Lana Del Rey Corrects Instagram Comments About Her Backstory And Cosmetic Procedures, Calls Out Music Critics By Name
Joseph Okpako/Getty Images for ABA
When not hopping onstage to sing “West Coast” with a random indie band while out for ice cream, Lana Del Rey has been busy with the kind of online drama that has been a more or less constant subplot throughout her career.
A week ago, she was leaving comments on Instagram insisting that she has not received cosmetic surgery. In response to one comment reading “lizzy grant u will never be forgotten” — a reference to her legal name, which she used to perform under before rebranding as Lana Del Rey — LDR wrote, “Ugh she never went anywhere, no more of that. Box dye hair does not a new person make.” In response to another similar comment — “Her natural nose was so perf” — Del Rey wrote that she has never surgically altered her face but confirmed she underwent what’s known as a “liquid nose job” or nonsurgical rhinoplasty:
to u and dear readers:
still never even been under the knife or anesthesia in my life for the 15th year in a row!!. But if u use filler like he used to- to build up the bridge of your nose it looks tall no bump . Takes seven minutes -in fact Dr Antel’s intern released those “befores” against hippa laws years ago much to my panic so u already know this.
Today she was back on IG addressing more controversy, taking aim at men who have asserted that she came from a rich family. In several comments she addressed a resurfaced 2018 interview with Ron Pope, a fellow musical artist who has been sometimes identified as a former classmate of hers at the Episcopal boarding school Kent School in Connecticut, where her parents sent her as a teenager to combat her struggles with alcoholism. (Pope has clarified that he didn’t go to school with LDR but instead played some gigs with her in the 2000s, and he’s apologized for passing along “shitty intel” about her; more on that below.)
While insisting that her family did not come from means, Del Rey also refers to Jon Caramanica and Sasha Frere-Jones, both of whom discussed her backstory in major New York publications (Caramanica in The New York Times, Frere-Jones in The New Yorker) in 2012, when she was on the rise. She even changed her Instagram bio to read, “Don’t ask me, ask jon caramanica or Sasha Frere Jones. They wrote my story. I’m just living in it.” This is a subject that has bugged LDR for years; she called out Caramanica and Frere-Jones in a 2023 Interview chat with Billie Eilish too, though the editors noted that she falsely attributed a quote about her self-reinvention to Frere-Jones.
Here’s what she had to say in one comment today:
I don’t remember a Ron Pope, although I might if I saw him. The only people I still know from school are from home. And I wouldn’t say I grew up anywhere other than lake placid. Whoever he was I must’ve felt comfortable to tell him that I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and that I did live for a while in a trailer Alabama not Arkansas- as well as in North Bergen, New Jersey. I sold my life rights for ten thousand dollars to pay for that trailer. These rather backhanded complimentary tales tell a larger story of the energy that still overwhelms my story. Many of the people I had to go to school with will never know what it was like to do what I had to do or go where I had to go to feel safe. One thing I can say is that if we had grown up with money- I firmly believe I would not have put myself in the position to be in the spotlight. My difficulties lead me to one concept of how I could get out of the spot I was in. The only comfort I have in my deeply misunderstood trajectory is that it lead me to Jeremy and allowed me to stay near to my siblings.
I would imagine perhaps that this guy Ron grew up in a family of means, but we as a family struggled like every other family in lake placid. I was on financial aid in Kent and I was made fun of every day for that. That being said I try to remember the better times there where my teachers were my main friends. People like him confound me. But unfortunately I feel that even acquaintances from back then were influenced by Jon caramanica who pushed this gross narrative of me growing up in wealth even though he knew the real truth after digging deep into my family history. His influence on the New York papers and old friends was so vast, and his conviction to erase my entire life story was so ferocious that he single handedly made it impossible to live in New York without being laughed at and made people who once understood me question the truth of my past. And he prided himself in that.
I felt safe in the south when I was young and later settled down there and that is a beautiful thing.
Don’t let anyone write your story, no matter how much smarter they look or sound than you.
Responding to someone who said she must be tired of explaining herself all the time, Del Rey wrote the following:
I am tired. But it’s very important not to let strange men keep telling me I had money. I have no idea what that would’ve felt like. It would have been easier if we did. That much I know for sure. I’ll never understood how living in one of the most hard working counties in the north east lead to some bizarre national tale of wealth. I do think if my family had known where my path would lead me they would not have applied for me to finish school in Connecticut since that seems to be the hot button twist in all of this. I know we as a family agree on this and believe that if I was able to finish school in lake placid then there wouldn’t be so much confusion. But we all made the very best decisions we could including me. But we also worked extremely hard. And noooo one is going to tell me that my parents being a special education/ 8th grade teacher and a real estate agent lead to an instant yellow brick path of gold
She also wrote this in a reply to someone who suggested she lied about her upbringing:
it’s just not the case. There are no discrepancies. My uncle worked in admissions. My parents found out I was able to go on scholarship. I found out I was going one month before. That experience didn’t go that well for me because of the widely spoken about issue of me being on financial aid that spread all over campus. I was one of the few people other than the locals and athletes who did not have that kind of money. I did my best to keep my head up. I was looked down upon by people who still hit me up. I learned a lot about great poets and philosophy and found solace in my kind teachers. It was hard. And now and then I make these comments to remind people of that. It’s not often but the truth is importsnt
Pope also chimed in with his own clarifications:
heyyyyy so this is a weird thing to resurface (it’s from a long ago interview, from 2013 I’m guessing)…first of all, I’m so sorry how this comes across. A few corrections to what’s written here…we didn’t go to school together and I never said we did. Someone introduced us in 2005 or ’06. You came to my apartment in Harlem maybe two or three times and then we played a tiny show together on the LES (we did a few of our own songs each and then a Tom Petty cover together; maybe seven people saw the show). In this interview, I was largely discussing how neat I thought it was that you’d created this whole world around yourself and how fun it was to watch someone rise so high professionally (if I recall correctly, this interview was around a time when we were on the same stage at that Swedish festival Bravalla, which is no longer there… many years after NY and any years before today…and we got to discussing you because of that funny coincidence that we’d played together for virtually no one and years later we were on this gigantic thing together). Not sure how it got cut up like this. You’re right in that I WAS misinformed by someone before I met you…they told me you were a super rich kid from upstate and then I carried those assumptions forward…so I was given shitty intel. Sorry about spreading that nonsense! Based on the information I’d been given, it felt like you were spinning wild yarns when we met. It’s gross that folks who knew you would lie about you like that and I’m very sorry for believing them (and then sharing that stuff). So, my sincerest apologies, my love to you and yours, I wish you nothing but the best and it was not my intent to be involved in your life or tell try to tell your story in any
way.
This has been quite the marathon, but if you’re interested in seeing the screenshots (and a few more LDR comments along the same lines), you can peruse the embeds below.
