Lana and Ethel and Nicki and Waffle House
The Friday Post.
Call it indie pop “Euphoria,” or singer-songwriter “Not Like Us.” On Wednesday afternoon, Lana Del Rey, sitting in the front seat of whatever type of car she drives, posted a snippet of a song. “Track 13,” she captioned, and tagged her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff. “Ethel Cain hated my Instagram post,” Del Rey murmurs on the song. “Think it’s cute reenacting my Chicago pose.”
Fans have been speculating on the existence of a Lana Del Rey-Ethen Cain diss track on Reddit for about a year now. In a comment under a PopCrave post reporting the news, Del Rey elaborated on her beef with the singer-songwriter and former internet troll. (In July, Cain responded to various controversies stemming from racist and bigoted posts she made online in her late teens.) “I didn’t know who Ethel was until a few years ago — when someone brought to my attention the disturbing and graphic side-by-side images she would often put up of me next to unflattering creatures and cartoon characters making constant comments about my weight, I was confused at what she was getting at,” she wrote. “Then when I heard what she was saying behind closed doors from mutual friends and started inserting herself into my personal life I was definitely disturbed.” Part of the dispute seems to include a photo Cain took with Del Rey’s ex Jack Donoghue of Salem. “However,” Vulture notes, “the alleged photos of Cain fat-shaming Del Rey have yet to surface, if they do exist.”
By Lana Del Rey’s own account, she is “just at Starbucks, talking shit all day.” Remember her “question for the culture?” Remember her telling Azealia Banks, another chaos agent, that she “won’t not fuck [Banks] the fuck up. Period.” This is a woman who dated a cop and put her album’s only promo billboard on his route to work;1 she is Elle Fanning barefoot at LAX. She has tapped into a deeper well of white womanhood. She is beyond a woo woo bitch; she is the definition of being on some other shit.
Five Years of Lana Del Rey’s “Question for the Culture”
Five years ago this week, Lana Del Rey logged on. “Question for the culture,” she began ominously in a message posted to her Instagram on May 21, 2020. The font was some type of weary, weathered Courier New. It wasn’t a Notes app apology it was a typewritten ransom note holding our attention captive. “Now that Doja Cat, Ariana, Camila [Cabello], Cardi B, Kehlani and Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating etc - can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money - or whatever I want - without being crucified or saying I’m glamorizing abuse??????”
Cain deactivated her Instagram account after posting a response: “update: lana del rey has blocked ethel cain on instagram,” she wrote, according to People.
Here’s a thought: what does this situation need? White women fight among themselves every day, according to every season of The White Lotus. What can escalate this? Who could elevate this? I truly believe in some cosmic, we’re-all-connected way, George Civeris uttering the name Nicki Minaj — even in a screenshot! — made this dispute a Nicki Minaj agenda item.
