CruelWorld

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

http://www.complex.com/style/2014/07/neil-krug-interview
 
How did you and Lana get in touch to do the artwork for Ultraviolence?
It's something that has been in the air for the long time. Since 2012, Lana's fans have sent messages to me asking the two of us to collaborate.  (this literally being a shoutout to me)
I generally don't get mail from other musicians' fans, but her audience is dedicated and had me on blast even before we met. Strangely, Lana had picked up a copy of Pulp Art Book years ago but was told that I was dead from a friend of hers, so it came as a surprise when someone at her label suggested that we work together on Ultraviolence. This was the right one for us to do together, as well. It has all of the right elements, and I'm in a good phase to jump on her moving train.
The album cover is a striking, almost haunting image. How did you decide on this shot in the end? 
The cover photograph of her getting out of the car was always one of our top selects. The image was taken in her driveway on our first day of shooting and stood out from the beginning. When we met, we discussed the idea of the cover being the reverse of what you would expect from such a bold album name. When you hear the title Ultraviolence, you almost expect some sort of explosion happening or her shirt covered in blood.
We both agreed that the artwork should have all the undertones present without having to blast it in your face. Stylistically, I was going for something that felt like a lobby card from a bygone midnight movie. In my mind, the cover needed to feel like the last frame of a '60s Polanski film, where the audience has been properly traumatized, and this is the last thing they see before the credits roll.

How does the cover represent the album concept or the title, Ultraviolence?
For me, it says it all without saying anything. It's an easy read when you look at it from a marketing perspective, because it perfectly communicates Lana's vision and is a clear image of her to absorb. For the fans who sit and listen, I think the image will reveal itself like a magic eye pattern. The image is like a window into the narrative.
What do the other photos in the box set represent? The ripped jeans, Lana in the car, the flowers, the city, etc. Where did you shoot them?
All the images she chose are pieces of a bigger picture that work as devices to put you in the right mood or frame of mind—the same way an author can lead you down the rabbit hole with the situation in which he or she places you. We called the selections "in-between moments" when we did the edits in my studio. Everything you see is the moment or action before and after, but not "the moment," if that makes sense. The ripped jeans Polaroid was taken in my living room, and the car shots were taken in her driveway. The allegorical smoking in the hydrangea image is a favorite of mine and was taken at Frank Sinatra's house outside of Los Angeles.

You also shot Lana for our Complex cover. What was that experience like, and what were you going for having done her album photography?
For me, the magazine shoot and the album packaging are two completely separate ideas, so the creative shift is how she is styled and the location choice.  The overall vibe is similar, probably because it's the same guy behind the camera. All of my shoots with her were done so quickly that's it difficult for me to be objective right now, simply because there are so many photographs over such a short period of time.
How did your style as a photographer develop? Have you always been into colorful images, warm hues, Americana, psychedelia, and graininess?
Since the early days I've always tried to keep the work in this space between illustration and photography. Whether the unnatural vividness of the colors is the narrative device or whatever else might be going on, the style is a hodgepodge of many ingredients.
"Window Water Baby Moving" versus "Gantz Graf" if you like. I love making images but never thought I would make photography a career in any capacity. In fact, photography is the only class I ever completely failed in high school. I remember my teacher passing along advice in the vein of "find another outlet for creative ideas." 

Do you have any plans to make a third Pulp Art Book? Why or why not?
Right now I don't have any plans to make another Pulp Book. It's a slightly complicated story, but Joni and I parted ways in 2013, so I don't see any new work from that project happening anytime soon. That being said, we have a giant archive of unreleased work that may come out in some form, but it's hard to say. I could see us releasing a collection of unseen prints, but sitting down to make a new book together again would be difficult. I will forever be proud of that imagery, but it does feel like the old me in a lot of ways. I want the next monograph I do to be completely different.
Is the present ever as intriguing as the past?
The present is far more intriguing and unknown.
If you had unlimited money or resources, what types of projects would you do?
I don't think I would change much to be honest. I love what I do and feel blessed to be in a position to shoot the type of projects that interest me. With unlimited resources I would probably spend a little more time getting the look and narrative just right, or going to more exotic locations, but at the end of the day, you can make magic anywhere. For me, limiting yourself forces the creative side to find a solution which keeps the work more focused.

