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Four years ago this week, Lana Del Rey made her notorious Instagram post about how female artists can finally sing about whatever they want, while she had suffered accusations of glamorizing abuse. Today, the singer used her Ivor Novello award speech to discuss the rise in domestic violence and the importance of writing vulnerably about relationships.
“When I started, I think a lot of things were written about how the songs were sort of navel-gazing and just about me and my experience with challenging relationships,” Del Rey said at the ceremony at Grosvenor House hotel in London. She continued:
Now I think what we’ve seen is that those songs were not written about a small microcosm of people and women. We’re seeing a huge amount of things written about difficult relationships. And even when Covid began, the second epidemic in the United States was interpersonal relationships violence, it increased by 300%. So I just think it’s amazing that female singer-songwriters have the freedom to write about absolutely whatever they want. It was always nerve wrecking to think that writing about your relationships were maybe something that could be seen as self-gratuitous, feigning vulnerability. I heard that a lot. But I mean it’s a very vulnerable thing, not just for women. But for men. I’ve learned so much in the last few years, from my peers about having a challenging time in music.
Watch her full speech below; this part begins at roughly 4:23.
Also today, the National Music Publishers’ Association revealed that she will receive the NMPA Songwriter Icon award next month. The ceremony takes place on June 12 at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York.