Lana Del Rey is one of my favorite music artists, despite the tone-deaf, offensive things she’s said in the past. My feelings about her are complicated. I love her music. I also think she has trouble learning from good-faith criticism, and gets defensive when people call her out instead of reflecting and growing. She continuously put her foot in her mouth in 2020, first with her infamous “question for the culture” post and then with the multiple posts she made about it afterwards. Girlfriend really needed to do some shadow work and introspection and stop being the poster girl for white feminism. Did she? I don’t know. But I guess she realized having social media might be something of a liability after that. In 2021, she deactivated her social media accounts, including her Instagram. But almost as soon as she did that, she reactivated @honeymoon on Instagram, which was initially created to promote her 2015 album of the same name. She made it private, and I was one of the 2 million people to get access before she closed it off. Lana’s Instagrams on @honeymoon were always pretty casual and oddly intimate. She also stayed away from saying anything controversial, as far as I saw. Well, now she’s shutting down @honeymoon, and didn’t really say why. This is in the midst of her appearances at several festivals, performing live for the first time in four years.

Lana Del Rey will no longer be providing updates to fans on social media.

The 37-year-old “Summertime Sadness” hitmaker quit social media back in 2021 but returned to Instagram to share content with her followers.

However, she shared a new message explaining her decision to depart the platform once again two years later.

“Thank you so much for everything,” she began the message, which was shared on her Instagram story. “Now that Rob‘s record is out and now you know where I’m touring this account is closing. Good luck and love u.”

[via Just Jared]

It’s kind of hilarious that Lana, who was accused of nepotism early in her career, has made her father Rob Grant a Nepo Daddy. When Lana left social media (for the most part) in 2021, she obliquely referenced doing other things besides music. I wonder if that plan is materializing now, and what it could be. I could see her being quite happy teaching ceramics at a high school or something like that. Or maybe she just wants more privacy. It’s interesting to me that Lana has just been able to do whatever the hell she wants, essentially, and Interscope (her record label) is fine with it. A quick rundown of what I mean: Aside from her first album, none of her music even approaches being radio friendly or a top 40 hit. She takes selfies in her car and uses them as cover art for her singles. She did no promotion for her eighth album, Blue Banisters. I know someone who works in the same industry and has dealt directly with Lana’s people, and let’s just say it’s as chaotic on the back end sometimes as it is on the front. Her album releases are often delayed for mysterious reasons. Now here she is doing shows at these giant festivals, including Glastonbury and Outside Lands, and you’d think she’d be obligated to do more to promote them. But instead she just opts out of social media! She gets away with a lot in terms of image management, promotion, and social media presence. But Lana does sell records in an era where that’s hard to do, so that’s likely why.

Anyway I think she’ll be back to Instagram. Whatever she says to the contrary, Lana likes attention and wants to be seen. There’s a verified Insta account called @oceanblvd that was created around the same time as the release of her most recent album, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard. (Any run-on sentence can be a Lana song title now. It’s become a joke within the fandom. “Drinking cherry Coke on a Pendleton blanket under the oak tree on the hill above the 405”? Coming soon to a sad-girl playlist near you!) She’ll probably be on the Ocean Boulevard account in two months, sharing typewritten poetry, polaroids of herself with her siblings, and randomly visiting chili cook-offs in Long Beach.

photos credit: Fayes Vision/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images, MHD/Avalon and Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon