Lana Del Rey will no longer use American flags as visuals on tour, and here’s why

Speaking candidly in a new interview, Lana Del Rey says she’ll no longer use America flags as visuals when performing live.

Lana, who releases her latest album Lust For Life today, made the comments while speaking to music site Pitchfork in an emotional interview.

If you’re a Lana  fan, you’ll know that much of her imagery and music is inspired by the America of yesteryear, and the singer is known to utilize vintage images of America for her live shows and visuals, including the American flag (as she does in the “Ride” video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_-3di1yx0?feature=oembed

However, Lana Del Rey says that she won’t be using the American flag moving forward.

Part of why the singer is dropping the motif is because, under the current administration, she said it feels “certainly uncomfortable” to romanticize Americana.

“I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing ‘Born To Die,’” she told Pitchfork. “It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag. It would feel weird to me now—it didn’t feel weird in 2013.” 

Lana has previously spoken about how her new album was shaped by current events, and on the way back from Coachella this year, in the midst of the North Korean missile crisis, the singer wrote a politically charged track in response, “Coachella — Woodstock In My Mind.” However, it wasn’t something that she or her collaborators expected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjDfD_RtYiA?feature=oembed

“All the guys in the studio — we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on,” she said. “We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening.” 

Indeed, Lana seems to have also been inspired by the Women’s March earlier this year, penning a song called “God Bless America — And All the Beautiful Women in It.”

“Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control?” she said to Pitchfork.

“I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president,” she added later. “When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-NTv0CdFCk?feature=oembed

Lana Del Rey’s latest album Lust For Life is available to download and stream now.