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

Lana Del Rey knows what you think about her. And she’s learned to live with it.
 
 
INTERVIEW BY DANA DROPPO
PHOTOGRAPHY BY NEIL KRUG

This feature appears
in the August/September
2014 issue of COMPLEX.
 
Satin gowns, fast cars, pills, and parties are the lifeblood of American glamour. Red carpets, unbridled opulence, and the kind of elegance that looks amazing in high-contrast black-and-white photographs are its marrow. Icons like Sinatra, the Kennedys, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe appeared to be beacons of the good life, but behind the velvet rope was a darker, less-than-pristine reality: one rife with gossip, addiction, betrayal, and violence. In 2014, no artist embraces both that world’s intoxicating glow and frayed seams more acutely than Lana Del Rey.
 
On her 2012 breakthrough, Born to Die, Del Rey cast herself as a tragic pop star from a bygone era. Her music videos were epics: on Born to Die’s title track, she begins perched regally on a throne flanked by Bengal tigers, and ends with model Bradley Soileau carrying her bloody body from the fiery wreckage of a 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1; in “National Anthem,” she plays Jackie O to A$AP Rocky’s JFK. Where many of her contemporaries reveled in little-known subcultures and outsider artists, Del Rey went for icons. “Marilyn’s my mother/Elvis is my daddy/Jesus is my bestest friend,” she wrote in the introduction to her Anthony Mandler-directed short film Tropico, released last year. Del Rey’s 20th Century nostalgia (cloaked in beats provided by Emile Haynie, Kid Cudi’s original producer, and Kanye West-collaborator Jeff Bhasker, among others) proved immensely successful. Only four albums released in 2012 outsold Born to Die, which went platinum in the U.S. and charted in 11 countries. Del Rey sold more than 12 million singles globally, received two Grammy nods (Best Pop Vocal Album, for her EP Paradise; Best Song Written for Visual Media, for “Young and Beautiful”), and sold out a North American tour.
 
Her arrival also attracted visceral criticism. The New York Times review of Born to Die savaged her aesthetic and artistic “pose.” Pitchfork likened her debut to a “faked orgasm.” The media seemed fixated on anything but the album’s actual music: the supposedly incongruous early recording career under her real name, the life cycle of the internet hype machine that birthed her, or the aggressively ridiculed Saturday Night Live performance that made her a household name.
 
In 2012, Del Rey moved from Brooklyn to L.A., and one year later began work on the full-length follow-up to Born to Die. Released in June and produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, Ultraviolence eschews the home-run pop melodies of Born to Die for stripped-down piano intros and reverb-heavy guitar solos that give her soulful, low-register vocals space to shine. Lyrically, though, Del Rey’s stance remains uncompromising, with titles like “Money, Power, Glory” and “Fucked My Way Up to the Top” explicitly referencing her image, and taking aim at her myriad detractors. And some of her old critics have changed their tune. In its review, the New York Times called the criticisms levelled against Born to Die “inaccurate,” and lauded Del Rey’s “retro sophistication” and “guileless candor;” Pitchfork called her “a pop music original,” adding “there are not nearly enough of those around.” Despite modest radio play for the lead single “West Coast,” the album debuted No. 1 on Billboard, selling 182,000 copies in its first week (more than twice as many as Born to Die), a testament to her growing fanbase.
 
Sitting on the roof of Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel for our interview, the 27-year-old “pop star” is dressed more like a suburban teenager, in light wash low-rise jeans and a tight, white, short-sleeved polo with lavender horizontal stripes. She has perfect posture and crosses her legs neatly. There’s a grace to the way she chain-smokes Parliaments and says “fuck” when she chips one of her pointed purple acrylic nails. If it’s all a show, well, it’s a good one. The cracks in the veneer of glamour humanize her and are one of the reasons she’s been able to mix self-serious writing about true love and death with provocative, pseudo-comical lines like the infamous “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola.”
 
For the next 60 minutes, Del Rey muses about sexual gamesmanship in the music industry, Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus, and the jagged reaction to her emergence on the pop scene. And words. Del Rey is a writer—not just the subject, but also the director of her own drama. The only mark of her wealth is a gaudy diamond-encrusted choker with a cross pendant hanging just above her sternum. Its sparkle evokes the cartoonish shine of costume jewelry, though it’s every bit as real as she has turned out to be.
 

