Lana Del Rey talks changing attitudes towards domestic violence and female freedom in music

nme.com:

Lana Del Rey celebrated female expression in music and changing attitudes towards domestic violence in her Ivor Novellos acceptance speech this week.The singer was speaking from the stage of the Ivor Novello Awards in London on May 23, where she picked up the Special International Award.She took the chance to address how perceptions of artists like her have changed since she emerged in the early 2010s.“When I started, I think a lot of things were written about how the songs were sort of naval-gazing just about my experience with challenging relationships,” she said.“Now, what we’ve seen is that those songs were not written about a small microcosm of people and women; we’re seeing an acute amount of things written about difficult relationships.

Even when COVID began, the second epidemic in the United States was interpersonal relationship violence – it increased by 300 per cent.“I think it’s amazing that female singer-songwriters have the freedom to write about absolutely whatever they want,” she continued. “It was always kind of nerve-wracking to think that writing about relationships would be seen as something self-gratuitous or feigning vulnerability.

It’s a very vulnerable thing – not just for women, but for men.”At the same ceremony, Del Rey also revealed she had once wrote a song for a James Bond film’, only to have it turned down by the franchise’s producers.

The track – ‘24’ – eventually ended up on her fourth album ‘Honeymoon’, but had been written with the Bond film Spectre in mind.Lana also spoke to NME at the Ivor Novellos this week.