Member Since: 4/29/2012
Posts: 15,977
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Lana:"I don't like controversy"
Quote:
Lana Del Rey: "I don't play the role of a lolita
ZEIT: In Germany alone, your debut album "Born to Die" has sold 400.000 copies.
Del Rey: Whenever I come to Paris or Berlin, I do catch my breath and think: It's wonderful here, the people like me and my music. And yet I thought for a long time that nobody cared about them. Again and again they said: These songs are too strange to be invested in, too bizarre to be played on the radio.
ZEIT: Do you like being controversial?
Del Rey: No, I don't like controversy. I'd be happy to be a normal singer. But in America, of all places, journalists have been sending me hate mails since the release of "Born to Die" as if they had been waiting to lambast me.
ZEIT: But you also received postive reviews - from the New York Times for example.
Del Rey: Yes, but there was also an author named Jon Caramanica there who dragged the entire album through the mire. The things he wrote about my family were outrageous and false!
ZEIT: So, you're suggesting there's a conspiracy against the pop singer Lana Del Rey among American journalists?
Del Rey: You can see it that way. One part of the journalists later contacted my press agency and apologized: They'd been bored and were looking for an exciting topic. This campaign is rather a comment on journalism in the USA than on my performance. It wasn't about a wrong key on the TV show "Saturday Night Live" - it was about something else.
Del Rey: So what? I think the line is funny. My boyfriend is Scottish, he deems American girls very exotic. He once told me: "You American girls walk around as if your ******* tasted like Coca-Cola, as if you'd wrap yourself into an American flags to sleep." He deems us all very patriotic.
ZEIT: The American flag is rarely missing in one of your videos, in photos you sometimes even cuddle yourself up in one.
Del Rey: Yes, because it just looks good. But I also like the meaning behind this flag: the idea of the American dream.
ZEIT: When one watches the video for "Ride", your American dream resembles the radical maverick stories, which were told by the American independent cinemas in the Sixties. In a long monologue, it says in the beginning: "I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer..."
Del Rey: That's autobiographical! There was a time in which I asked myself: What will you do if your dreams don't all come true? I really did seek safety in men. But "Ride" isn't the story of a victim. And it's not supposed to be a comment on prostitiution like the American media assumes. It's about my own life: What happens if you want to be a great singer but your own home country says: "No, you're not"?
ZEIT: The men in the video look like members of the Hells Angels...
Del Rey: I've always felt like an Outlaw and Biker - I've been riding on the back of motorcycles since my fifteenth birthday. I've also been dating significantly older men since then. I had discovered writing for myself early on and was confident that I would become a successful author. But it came differently. After I stopped driking at age 18 - i had an alcohol problem - I was rather looking for contact to people who were leading established lives.
ZEIT: A lot has changes in your life in 2012.
Del Rey: The things around me have changed. There are now people who listen to and like my music.
ZEIT: How do you get along with feminists? A lot of people had a problem with you lolita look in the video for "Ride":
Del Rey: I don't play the role of a lolita! I just like the text! Lots of popstars play with the lolita thing, barely wear clothes. It's different with me, I wish I knew how to explain it...it's not about being a lolita, it's more about an additude, as if one was choosing polygamy, free love or whatever. It's my choice! It's not about the women's movement for me, and my songs aren't a comment on today's pop music either.
ZEIT: If your songs are so autobiographical: Is there even a difference between you, Lizzy Grant and your fictional character Lana Del Rey?
Del Rey: No, it's just a different name. To me, it both feels the same.
ZEIT: Even when you're modeling for H&M?
Del Rey: Oh well...
ZEIT: Are you even interested in fashion?
Del Rey: No. I mean, you can see what I'm wearing (flannel shirt, tight jeans, mocassins). Jewelry is the only thing I occasionally buy. Sometimes I find a few pretty second hand things.
ZEIT: Is your jacket from a second hand store?
Del Rey: No, it's from K-Mart, a five-and-ten. When we were recently in New York, I was freezing and because there was a K-Mart on the other side of the street, I went inside and bought this jacket. I'm sorry if I don't look very glamourous in it.
Del Rey: I've been singing since I was 17 years old and most of the time, nobody cared about it. To be honest, I don't know why that's different now. I always went the straight path, showed continuity. But recently, people have been seeing as a person who has changed everything about themselves. That probably just promises more commotion.
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So many things cleared up 
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