When Lana Del Rey dropped details of her highly anticipated 2021 album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club, in January fans were excited.
Until she started explaining herself.
Along with the album artwork and track listing, Lana, real name Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, uploaded a lengthy statement preemptively defending herself.
Against "a WOC/POC issue".
She brought it up herself in an Instagram comment on a photo of the album's cover art. The image shows a group of women gathered around a table, in a black-and-white photo.
"Yes there are people of colour on this record's picture and that's all I'll say about that but thank you," she wrote.
However, she continued, naming her BIPOC friends.
"These are my friends this is my life... We are all a beautiful mix of everything - some more than others which is visible and celebrated in everything I do."
She attempted to prove her allyship: "In 11 years working, I have always been extremely inclusive without even trying to. My best friends are rappers, my boyfriends have been rappers," she wrote.
Then she linked it to Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
"Before you make comments again about a WOC/POC issue, I'm not the one storming the capital, I'm literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table 24 seven," she wrote. "Respect it."
The comment seemed to be Lana's attempt to quash any criticism before it began, but it backfired.
She followed up with a BBC One radio interview where she discussed the controversy, that she herself started.
"Before I even put the album cover up, I knew what people were going to say," she said.
"So when they actually started saying things, I responded and I just said, 'I got a lot of issues but inclusivity ain't one of them.' It just isn't. You can't just make it my problem...
"I wasn't being preemptive, I was definitely responding. But I just feel like if that’s really what people are gonna say, I have an answer for them, which is that if you look closer, you will see people of colour. It's a black-and-white image, so zoom in, you know. It's just weird, you know?"
And she then found herself in more hot water, over comments about Donald Trump.
"The madness of Trump, as bad as it was, it really needed to happen. We really needed a reflection of our world's greatest problem, which is not climate change, but sociopathy and narcissism. Especially in America. It's going to kill the world," she said.
She explained her comments further on Twitter:
She said her lyrics had made people say she'd "set women back hundreds of years".
"Let's be clear: I'm not not a feminist - but there has to be a place in feminism for women who look and act like me - the kind of woman who says no but men hear yes - the kind of women who are slated mercilessly for being their authentic, delicate selves, the kind of women who get their own stories and voices taken away from them, by stronger women or by men who hate women."
While she raised good points about the double standards faced by men and women in the music industry, these were overshadowed in the reaction - because she seemed to diminish the accomplishments of women artists of colour to make her point.
As BuzzFeed News reporter Michael Blackmon put it, those women "have endured a lot of the same struggles as Del Rey - and often to a greater extent because of their race. There's an entire history of women singers and songwriters making music - the kind Del Rey seems to believe she invented - who are completely erased by her statement."
The statement saw reactions from across the industry, and Lana later said she'd only singled out those women as they were her favourite musicians.
"If you want to try and make a bone to pick out of that like you always do be my guest, it doesn't change the fact that I haven't had the same opportunity to express what I wanted to express without being completely decimated," she wrote in a comment.
"If you want to say that that has something to do with race, that's your opinion but that's not what I was saying."
In response to her latest internet drama, over the explanation of her upcoming album cover, Lana singled out magazines that she considered had taken her out of context.
Despite everything, Lana's single and music video 'Chemtrails over the Country Club' dropped on January 11 to much fan support, and positive responses in early critical reviews.
Perhaps it's true what they say: all publicity is good publicity.
And with her album slated for a March released, who knows what could happen before then?
Feature image: Getty.