 
When you’re writing, what comes first? Song titles, melodies, music?
Well it took me a long time to write the album as it’s listed. I was writing a lot since the last record came out, but for some reason, 70% of what I was writing didn’t feel right for me. So if I’m lucky enough to have an experience that really impacts me, it comes with a verse and a melody. From there I ad lib it. But they come together, the melody and the words come together. But it happens rarely for me.
 

 
“I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. How can I say this without getting into too much trouble?”   What do you mean?
Actually having that happen, where it just sort of comes. I remember with “Carmen,” I was out really late and walking to the tempo of my own rhythm, and then I just started singing, “Carmen, Carmen doesn’t have a problem lying to herself cause her liquor’s top shelf.” And it was an easy cadence. The whole thing just came, and I think I was in a really good place then, so it was like things...it was really easy to channel.
 
What defines being in a good place?
Feeling really happy and just circumstantially like nothing’s going wrong, which becomes more difficult but that’s only my experience. I think a lot of people think the whole thing is really great. Making Brooklyn my home base for the last two and a half weeks has really helped me out, like I’ve actually started thinking conceptually that I have this addition, an addition to this record that could come really easily. That hasn't happened in a long time. Not since I wrote that Paradise addition to Born to Die, which I really loved.
 
Did you miss Brooklyn?
I missed Brooklyn. I missed the people.
 
How are the people here different?
They’re not different. I’m a little different. The vibe is the same. I met some guys from here last week I had never met before, and they were just really easygoing. All artist types—writing during the day and hanging out at bars at night. I miss that, I like that. I haven't really found that in California yet. I relocated there because my record got a little bit bigger, but I didn’t really find a music scene that I was a part of. There was something happening—there was kind of a reemerging Laurel Canyon sound. Jonathan Wilson, Father John Misty, and I really liked those guys. I felt like maybe I had something in common with them and I slipped right into that atmosphere really well.
 
Let’s talk Ultraviolence. The crop of the photo on the album cover is similar to the crop of your first two album covers.
I liked that, I wanted the continuity. I didn’t have that for the album cover at the time and I wanted it to be a continuation of the story. I did like the idea of it being in black and white so that there was, literally and figuratively more to be revealed. Even color-wise.
 
You wanted a continuation in aesthetic for this album cover, is that something that was important to you musically for Ultraviolence as well?
Yeah. Not being misleading in terms of your personal aesthetic, like your psyche coming through design-wise and musically—I like continuity.
 
You have this way of exacting your creative vision through so many different parts of your art—music videos, lyrics, tone and the melody, style of dress. Are those things that you plan ahead when you think about an album? Is it a concept that grows from one idea? I don’t know. I was in college at Fordham when I was 18. I was living between Brooklyn and New Jersey and I was working with this guy who was more famous than anyone I had met at the time, this producer David Kahne. I had that record—you know they shelved it for two years—and I had all this time to think about what was really important to me and what I actually wanted to do if I had the opportunity to do what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to make life easy for myself in the way that I would always be living in a world I constructed and whatever felt true to me, regardless of however that appeared to other people. That definitely extended to song titles, whether I shot in black and white, hair color, things like that. It’s not really something that I planned ahead. I had a sense that I wanted the world I lived in to be really personalized to what I liked.
 
When I hear the words “ultra” and “violence,” I think about WorldStarHipHop. What does the phrase mean to you?
That’s funny. I feel connected to two emotions—aggression and softness. I like that luxe sound of the word “ultra” and the mean sound of the word “violence” together. I like that two worlds can live in one.
 
What’s the relationship between violence and love?
I like a physical love. I like a hands-on love. [Pauses.] How can I say this without getting into too much trouble? I like a tangible, passionate love. For me, if it isn’t physical, I’m not interested. Everything I do feels so organized: touring, playing a show night after night with a couple months in between to make a record, and being in charge of all of it—mixing, mastering. Sometimes I meet people with a lot of fire and energy. Mentally, maybe we’re not that similar. Telepathically, we’re not on that same wavelength. If there’s a physicality and a chemistry, that ends up winning for me every time because it’s the opposite of what I have every day.
 
Who’s the last person you met who made you feel like that?
Dan Auerbach, for better or for worse.
 

