'People would throw elbows at me': Lana Del Rey reveals physical abuse she received after finding fame
Lana Del Rey paved the way for artists "talking about how things really are in their lives" - but faced physical and verbal hate for it.
Lana Del Rey used to get shoved in public after shooting to stardom.
The 'Video Games' hitmaker was surprised to face hate online and walking down the street and had to deal with people trying to school her in feminism for telling it how it is in her lyrics.
Speaking to Billie Eilish for Interview Magazine, she recalled: "All of a sudden, I was walking down the street as I always did, and people would throw elbows at me.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, no way did that actually happen. Someone recognised me and gave me a shove.’ Or in San Francisco, I was eating at a bistro and a woman threw a book about feminism at my face.”
The 37-year-old star drowned out the noise by touring for almost a decade.
She said: “I toured for nine years and kept my head down.
“I didn’t think anything could ever get elevated to the point where, for instance, Interview Magazine would say, ‘You’re on the cover.’ Even still, it’s like, ‘Really?’”
Lana found it "quite tough" receiving so much hate for speaking her reality.
She explained how "when things shift radically in your life you have to almost want to have a radical perspective shift.
“You can’t force it, but if you stay calm, all of a sudden, it comes. I know that the process I went through is not the process a lot of people went through. Everyone gets their fair share of think pieces, but there were definitely some 60-page articles about me being the face of feminine submission and the pro-domestic whatever."
However, in doing so, she was actually paving the way.
Lana added: “That was quite tough, because at the time, I was just trying to figure things out. Now, you hear a lot of singer-songwriters and rappers talking about how things really are in their lives, and a lot of it is super messy. And everyone’s like, ‘The storytelling is amazing, and I love that they’re baring it all.’ I always felt with me that there was some catch-22 and I wasn’t sure what it was for a long time.”
Billie, 21, commented that she "relate[s] to so much” of what Lana said about having a career of “trial by fire”.
