Lana Del Rey: 'I wish I was dead already' (The Guardian Interview)

[HEARTCORE 18,720]

Here is the link to the interview, check it out underneath:

"I wish I was dead already," Lana Del Rey says, catching me off guard. She has been talking about the heroes she and her boyfriend share – Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain among them – when I point out that what links them is death and ask if she sees an early death as glamorous. "I don't know. Ummm, yeah." And then the death wish.

Don't say that, I say instinctively.

"But I do."

You don't!

"I do! I don't want to have to keep doing this. But I am."

Do what? Make music?

"Everything. That's just how I feel. If it wasn't that way, then I wouldn't say it. I would be scared if I knew [death] was coming, but …"

We're in New Orleans, a city not known for peace and quiet. A couple of blocks from Lana Del Rey's hotel lies Bourbon Street, the scene of drunken rampages from morning till night. Head in the opposite direction and you can expect to be assaulted by the vibrant brass of the French Quarter's street jazz musicians. Even inside Del Rey's elegant suite there is carnage: suitcases half-exploded; bags of corn chips strewn across the floor. Even her laptop has been doused in tomato ketchup, temporarily thwarting our attempts to hear songs from her new album Ultraviolence. "Ewww," she says, baffled as to how a condiment could have found its way inside the power socket.

And yet when we move outside to sit on her balcony, the scene is transformed into complete calm. "This place is magical," she says, sparking up the first of many cigarettes. So serene is the setting, in fact, that it takes me by surprise when Del Rey begins to tell me how unhappy she is: that she doesn't enjoy being a pop star, that she feels constantly targeted by critics, that she doesn't want to be alive at all.

"Family members will come on the road with me and say: 'Wow, your life is just like a movie!'" she says at one point. "And I'm like: 'Yeah, a really fucked-up movie.'"

Throughout our hour-long conversation she keeps returning to dark themes. Telling her story – a remarkable one that involves homelessness, biker gangs and being caught in the eye of a media hurricane – also involves working out why a songwriter who has sold more than 7m copies of her last album, Born To Die seems so disillusioned with life.

Perhaps the logical place to start, then, is with the extraordinary reaction to Video Games, her breakthrough song in 2011. Arriving seemingly out of nowhere (although Del Rey had been posting her songs and homemade videos for some time), the video's Lynchian creepiness cast a spell on almost everyone who saw it, causing the song to go viral. Yet no sooner had the plaudits started rolling in (the Guardian voted it the best song of 2011) than Del Rey was placed under the intense scrutiny of endless blogposts and think pieces, with critics poring over her past for evidence of fakery: was her carefully studied aesthetic for real? Was she really just a major label puppet? Had her dad funded a previous bid for fame? Were her lips the result of plastic surgery? Was she really born as plain old Elizabeth Grant rather than emerging from the womb fully formed as the popstar Lana Del Rey?

I ask how long she got to enjoy the success of Video Games before the backlash arrived and she looks surprised. "I never felt any of the enjoyment," she says. "It was all bad, all of it."

Del Rey says she's not scared to put another record out because she "knows what to expect this time", but during the two-and-a-half years since Born to Die came out, she has often dismissed the idea of a follow-up because she'd "already said everything I wanted to say". So what changed?

"I mean, I still feel that way," she says. "But with this album I felt less like I had to chronicle my journeys and more like I could just recount snippets in my recent past that felt exhilarating to me."

From the handful of songs I get to hear at the hotel, it's safe to say the new material has plenty to get the bloggers worked up about again. Sad Girl, for instance, talks about how "being a mistress on the side, might not appeal to fools like you".

She laughs when I ask where the inspiration came from: "A good question. I mean … I had different relationships with men, with people, where they were sort of wrong relationships, but still beautiful to me."

By wrong does she mean being the other woman?

She laughs again and looks away coyly. "I mean, I guess so."

It's not clear if Money, Power, Glory was originally written just to rile her detractors but it makes a decent stab at it by warning: "I'm going to take them for all that they've got."

"I was in more of a sardonic mood," she says of writing that song. "Like, if all that I was actually going to be allowed to have by the media was money, loads of money, then fuck it … What I actually wanted was something quiet and simple: a writer's community and respect." She talks about that frequently: craving a peaceful life in an artistic community, away from the glare of a media that "always puts an adjective in front of my name, and never a good one".

