Lana Del Rey connects with Billie Eilish over the “trial by fire” of being young women in music
Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish recently connected for an “in conversation”-style interview with each other, and at one point, bonded over their struggles as female artists who rose to popularity in their youth.
The topic was broached around halfway into their chat – published yesterday (February 14) by Interview Magazine – when Eilish mentioned Del Rey’s recent surge in critical acclaim. “You are so romanticized online,” the former singer-songwriter observed, “specifically different eras of you and your music and your visuals.”
Eilish went on to assure that Del Rey was “always the coolest of the cool in my world”, but asked her if “having older versions of yourself romanticized later in life” made her reflect on her early years in the industry, when she was often denigrated for being outspoken in her views and scoffed at for her aesthetic choices. Del Rey answered in the affirmative, telling Eilish that she’d just recently wondered “if it’s better to be initiated into that club where it’s like, ‘She’s wonderful,’ right away”.
Del Rey explained that after building a respectable following on YouTube, she assumed “there was going to be this very niche lane where I knew that I could thrive”. That wasn’t the case though, and Del Rey was suddenly thrust “right into the middle lane where everyone could see it and could hear the music”.
“As soon as that happened,” she said, “I knew I was in for it, but I didn’t know to what extent. In the beginning, I was following the mantra: ‘It’s all about how you feel, not about what other people think.’
“I had never thought that one day Bruce Springsteen would say something like, “I think she’s one of the most beautiful American songwriters” after Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Change your name, change your face, and try a new career,” and Jon Caramanica was going off about whatever – this was in The New Yorker and New York magazine, and I lived in New York.”
Beyond online vitriol, Del Rey admitted she started to receive physical abuse from strangers after reaching stardom. “All of a sudden, I was walking down the street as I always did, and people would throw elbows at me,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, no way did that actually happen. Someone recognized 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.”
Del Rey said that such experiences led to her minimising her focuses, touring frequently to avoid pushback in her own stomping grounds. “I toured for nine years and kept my head down,” she continued, noting that she never envisioned the landscape shifting in her favour: “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?’”
On the notion of her public perception improving, Del Rey made it clear that “when things shift radically in your life you have to almost want to have a radical perspective shift”. She continued: “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.
“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.”
Del Rey continued to say that in time, she “cracked the code and realized they were tapping into the fact that there was something a little weird and different going on with me”, which she considered “a blessing” and “a very shrouded gift” because it “opened a door for me to think about the way everything had gone from when I was little up until now”.
Eilish told Del Rey that she “relate[s] to so much” of what she’d been saying, particularly since Eilish herself has been through a similar “trial by fire” in recent years. Critics, she said, “don’t ever let anything go”, and young artists “literally can’t make a single mistake ever”. She continued: “No matter what you do to redeem yourself, it doesn’t matter. They decide that’s who you are and that you deserve death.”
Because of her formative experiences in the music industry, Eilish admitted she has “this inevitable feeling of, ‘Oh, everyone hates me’”. She explained: “With the world of TikTok and social media, there is a level where it’s kind of true, because there are these videos. I’m lying in bed last night, and I go on TikTok because I’m falling asleep, and I just want to be mindless for a second, watch some funny videos.
“I keep scrolling and I’m thinking, ‘Billie, put your phone away. You’re getting tired.’ Then I swipe to the next one and it’s a video with millions of likes and it’s something about how I’m a horrible person. And all these comments are like, ‘I’m so glad that you guys are seeing through her.’ And I’m like, ‘Damn.’”
The interview coincided with the release of Del Rey’s latest single, ‘A&W’, which arrived as the second preview of her forthcoming ninth album, ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’ (due out March 24). It was co-written and co-produced by Bleachers‘ Jack Antonoff, and follows the album’s title track from last December.
Meanwhile, Eilish recently revealed she’d been forced to file a restraining order against a fan who allegedly broke into her house on multiple occasions. The artist said that the series of incidents had caused her “substantial anxiety, fear, and emotional distress” over her safety and that of her family.
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Ellie Robinson
NME
