Lana Del Rey has said it is time to stop and question why so many people have died in mass shootings in the US.
The singer-songwriter, 34, recently released a song in response to the massacres — Looking For America — and said the money raised would go to charities helping shooting victims. Speaking to BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac, Del Rey, left, said the recent spate of shootings had left her friends “upset” in a way she had not seen before and said they feared a shooting could occur at events in their home towns.
She said: “California and New York — I was between both states when that double shooting happened, when I released that song. People were very upset in a way that I have not heard before. My friends were crying, ‘Is it going to be next at our holiday parade?’"
“Especially now on my phone, when you wake up you’ve got your newsfeed right there. You see there is a mass shooting in Kansas. You keep scrolling. It’s like it’s every few days. It’s time to stop and ask why.”
Incidents at a food festival in Gilroy, California, a shopping center in El Paso, Texas, and in Dayton, Ohio, reignited the debate over gun control in America.
Del Rey also explained the meaning behind the title of her forthcoming sixth studio album, Norman F***ing Rockwell!
She said that by adding a curse word in between the American author, painter and illustrator’s first and last names, she was making a comment on the American Dream.
“Obviously, I am not a highly political writer,” she said. “But putting the effing in made it like a commentary, like an exclamation point on the American Dream. Like, where are we now in the American Dream? Well, Norman effing Rockwell. This is where we have come. We are kind of in a state of exclamation. Culturally, everything is different. It’s a lot more fun and there’s more different personalities. It’s an interesting time and it called for an interesting title.”
Norman F***ing Rockwell! will be released on Friday.