 
Do you think a “guilty pleasure” is a real thing?
Yes, but I don’t have many of them musically. I have tons of them in life.
 

 
“DAN AUERBACH SAID, ‘WHY DON’T WE GO TO NASHVILLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?’ I DIDN’T WANT THE PARTY TO END.”   Do tell.
Well, smoking is one of them. Sugar, coffee. I must have 13 cups a day. It’s a shame about the health consequences because a lot of great things happen over coffee and a cigarette. A lot of great songs were written.
 
Why did you choose to cover Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman” on Ultraviolence?
[Sings, “The other woman has time to manicure her nails, the other woman is perfect where her rival fails.”] I relate to being the person who people come to for “such a change from the old routine,” but not being the main thing. I had a long-term relationship for seven years with someone who was the head of a label and I felt like I was that change of routine. I was always waiting to become the person who his kids came home to, and it never happened. Obviously I had to seek other relationships, and I felt like that became a pattern. I was younger—24, 25 at the time. I had known what I wanted to do for a long time. I had been serious about music since high school, and I stopped drinking when I was 18. By 24, I was a pretty serious person. I thought I was a writer, and I was a singer. I thought I knew what I wanted my path to be. The people I was drawn to were already established, but they were probably looking for someone more on their level, age-wise. But I love the idea of wrapping up the record with a reference.
 
Many artists use obscure references to try to prove individuality and originality. Why do you go for icons like Marilyn, Elvis, and Jesus?
When I had put out only “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” I caught a lot of grief from journalists asking me why I was being so literal and obvious. I referenced things like Marilyn without trying to be accessible. I have a personal relationship with my perception of who Marilyn was. She was the kind of female who was really warm and giving. I like that type of girl who’s friendly and easy. I was always looking for girls like that as friends. I felt like I knew her in that way. And Jesus—I mean, being raised Catholic, it was just a way of life. Spirituality and religion were strong. I was in Catholic school until I was 13. Like a lot of other people, I think foundationally I was hymn inspired—musical hymns, not Him, Jesus. [Laughs.]
 
How did you meet Dan?
I met Dan at The Riviera strip club in Queens. He was with Tom Elmhirst, who’s an amazing mixer, and I was with Emile Haynie. Emile asked if I wanted to go hang out with them and I had a lot of fun for the first time in a long time. Dan had been mixing Ray Lamontagne’s record with Tom down at Electric Lady studios. And he left by the time I was there—Lee Foster gave me Electric Lady all by myself for three weeks.
 
Wow.
It was incredible. By the end of the three weeks I thought I was done. Then I met Dan and he said, “Why don’t we just go to Nashville and see what happens?” I went because it sounded like a good time. I didn’t want the party to end. I flew there with Lee and we rented a farm for six weeks. We drove to Dan’s studio on 8th Street every day and I loved it. He was what I was looking for, because he was a facilitator. He said “yes” a lot. If I was like, “I only want to sing this through once,” that was normal to him. It was natural that someone would like what they got on the first try. He was cool like that. [Lights a Parliament with her plastic purple lighter.]
 
You’ve been smoking cigarettes on stage a lot.
Dude, I have to. I can’t get through it.
 
Is it an addiction?
Yeah. I’m a chain-smoker.
 
How long have you been smoking?
Since I was 17. It’s crazy. That’s why I try to play mostly outdoor festivals. [Laughs.] Because 45 minutes into the set, when you’ve still got 45 more minutes to go, you need to smoke.
 
That’s a long time to be standing in front of people.
It’s a long time. If people come and see you at a show for 80 minutes they literally know everything about you. With 5,000 people coming, they film you so the people in the back can see you on the screens. There isn’t a moment when you can turn around and gather yourself. Everything you feel, everything you’re emoting, is just there. I have toured so much more than I thought I would; I thought I would be more of a studio singer. But I toured Europe for two years.
 

 
There was a time after Paradise came out when you said you weren’t sure that you were going to make any more music. What changed?
A year after Born to Die was released, a lot of people asked me what the new record would sound like and when it was going to come out. I said, “I don’t know if there will be another record.” I didn’t have songs that I felt were good or personal enough. Dan Auerbach changed things for me, and I have no idea why. He was just interested in me. That made me feel like maybe what I was doing was interesting. He gave me some confidence back. He listened to songs that were folk songs at the time, and he thought that maybe, with some revision, they could be more dynamic. I started to see a bigger picture. For me, if I don’t have a concept it’s not worth writing a whole album. I don’t like it if there’s no story.
 

