To promote her new single, Lana Del Rey has recently done a conversation with another pop superstar, Billie Eilish. During the interview Lana revealed that Eminem and Country music was the only thing she heard before moving in New York.
DEL REY: I will also say, in terms of everyone who’s paved the way for me, the way Cat Power delivered her songs in the ’90s and in the early 2000s, and even now—we’ve toured together and I’ve told her so many times, “I should be opening for you.” I was a high soprano, which you can kind of tell in the way that I talk, but her low tones, I would practice them the way she sang that song where she’s like, [sings] “Bay-be-doll.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, I could sing like that.” I realized I had a low register too. And when I learned that she played a big concert in New York with her back turned to the audience, that was when I realized I might have a chance. Then, I watched this documentary when I was 20 called The Devil and Daniel Johnston with my boyfriend at the time, Artie Levine, and seeing that Daniel was super different and he had a bit of a cult following, I realized there might be a chance here. I definitely had my muses, but it was so much later on in life because I didn’t move to New York until I was 18, and that was when I first heard anything other than Eminem, country, and NPR. All of a sudden, I got a f—ng crash course in music.
EILISH: Everything you’re saying is blowing my mind out of my skull. You will never understand how much of an impact that you have had on me in my life.
This is not the first time Lana Del Rey mentioned Eminem in a positive way. Back in 2012, the singer told RNB Junk in Milan that Slim Shady’s music changed her life: “He really changed my life because I didn’t know music could be intelligent. He was talking about his own life, and he wasn’t just rhyming over music for rhyme’s sake… That made me think I could talk about the way things were instead of just making stupid music.”
“Eminem really changed my life because I didn’t know music could be intelligent.”
– Lana Del Rey
That did not stop Eminem to play on Lana’s name in his 2014 Shady Records cypher: “Play nice? B–ch I’ll punch Lana Del Rey right in the face twice, like Ray Rice in broad daylight in the plain sight of the elevator surveillance/ ’Til her head is banging on the railing, then celebrate with the Ravens.”
As for Billie Eilish, in her 2019 interview with Noisey magazine, revealed that she was scared of Eminem when growing up. When asked to choose her favorite rapper between Eminem and Childish Gambino, she admitted: ”I have to say Childish Gambino, one billion percent. I was scared of Eminem my whole life. Terrified. That dude freaked the f–k out of me. Oh my god.”
Em kind of responded Billie in his 2020 song “Alfred’s Theme,” from Music To Be Murdered By album with the following lines: “I’m just fulfilling my wish of killing rhymes / Which is really childish and silly, but I’m really like this / I’m giving nightmares to Billie Eilish, I’m Diddy’s side b–ch.”
For the full conversation between Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish, visit Interview Magazine. And listen to Lana’s new song below: