Lana Del Rey’s latest Instagram post is raising eyebrows among her fan base.
“Always chilllling,” Del Rey, 38, captioned an Instagram photo of herself posing in a white mini dress while holding a handgun on Tuesday, February 6. She seemingly used the post to promote her upcoming headlining performance at Coachella by sharing the festival’s artist lineup in the upload’s second slide.
Del Rey also included the gun photo in her follow-up Instagram post, which featured a slideshow of snaps and video from the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
The singer’s fans fled to the comments to speculate about the meaning behind the gun photo, with many theorizing that it was a dig at the Grammys. Del Rey was up for five awards at the Sunday, February 4, awards show but walked away empty-handed. She has never won a Grammy despite being nominated 11 times throughout her career.
“Oh the grammys made her MAD,” one fan commented on the Instagram upload, while another wrote, “We love you so much, album of the year, album of my life.”
Other observers suggested the photo could be a reference to Del Rey’s previous mentions of firearms in her song titles, including “Guns and Roses,” and in song lyrics. “The poetry inside of me is warm like a gun,” one user wrote, quoting Del Rey’s 2019 track “Bartender.”
In addition to the many music-related comments, some fans expressed concern about the singer posing with a gun. “We just gonna ignore the gun orrrrrrr,” one X user wrote in reaction to the pic on Tuesday, with another person calling the post “a cry for help.”
Del Rey is no stranger to sparking controversy through her art. She was accused of glamorizing domestic violence with her 2012 single “Blue Jeans,” the music video for which featured a man choking her.
Del Rey also faced cultural appropriation accusations from the Native American community for wearing a feathered headdress in her 2012 “Ride” music video. The following year, she was criticized by the Latinx community for perpetuating gang culture stereotypes in her Tropico short film.
Del Rey’s cryptic Instagram post comes nearly one month after she was announced as one of Coachella’s headlining acts this year along with Tyler, The Creator, Doja Cat, No Doubt and more
Just days before attending the Grammys with her pal Taylor Swift, Del Rey announced her 10th studio album, titled Lasso, while celebrating frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff at the Billboard and NMPA Songwriter Awards.
“If you can’t already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country. We’re going country. It’s happening,” she revealed at the January 31 awards ceremony, according to Billboard. “That’s why Jack has followed me to Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Mississippi, over the last four years.”