 
“THAT GOLD AND PLATINUM STUFF, IT DOESN’T MEAN AS MUCH IF YOU’RE WALKING DOWN THE STREET AND YOU CAN HEAR PEOPLE SAYING THINGS ABOUT YOU.”   There are a few different ways to take your song “Fucked My Way Up to the Top.” Is it about people not wanting to give you credit for your success? Or is it about fucking people to get to the top?
It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.
 
What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?
That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.
 
That reminds me of an Eartha Kitt interview clip you once posted. Asked about love and compromise, she says, “What is there to compromise? I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.”
She was so right-on with that. It’s nice to have a fiery relationship that enhances everything you do, that doesn’t feel like part of it is not what you want.
 
What is the most valuable thing that you’ve destroyed in life?
In terms of money?
 
It doesn’t have to be, but that works. I don’t know. I don’t think money has had an influence on things I’ve sabotaged. But there are things.
 
What’s something you’ve destroyed that’s actually valuable to you?
Probably the relationship I’ve been in for the last three years. Definitely demolished that through tons of depression and insecurity. Now it’s just an untenable relationship, impossible because of my emotional instability.
 
Sometimes people do their best writing when fucked up.
And I am a little fucked up. This whole experience has fucked me up.
 
Fucked you up how?
I don’t know. It’s been hard. I was in a good place when I wrote my first record because I wrote it for fun, but then, I felt like everything that went with the record was heavy. I was also trying to deal with stuff with my family. The world was heavy for a couple years. That’s why I liked Dan: He was casual. It didn’t have to be so serious.
 
Speaking of non-serious, what restaurant has the best red sauce in the world?
That’s a good question. I go to the same place in Los Angeles all the time, Ago on Melrose. I order the same thing every time, penne alla vodka.
 
What were you listening to when you were writing?
I love jazz. I love Chet Baker’s documentary Let’s Get Lost, which influenced my video for “West Coast,” which Bruce Weber shot. I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday like everybody else. I have a ’70s playlist that I listen to daily. A lot of Bob Seger, who I love. He’s probably the main person I listen to, and also the Eagles and Chris Isaak, Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson. I like Echo and the Bunnymen, “Killing Moon”—just like single tracks.
 
Do you have a guilty pleasure song on that playlist?
No, they’re all pretty good.
 
You experienced a level of scrutiny that was very personal. How has that affected you? The good thing about catching so much grief from critics is that you literally do not fucking care. It put me in a mind frame where I expect things not to go right, because they generally don’t. But it’s not a pessimistic place. The music is always good, in my opinion. That’s what I expect now from my career, that the music is going to be great and the reaction’s going to be fucked up.
 
Why do you think they reacted so vehemently to what you were making?
If they thought it was supposed to be categorized as pop music, that was the first mistake. It wasn’t made to be popular. It was more of a psychological music endeavor. I wasn’t out to make fun, verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs. I was unraveling my history through music. People were confused as to why I would stand on stage and just sing and not perform. To me, performing is just channeling and emoting through inflection, cadence, phrasing. That’s pretty different from what’s popular, so I think maybe they thought it shouldn’t be popular. What do you think?
 
It felt like you were being critiqued not as an artist or even a pop musician, but as a celebutante. You presented such a comprehensive, seemingly calculated project—the videos, the styling, the references, etc.—that people felt compelled to pick it apart.
It’s funny, because my process was natural. I remember making “Video Games,” and I did my makeup as I did it every day. I put my hair up like I did. I was wearing a dress and filming myself. I didn’t think that the juxtaposition with this found footage that I had taken from people’s honeymoons on Super 8 would get the reaction it did. The reaction to everything six years prior to that, from the day when YouTube was actually born, was a non-reaction. People just didn’t care.
 
Do you feel vindicated?
I feel a sense of relief, but I don’t feel vindicated.
 
How come?
I don’t feel like things have gone well. It’s not the way I would have chosen them to go. So it’s not like I feel everything’s turned around and it’s great.
 
