, sleepy quality to her voice and a number of her songs
.
It sounds to me like personally she’s centrist but votes Democrat. I was like that for a long time when I was younger, I was always an Independent but voted mostly Dem, but the GOP has gone so far right that it pushed me much further left and made me get more involved.
I didn’t hate what she had to say, surprisingly.
I absolutely love Kanye’s music so it sucks having to boycott all of his new stuff but it is what it is. He really is blonde and gone.
Lana is one of those very clever people who are better at what they do and the way they do it than at expressing themselves. Musically she is one of the greats for me.
It’s more than her admiring Kanye’s music. They were friends. She sang at his wedding to Kim. Which is why her calling him out was so interesting IMO. Because that’s what a true friend will do: they will tell you the thing you don’t want to but need to hear.
I didn’t realize that. That is pretty cool of her, but that does make it harder to do.
Even Centrist is relative. By Canadian terms, Obama is a Centrist.
I’m in the center between people who lock up babies and don’t believe in science & want to destroy Roe & the other side. F&%k her.
THANK YOU, YES! Now is not the time for the covering of ones’ ass.
I can relate to this. I used to LOVE Kanye, his songs were all over my iPod and I felt bad for him when he lost his mother, when he did the Taylor Swift thing. I was still a fan. But the MAGA, I can’t with. It’s kind of funny because I’m certainly a democrat, I used to consider myself more moderate as well. I guess it’s a combination of Trump and age, but now I’m liberal af and make no apologies lol