Like the woozy soft rock of the album's teaser track West Coast, many of the songs on Ultraviolence are slow-tempo and atmospheric, ditching the hip-hop trappings of Born To Die for what she and her producer – the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach – call a "real narco swing". Del Rey originally thought she had completed the album back in December, but after meeting Auerbach in a club and dancing the night away with him she realised she needed to record it all over again with his looser techniques – adding a more casual, California vibe to the sound by recording in single takes, with cheap microphones bought from the drugstore.

It wasn't all plain sailing. One track, Brooklyn Baby, had been written with Lou Reed in mind: he'd wanted to work with Del Rey and so she'd flown over to New York to meet him. "I took the red eye, touched down at 7am … and two minutes later he died," she says.

If the critical sniping had died down, then Del Rey was finding her life invaded by other, more intrusive, means. In 2012, her personal computer was accessed by hackers and all sorts of information started to appear online: pictures, financial details, health records, not to mention her songs. "All 211 of them," she sighs. "Just one more element of the unknown in my daily life." She says she has no way of knowing who currently has access to several years' worth of material, and no way of controlling the slow-drip leak of them online, including songs written for other people and at least one – Black Beauty – that was originally scheduled for Ultraviolence.

Indeed, when you start to look closely at Del Rey's past three years, it's not hard to understand why she might feel burned by her experience of stardom. You're also forced to wonder why the pop stars who attract the most vitriol are so often solo female artists.

"People ask me this all the time," she says. "I think they think there's an element of sexism going on, but I feel that it's more personal. I don't see where the female part comes into it. I just can't catch that feminist angle."

I mention some current examples of musicians getting picked over in the spotlight: Miley Cyrus, Lorde, Lily Allen, Lady Gaga, Sinéad O'Connor spring to mind.

"Well maybe those people are true provocateurs," she says. "But I'm really not and never have been. I don't think there's any shock value in my stuff – well, maybe the odd disconcerting lyric – but I think other people probably deserve the criticism, because they're eliciting it."

What about her video for Ride, in which she hooks up with a succession of older guys from biker gangs (it received criticism for, among other things, appearing to glamorise prostitution)?

"OK," she concedes. "I can see how that video would raise a feminist eyebrow. But that was more personal to me – it was about my feelings on free love and what the effect of meeting strangers can bring into your life: how it can make you unhinged in the right way and free you from the social obligations I hope we're growing out of in 2014."

How much did that video reflect her actual life?

"Oh, 100%"

Hanging out with biker gangs and going off with different guys?

"Yeah," she says, looking away again with another awkward laugh.

For all the accusations of being a fraud, Lana Del Rey seems to have lived a more rock'n'roll existence than your average pop star. She talks of teenage years spent "displaced … I didn't have a home, didn't know my social security number" and says she wasn't in contact with her parents for about six years. Which must have made it extra galling when accusations came in that her career was funded by her father. "It was the exact opposite of that," she says. "We never had more money than anyone we ever knew in town. My dad was a well-loved entrepreneur - he was interested in the early dawning of the internet in 1994 - but it wasn't anything that ever translated financially." When those stories first emerged in the wake of Video Games she says she wasn't even sure what her father was doing with his life: "And I don't think he was too sure what I had been up to either. So it was interesting that they sort of fictionally put us side-by-side together and involved him in that story."

Del Rey likes to describe the more tumultuous periods of her life in romantic terms: she says she'd often spend her nights wandering around New York – "West Side Highway, Lower East Side, parts of Brooklyn" – meeting strangers and seeing where the night took them. "I was inspired by Dylan's stories of meeting people and making music after you met them. I met a lot of singers, painters, bikers passing through. They were friends, or sometimes more. All people I was really interested in on impact."

It sounds pretty dangerous.

"Yeah, I was lucky, but I also have strong intuition."

Does she still do it?

"Sometimes."

Does anyone ever say: "Hang on … you're Lana Del Rey!"

"Sometimes they do. About half the time they do, half the time they don't. If they know who I am I can just leave, or I say it's not a big deal, I'm just a singer."