You’ve got quite a few gold records, and a handful of platinum ones.
Yeah, but I still didn’t find that community of people I was looking for, like the way Bob Dylan found his friends, or the respect of being a writer. Because that gold and platinum stuff, it doesn’t mean as much if you’re walking down the street and you can hear people saying things about you. That doesn’t even out.
 
 

https://soundcloud.com/softmetallover/lana-del-rey-ultraviolence-audio-commentary

 

 

Listen to Lana talk about all the tracks on the standard edition of Ultraviolence.

 

Source: http://www.mtvmusic.de/artist/lana-del-rey/album/ultraviolence-audio-commentary

 

(Ripped and edited by @@Ultraviolence.)

Someone needs to translate it...
http://veja.abril.com.br/noticia/celebridades/lana-del-rey-a-musa-triste-da-musica-indie
 
EDIT:
Here it is...

 
 
Credits for translation: @@vanillaiceys

Why doesn't Shades of Cool count?

Lana Del Rey, the sad indie singer   Depressives songs and a blasé look, the american singer became a popstar and opened doors for another girls that may be considered "different" in the musical scenario. The american singer have 28 years, and have a lot of qualities. She is beautiful, famous, have a big crowd in her performances at festivals and have some special fans like: Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Daniel Radcliffe and David Lynch. Talking about Lana and Kim, the popstar was invited to sing at the Kardashian's wedding earlier this year. And there's some rumors that say that George Clooney asked the same favour and he will pay any price to have the indie singer doing a performance at his wedding. Besides her popularity, Lana recently said that wishes that she was already dead. Her beautiful lips, sad/blasé eyes, and a deep voice made Lana a success. In 2012 with her album Born to Die, her second album in a studio, sold more than 7 millions of copies all around the world.  Ultraviolence, released in june, is following the same way, in a month, the album already sold 300.000 copies on USA   “I was a risk for the record label. It wasn't a good investment. But I'm persistent and I never gave up”
VEJA: Your road to the fame was long and was ever changing. How do you feel about being the center of the attention?   LANA:It's good to see my style and see how things are working good. I've performed a lot of times and the experience of doing a show in different places is great, they fit with the changes of my mood . The energy that my fans gave to me are great and scares me at the same time. It's always a surprise. Even having some experience, I feel kinda nervous when I see the crowd. VEJA:Do you still have some issues about having a big crowd? 
LANA:No, especially because I'm not nervous about my album. Now that it's finished, I can give more attenton to my shows. While I'm touring, I can't be creative. But now I feel that it's all okay, it's a part of the job.
VEJA: When you became famous, a lot of rumors about you were spread, saying that your style is fake . How do you deal with this? 
LANA: It's easy to judge somebody when you do not know them and know how their personal growth happens. When a singer gets bigger, it's hard to say if they care about their music and if they deserve their success. I'm gonna still doing my work and I'll became more and more mature. On set, I do not have a lot of people helping me and I do not have somebody that makes me do stuff that I do not like. 
VEJA:If your style wasn't created, it probably have bothered a lot o people because your style is different compared to the actual pop music scenario.Does somebody tried to change your style to fit the mainstream pop style?    LANA: Only at the beginning of my career. I was a risk for the record label. It wasn't a good investment. But I'm persistent and I never gave up. I felt great when "Video Games" became a hit. I really like that song and the version that became famous was the version that I wanted to everybody hear.I played it for like a year and my actual record label liked the song, but they were kinda worried about it because it was too slow.   VEJA:Dan Auerbach produced Ultraviolence. How this work begun? Are you a fan of The Black Keys?
LANA:I know the work of The Black Keys, but I didn't knew Dan very well. We had a great work together. We've decided to make the album while we were knowing each other in NY. We were having such a great time with a couple of friends and he looked at me and we said "Why don't we make this album together?. I realized that he was the producer that I was looking for. He put on some electric guitars and a 70's style on the album. He also uses the same weird references that I use. Also, it was good to change the producer, I've worked with the same guy for like three years.
VEJA:With a several leaks, your album was prejudiced. How do you felt about do the same work again? 
LANA:It was prejudiced, but it was a blessing because I hate those songs. It was basically songs that I wrote for some singers or songs that I was working at, so, when these songs wew leaked, I've realized that I do not like how they sounds like, so I've started all over. When I thought that I had finished them, I met Dan. It was wonderful, it was I met this new sound that I've fell in love.  
VEJA:Why "Ultraviolence"?
LANA:It's my darkest album, even with some romantics elements, I do not like to hear some songs, even if I've wrote them. I do not feel okay to listen some tracks, but I feel great when I listen to anothers. Make this album was hard in some moments because if it's not natural, then I do not work well. The time was almost ending, so I had some anxiety crisis, I do not work well under a lot of pressure, but at the end, everything worked in a good way.
VEJA:So you had some anxiety crisis while you were doing your album?
LANA: Yeah, I had the feeling that my album would not become a big hit. I really try to not be sad and be a pessimist, but that's who I am. I couldn't like anything that I've wrote for the album, so, I begun to tour and my fans made me feel more confident. In the first week, I realized that it is what I want to do for the rest of my life. It was great, because I was afraid to sing again, but, this year made me feel confident about still singing
VEJA:Are you okay now?
LANA:Absolutely. I'm really excited and I love "Ultraviolence". I was really worried and I wanted to write something that I'd like to, because everything in my life was complicated. Music is the only that was really stable to me. I wanted this album to be perfect because I've worked so hard on it and I'll perform the songs at my concerts.
VEJA:Your "visual identity" and your videos walks besides your musical style. When you write a song, do you think about how the video will be?
LANA:That's for sure, I always think about the history that influenced the song and how it get connected to what I've wrote. I'm lucky because I've always worked with great directors like Yoann Lemoine and Anthony Mandler. We have a great and unique connection. I've alway wrote the video concept for they. I think that it was kinda boring for they, probably that's why they do not work with me anymore. But the magic is that at the end, everything is like I was thinking about, and it's pretty hard to happen. That's the opposite control that I have at my personal life, I've showed every detail to the directors and they've made a beautiful work. 
VEJA:Do you have the same cares with the album artwork?
LANA:Yes, I do. I do love to see the progress of the artwork. For "Ultraviolence", I've worked with Neil Krug, he changed the way that I've seen some stuff. He have transformed polaroids into perfect portraits for my album. For me, the artwork helps to give the album some individuality. So, when I saw the artwork, I've started to see "Ultraviolence" as it is, like the story that it is. The story begins with a electric guitar solo that Dan made in "Cruel World", the first song.
VEJA:You've moved from NY to LA during the process of creation of the album. How this change influenced at the album?
LANA:I was living in London for some time and I moved back to USA. So, I've moved to California, I also lived in NY for several years, and these years influenced me to write "West Coast". In "Broolyn Baby", I sing about Brooklyn, as the title suggest. Well, I could bring all my worlds to a album. That's great and makes me happy.



