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Lana Del Rey has called Donald Trump “a reflection of our world’s greatest problem” in a new interview.
The musician spoke about the state of America with BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac while premiering her new single ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’.
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Asked how she had coped with 2020, Del Rey said she had “always thought” something like the coronavirus pandemic would happen “way sooner”. “When they got rid of the contagious disease sector of the White House, I was like, ‘we’ll never make it’,” she said.
“So that was one. Because I’m a bit of a fatalist, I am scared. So I thought something’s definitely going to happen there.”
She continued to talk about the bigger picture with the current US government, saying: “The madness of Trump, as bad as it was, it really needed to happen. We really needed a reflection of our world’s greatest problem, which is not climate change, but sociopathy and narcissism. Especially in America. It’s going to kill the world. It’s not capitalism, it’s narcissism.
“I was surprised we didn’t have a live-television psychopath crazy person as a president a long time ago because that’s what we see on TV and that’s what we see on Instagram. A lot of really self-obsessed influencers… Not to say that there’s not some also really cute, great, happy-go-lucky influencers that have taught me about crockpots and Target hauls and all the things that have really cheered up my life.”
Del Rey added that, minus the “terrifying death toll” of the pandemic, recent events had been a “huge wake-up call”. “Your life is not about what kind of shoes you buy, it’s not about going to Harvard or Oxford,” she explained. “It’s about what kind of person you are.”
Speaking about last week’s storming of the US Capitol in Washington D.C. by Trump supporters, the star said she didn’t think Trump knew he was inciting a riot with his words because “he’s got delusions of grandeur”.
She continued to say incidents like the Capitol riots allowed people to be “clearer about what’s going on”. “Now what I think some of the higher-ups and people that are thinking can really see is… ‘OK, we’ve got a problem now. We didn’t know that we got half of the country who wants to shoot up the Capitol’.
“We didn’t really know that because we never got to see it. I think this gave us the opportunity to see where our level of mental health is at. And also to see where our level of disassociated rage is.”
Earlier tonight (January 11), Del Rey shared the video for the title track of her new album ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’ and announced the release date for the record, March 16.
The album was initially due to be released around the one-year anniversary of her last record ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’, but was delayed because she felt it wasn’t finished and then again due to manufacturing delays for the vinyl release.
The singer shared both the tracklist and artwork for ‘Chemtrails…’ yesterday (January 10), and offered an explanation for the album cover when some online commenters criticised the “diversity” of the sleeve.
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