Why do pro-Trump people love Lana Del Rey so much?

When she appeared at the Variety Hitmakers 2024 ceremony on December 7 in Los Angeles, Lana Del Rey gave, once again, the disturbing impression of emerging from another era. Already physically, in a crowd of women in minidresses, visible lingerie and dizzying heels, the 39-year-old American singer stands out with a revisited vintage look: round-neck sweater old money à la Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe-style pout and impeccable blow-dry inspired by Rita Hayworth, icon of Old Hollywood. Then comes this famous moment where she walks on stage, takes the microphone and says: “It’s so scary to have to hold on to an innocent perception of how things could be, when you’re in an industry where your values ​​and morals may not quite fit the zeitgeist.” Before publicly thanking her “incredible husband”, Jeremy Dufrene, an alligator shower and “known supporter of Donald Trump”, according to several sources.

It doesn’t take much to set the Internet on fire. Following these comments, tweets claim that Lana Del Rey is officially a pro-Trump conservative. On the one hand, her Democratic fans who defend the idea that she was never on the side of Donald Trump, she who orchestrated in 2017 a mass occult ritual against the politician. On the other, his Republican fans who are ecstatic. “Oh Lana, we know your secret and we are with you”, expressed for example @2dwade on X. And continued in another publication: “She is not a democrat. Just stop. She is happy in her marriage to her Republican husband.”

Democrat…old school?

Whatever we think, this is far from the first time that Lana Del Rey has melted the hearts of Republicans. In 2023, the release of his album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd does not go unnoticed by the most conservative among them. Especially the title Judah Smith Interludean almost five-minute recording of a sermon by Judah Smith, the star pastor from California. In this successful album, thanks to which she was nominated five times for the Grammy Awards, Lana Del Rey bares herself. She talks about her love for God as well as unbridled sexuality in her very successful A&W. Dare to confide her fear of being forgotten by this industry which always tends to label her girl next door. Pays homage to the lost icons of Old Hollywood in Candy Necklace…

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These artistic choices, often illustrated with the American flag in the background, appeal to Republicans. Like Spencer A. Klavan, editor at American Minda publication of the American conservative think tank Claremont Institute. “It’s time again for me to ask conservative heterosexual men to explain Lana Del Rey to me,” he tweeted then.

In the process, the editor opens a discussion in which several conservative men agree on the same thoughts. For Ben Domenech, editor of the conservative newspaper The Spectator“she’s everything straight men idolize in the sultry tradition of the American Pacific sex queen, a sweet, sad, sun-kissed California lover wrapped in an American flag that tastes like cigarettes and broken dreams “. “She intuitively understands the very real power she exercises “as a woman” and translates this attraction and mystery into her music,” analyzes another.

Points of view that, when you think about it, make sense. Because with Lana Del Rey, everything is always a little blurry. One day, we see her arm in arm with Taylor Swift, a democratic figure in the pop music industry. Later that year, she was filmed by a stranger dressed as a waitress in a Waffle House, an American restaurant chain, in the depths of Alabama, and sang Amazing Grace with a regular of the place. Or shows up without warning in cowboy boots and beer in hand during a football game between the Texas and Oklahoma teams.

free spirit

Lana Del Rey is this woman who opposes the carrying of weapons in her title Looking For America (I’m still looking for my own version of America / One without the gun, where the flag can freely fly in peace). But also the one who is criticized for not speaking out on various subjects that divide the world, at a time when Taylor Swift expresses in black and white her desire to vote for Kamala Harris in the last American presidential elections.

She prefers to share her convictions in small amounts in face-to-face videos posted on Instagram, before deleting them a few hours later. She also says she defends them through her art and songs. Those who often paint the portrait of a woman who sees no problem in glamorizing toxic relationships with men, nostalgic for a failing American dream, fascinated by the imagery of women of the 1950s and 1960s. These same women in pastel dresses and sauerkraut buns that we find in the portraits of Norman Rockwell – an artist who, moreover, lends his name to Lana Del Rey’s seventh studio album, released in 2019.

For many, “she is not a doctrinaire modern liberal, but rather an old-school liberal,” says Rich Cromwell in the columns of an article for The Spectator. In fact, an eternal good girl from America who gives herself the freedom to ride a Harley Davidson on Route 66 with complete strangers in her music video Rideor to put up a single billboard to promote her latest album in her ex-boyfriend’s town. And it is precisely this spirit of independence and resilience, which she has cultivated for more than a decade now, which makes her a politicized icon. Often in spite of herself.