Lana Del Rey has long been “accused” of being the daughter of a rich man. From the outset of her success, there were speculations that Robert Grant had “bought” her career, including her initial bum deal with 5 Points Records (which eventually cost Del Rey plenty of money to buy back the rights to the songs that were released on Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant, ergo eschewing an eventual need to release Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant [Lana’s Version]). In the first year after “Video Games” was released, there was no shortage of venom directed at her vis-à-vis her “authenticity,” or lack thereof. And part of that stemmed from a vehement belief that Del Rey was yet another case of privilege being the key to success. For whatever reason, Del Rey has sought to set the record straight after over a decade of letting “the narrative” perpetuate. And yet, what she had to say about being “poor, or whatever” (as Madonna would call it) doesn’t exactly scream, “Struggle!”
Citing growing up in Lake Placid as the height of her “poor girl legitimacy,” Del Rey does little to assuage the contempt of those who would seek to remind her that poverty—real poverty—is not what she endured. At worst, she endured the white girl version of poverty that Andie Walsh in Pretty in Pink had to by being called white trash and having to work a part-time job. In fact, she says the real rich kids at her boarding school used to call her “WT from LP” (white trash from Lake Placid). An “epithet” that actually sounds like an on-brand song title for Del Rey.
Somebody trolling in the comments section (via the sarcastic, “It’s so depressing to grow up rich. And then get even richer. Omg what will she ever do?”) was what finally set Del Rey off enough to post a video (and then delete it) about having “absolutely no money” as a child. She started by saying, “I wanna make this video really short and sweet [at over five minutes], just ‘cause the conversation that keeps coming up about coming from, me coming from money and my family having money and this whole thing. I just wanna say, like, coming from the most rural spot inarguably, one of the most rural spots in America, that was not a wealthy town, um, and having gone to a boarding school where I didn’t even know I was going or didn’t have any concept of and got financial aid for because my uncle worked in the administrative building and also being completely alienated from all the kids who already knew each other from New York City. I had such a tough time there because everyone knew how much money everyone had.” Apart from the incomplete sentences, there are many holes to poke in all of those statements. For a start, there are far more rural places in America than Lake Placid, and it is certainly not known for being a poor town. Indeed, it was co-opted by the wealthy after the founding of the Lake Placid Club in 1895 led to the “discovery” of the upstate milieu as a place where the affluent could “retreat” (as though their already cushy day-to-day existence was something that needed to be “escaped”).
Dewey Decimal System creator Melvil Dewey was at the helm of the aforementioned social club known for its racist and exclusionary practices. Complete with a membership policy that stipulated, “No one will be received as a member or guest against whom there is physical, moral, social or race objection, or who would be unwelcome to even a small minority… This invariable rule is rigidly enforced. It is found impracticable to make exceptions for Jews or others excluded, even though of unusual personal qualifications.” So fearful of a Jewish “infection” near his precious Lake Placid Club was Dewey that he even bought the plot of land adjacent to the club so that no Jewish person would.
So yes, Lake Placid, one could argue, was a haven for the white and racist (often synonymous with wealth) early on in its history, and perhaps that’s where Del Rey has gotten some of her propensities for tone deafness (e.g., the “question for the culture,” posting videos of people without their faces obscured during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, saying she’s not racist because she’s fucked some “rappers” [though which ones besides the white G-Eazy remains unclear]). Del Rey also freely admits to the perks of nepotism, which most non-privileged people have no access to whatsoever, by stating her uncle’s administrative position at the Kent School helped give her a leg up. And yet, she clearly doesn’t see it that way. All she sees, essentially, is being the Dan/Jenny Humphrey of her boarding school, looked upon as “less than” in such a way as to make her eventually sing, “Money is the reason we exist/Everybody knows it, it’s a fact/Kiss, kiss.” For those without “real” money to spend in here (as Vivian Ward announced at the Beverly Hills store where she was previously rejected) genuinely don’t “exist” to those with the proverbial big bucks. This, as Del Rey admits, further compelled her toward the path of fame and fortune so that no one could ever call her trash again. Though, of course, no one outside an uber-wealthy circle probably ever would have.
Elsewhere, Del Rey remarks, “My parents were arguing about money every single day, and my dad working as a woodworker and in real estate and my mom working in special education… Like, although he bought domain names later on, it doesn’t mean that they were worth anything until more recently.” What she fails to mention is that both worked at renowned ad agency the Grey Group in NYC before moving to Lake Placid once Del Rey was born (to die). Robert Grant was a copywriter, while her mother, Patricia Hill, was an account executive. Neither of those salaries would be anything to turn one’s nose up at. And obviously, they had enough money for the move upstate and to buy a house where they would raise the rest of the Grant family. Nonetheless, Del Rey claims to have felt scarcity during her youth. And yet, how scarce could it have all really been once Robert and Patricia got Lana and her sister Chuck’s modeling career for Ford Models going (hence, the constantly resurfacing photos of Lana from random-ass photoshoots like the one with Lindsay Lohan for Abercrombie & Fitch)? Pimping them out like the Spearses with Britney, as it were. Maybe some of that money even helped with LDR’s tuition for the notoriously expensive private university that is Fordham in the Bronx. Del Rey, conveniently, didn’t mention how that was afforded.
Though she was sure to add that, while in New York, “I really didn’t know what to do, and depended on the boyfriends that I had to let me stay with them all that while.” Steven Mertens and Josh Kemp are then name-checked, the way Madonna might be forced to give Dan Gilroy or Camille Barbone some credit for furnishing her with the basics in life while she focused on her music. As a matter of fact, while performing in London for The Celebration Tour, Madonna made a similar, blunter comment about needing to rely on boyfriends upon moving to New York City, and away from her own middle-class family in Michigan: “I had no way to take a bath or shower… So I would actually, um, date men who had showers and bathtubs. Yep, that’s what I did… Blow jobs for showers.” Del Rey could say the same, but that wouldn’t suit her vision of herself.
Nor would it to admit that taking any kind of vacation is a privilege, no matter how “ghettoly” executed. So it is that she also declared, “Even on our monthly [a word she didn’t seem to mean within the context], like, spring break vacation every year, we drove to Daytona. Not flew ‘cause it was too expensive.” This is where she comes across like that model in the season one episode of Sex and the City (or Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids saying, “Help me, I’m poor”) who insists, “I’m really very literary. I read. I’ll sit down and read a whole magazine from cover to cover.” Del Rey’s version of that is, “I’m really very poor. I had to go to boarding school and Fordham on financial aid” and “Oh my gawww, we had to drive to Daytona instead of flying.” Bitch, do you know how many actual poor people can’t go goddamn nowhere?
Still, she concludes her woe-is-me speech with, “It’s so sad that I can’t own coming from this, like, beautiful rural mountain town.” No one ever said she couldn’t own that. But to call herself poor (while her parents’ huge wedding announcement in the New York Times circa 1982 also suggests otherwise as poor people simply don’t do that kind of shit) is, let’s just say it, a bit extreme and absurd. Granted, in the present, being middle class (even upper) is little better than being outright poor (in terms of how far a dollar will stretch), and certainly entails far fewer (if any) governmental benefits…replaced instead by greater tax burdens. But Del Rey ought to at least somewhat remember, in her life before fame, that poverty is not something she ever actually experienced, nor was she at risk of it. Especially after her father did cash in on those domain names in the 2000s. Even so, it better suits the “lore of Lana,” particularly with her small-town predilections of late, to announce that not only was she not a rich kid, she was a poor kid. But with poverty like hers, who needs food stamps?