Are they not surprised to see you out wandering the streets?

"If I'm in LA then maybe. If I'm in Omaha, maybe not."

When she was 18, Del Rey's darker experiences – she has talked about being alcoholic – prompted her to take up outreach work helping those addicted to drugs or alcohol. It's something she describes as her true calling and something she still does when she gets the chance.

"I live in Koreatown on the edge of Hancock Park [in LA], so I do different things where and when I can. It's not just people with mental illness on the streets, but also people who, throughout the years, have lost identification information, that sort of thing. And I know what to do, I know how I can help, because I was that person."

She says it feeds directly into her music. "A lot of my songs are not just simple verse-chorus pop songs – they're more psychological." She talks about tempo, and how she likes to reflect her mental state through a song's speed: "When I played [the label] West Coast they were really not happy that it slipped into an even slower BPM for the chorus," she says. "They were like: 'None of these songs are good for radio and now you're slowing them down when they should be speeded up.' But for me, my life was feeling murky, and that sense of disconnectedness from the streets is part of that."

She longs to be regarded as a serious songwriter, which is why those early accusations of fakery stung her so badly. Yet Del Rey only really needs to take a step back to see how well things have gone for her since she rode out that initial storm and began accruing the critical respect she feels she deserves. Outside music, too, her life appears relatively settled, even if she does describe her relationship with fellow musician Barrie-James O'Neill intensely: "We have a difficult road. He's a very dark character. He has months on end where it's a really dark stretch of writing and waiting, he has his total own world so …"

She falls silent. A waft of brass floats by and mingles with her cigarette smoke. I think about her live shows, such as the outdoor one she's due to play later that night, during which she'll respond to the constant screams – her fans are too busy taking photos to applaud – by letting her band jam away for 20 minutes while she wanders the photo pit, posing for selfies with fans in the front row. Surely during those moments she must love what she does.

"No," she says. Then after another drag from her cigarette she looks down towards the busy street below and says. "I don't know what I think. All I know is that, right now, I like sitting here, on this terrace." She leans back and, for a moment, looks completely content in the silence.

 

[yourdangerousgirl 145]

One of her most personal interviews lately but also the saddest. It makes me so sad to find out how much the critics and the industry in general have sucked the light out of her :/

[Limelight 4,689]

I'm sad now I hope she finds a way out of this situation.

[ConeyIslandQueen262 1,066]

I actually feel quite guilty after I read this interview. If she doesn't like the fame, why does she release new music and why does she play so many concerts all over the world ?

I'm going to see her performing live for the second time in one week and how can I be able to ban the thought that she doesn't feel comfortable with what she's doing while I'm having one of the best times of my life ?? 

[HelixSpirals 28]

This is so sad....

I really hope she doesn't do anything drastic...

I'm honestly so surprised she hasn't quit music yet, I mean it seems like more of a burden than a joy to her...

[Sitar 22,155]

 

It wasn't all plain sailing. One track, Brooklyn Baby, had been written with Lou Reed in mind: he'd wanted to work with Del Rey and so she'd flown over to New York to meet him. "I took the red eye, touched down at 7am … and two minutes later he died," she says.

 

Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

[Tyler 840]

i need a moment.

[WhiteIrishDrinker 1,043]

asdfarwrecw

[Floridakiloxx 7]

Oh god, i don't understand some text but death.. #np sad girl 

[Gangster Bitch 69]

Jfc this is one of the most depressing interviews I've ever read regarding anyone, most depressing of hers for sure. I don't agree with the 'why is she still putting music out there if she feels this way' perspective; she's a creative person, I mean she's not even 30 yet and we have like five albums worth of songs from her, she obviously likes creating. I think it's the whole... sort of MTV~ side of it that overwhelms her, she's putting something personal out there to share with fans, I can see why she would be baffled when a critic at guardian who's never met her says 'this album is trash', it's not easy as it sounds to tune the public out. I honestly do think she enjoys the connections she has with the fans, and the whole coming down to the front row isn't a PR schtick, you can *tell* she gets emotional when she's met with such amazing praise and love from the fans. 

 

Having said that, this interview puts UV into a new perspective for me, it's always one thing knowing she's had *some* life, but having it so blatantly shoved into your face is another thing. I just hope that it's one of the phases in her life where she feels that sort of way, and not her entire thoughts regarding her career. Cause I also remember her saying how she was going to take a break and she wasn't feeling it anymore after Tropico, and like not a month after that or st, we got news for UV. So yeah, hope she's just going through the motions, and most certainly not always wishing that she was dead already, jesus Lana. 

[Agnese13 132]

wow...

[Kommander 3,256]

Outside music, too, her life appears relatively settled, even if she does describe her relationship with fellow musician Barrie-James O'Neill intensely: "We have a difficult road. He's a very dark character. He has months on end where it's a really dark stretch of writing and waiting, he has his total own world so …"

 

Sounds like a lot of fun going on at home 

[MahaMaha 1,109]

I just hope she'll find some peace again soon and figures out the right path for her to be happy. But I don't really know why some of you are totally surprised like this girl is singing about running towards gates and how 'cheap thrills' get her closer to death etc. I guess she truly believes in life after death and she's just longing for paradise. You know she says she lived a long life, she has no ambition to go on.. I really hope she and Barrie aren't toxic for each other, they may have huge empathy for their partner, but maybe they drag each other down sometimes. But yeah I see the fact she's mentioning this in an interview is worrying, hope she battles through it until she'll find some sort of balance again "living with my sadness" as she would put it. 

[Alice 11]

Reading this broke my heart. I hope she can find peace soon.

[kik 1,563]

All the love from her fans will never fill the emptiness she feels inside or increase the love she doesn't have for herself. That's not real love, it's not shared, she's not connected deeply with people and it's understandable. The applause is just a thrill. It's not reality. And she can't face reality. She can't find a place where she belongs, she can't find people to rely to and she have a hard time keeping meaningful relationships. She still feels alone when there are so many people who would like to love her and care for her. I might be wrong, but that's how I see things. It's sad.

[MaraDreea 204]

people don't understand the length of her mind and take everything too literally. the fact that she said she wants to die does not mean that she contemplates suicide or something along those lines. she has a very philosophical and spiritual view on life, so death can be just as gratifying as life in that way. it still is sad to think that such a troubled soul can bring us such happiness.

 

But maybe her saying something this personal is a sign that she truly doesn't care that much about what people say about her anymore. I mean, she's opened up quite a lot about a bunch of stuff lately and I don't believe she would've done that without being fully aware that not all people will understand her/empathize with her and they will still judge her mindlessly, much like some of us on here do, unfortunately.

[MahaMaha 1,109]

people don't realize the length of her mind and take everything too literally. the fact that she said she wants to die does not mean that she contemplates suicide or something along those lines. she has a very philosophical and spiritual view on life, so death can be just as gratifying as life in that way. 

Yeah I thought that as well, like she's just saying oh well I wouldn't mind being dead there's nothing I want any more. But okay I'm alive so Imma roll with it, try to have fun in the meantime  But I don't know I do think she has always fantasized about suicide and death, we just don't know how intense or serious the sitaution is.

[hitnrun017 38]

All these interviews the past month are making me uncomfortable. And while she's being blunt and honest (which I can appreciate), it's painting her in a brand new light for me... one that's so drastically different than what I've imagined the last two and a half years I've been a fan. It's not a bad thing, but I feel pity... and I don't like feeling pity. I don't like worrying about someone that has brought me so much joy and opened my eyes to so many new things.

 

If she's not happy and feels out of touch with everying, as a fan it makes me feel strange for buying into it all: supporting her music, following her interviews/news, going to her concert, standing outside in the cold for three hours so I could meet her in the middle of the night... It makes me feel guilty in a weird way. Like she has no idea what her music does for some people. No idea how much it means seeing her peform and meeting her. She feels empty. So what's the point?

[kid blue 47]

I guess I'm surprised and not surprised in the slightest with how dark her mind is. Just thinking it myself is one thing, hearing her confirm it just makes me really fucking sad. I don't know...

[MaraDreea 204]

But I don't know I do think she has always fantasized about suicide and death, we just don't know how intense or serious the sitaution is.

 Oh yeah, I meant it like she thought about actually doing it. Like being on the verge of it, you know? I mean, I can only hope she hasn't, of course.