_______________________________________________



Sorry for the several mistakes! I'm kinda sleepy, but I've tried!

World tour is coming, I can smell it.

World tour is coming, I can smell it.

The Austrian newspaper "Kronen Zeitung" (called "Krone") just published an, in my opinion, quite good interview with Lana.
Source
 
I did a quick translation again. I hope there aren't too many mistakes in it.
 
TRANSLATION:
 
 
 

Triple J is there:
Retweeted by Lana Del Rey Online:
(1st link gets you to the 2nd one).
https://twitter.com/LanaNow/statuses/485730141554098177
https://m.soundcloud.com/lindzydelrey/lana-del-rey-interview-on-triple-j-radio-july-62014
 
I thought it was interesting particularly when they talked about Brooklyn Baby. I didn't notice the time of it (midway thru?) and anyway I was perplexed at the interface, which didn't allow me to skip around. The talk *suggested* (to me, at least) ambiguities about Barrie. Maybe they signal a true divide or maybe it was just slyly orchestrated to seem ambiguous. Anyway, still rooting for Barrie, in the sense of wanting collaborations from him and LDR in the future. 

Lana had an interview with a major radio station in Sweden last week where she revealed that her first ever written song was called "China Palace" and it's about strawberry daiquiri!
 
Edited all the redundant stuff and here's what we got:


 
Transcribed version by yours sincerely:
 

first Brooklyn Baby performance 

inb4 leak

Full show...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JRqxrkQF7w

Full show...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JRqxrkQF7w

And a behind-the-scenes vid: http://madame.lefigaro.fr/style/video/lana-del-rey-coulisses-shooting-230614-884176

 

Did they really use a fake Heart Shaped Box cover...