If you know anyone who identifies as a femme with an intense sense of malaise, you should really give them a call: A new beef in the music industry has mooed between the singers Ethel Cain and Lana Del Rey, and it\u2019s distressing sad girls everywhere. The two, who often are referenced in the same breath, considering that they\u2019re both female artists exploring Americana ideals and imagery through music, were revealed to be in a standoff when Del Rey dropped a snippet of an unreleased song<\/a> to her Instagram account last week. As internet sleuths piece together evidence pointing to the likelihood of years of friction between the singers, concerned members of the public are left wondering what to even make of the allegations and brewing fan wars. Now everyone from Nicki Minaj to Jack Schlossberg is weighing in on this new line drawn in the sand. But don\u2019t worry if you didn\u2019t understand a single word I\u2019ve said so far: Here goes my best attempt at breaking it all down.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t hear a peep about Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain\u2019s relationship before this, so how did this all start?<\/strong><\/p>\n Del Rey, the 40-year-old Born to Die crooner known as Lizzy Grant in another lifetime, ignited the fire last Thursday<\/a> when she teased part of an unheard song\u2014captioned \u201cTrack 13\u201d and directly tagging her go-to producer, Jack Antonoff\u2014in a video posted to her Instagram. In the video, Del Rey listens to the track in the car, with a snippet that starts with the lyrics \u201cEthel Cain hated my Instagram post\/Think it\u2019s cute reenacting my Chicago pose,\u201d before going on to refer to herself as \u201cthe most famous girl at the Waffle House.\u201d Notably, Del Rey is shown not passively listening but instead looking directly at the camera and making slight gestures, including shrugging in nonchalance after the lyric \u201cEthel Cain hated my Instagram post.\u201d She ends the clip by saying \u201cOK? OK,\u201d nodding in satisfaction, as if she has finally put some argument or confusion to bed.<\/p>\n All right, let\u2019s break this down. What\u2019s this about an Instagram post and Chicago pose? <\/strong> In July 2022, Del Rey was pictured posing<\/a> with then-boyfriend Jack Donoghue, a co-founder of the electronic band Salem, outside the Cook County Jail in Chicago. The photo was posted to Donoghue\u2019s Instagram page, though it has since been deleted. It was rumored that Cain, a 27-year-old gothic indie rocker who gained a cult following after her debut album was released in 2022, had also dated Donoghue, though that has not been verified. Whatever the nature of their relationship, it became crystal clear that Donoghue and Cain at least knew each other when, sometime after the jail photo was posted, Cain posted her own similar photo<\/a> of her and Donoghue. Cain\u2019s caption read \u201cOK wait my turn,\u201d seemingly in response to the photo of Del Rey and Donoghue.<\/p>\n Oh! Claws out, maybe. What is the significance of Del Rey mentioning Waffle House in her song snippet?<\/strong><\/p>\n In May 2022, the New York Times ran a profile of Cain headlined \u201cThe Most Famous Girl at the Waffle House<\/a>.\u201d Later, in 2023, a viral video surfaced showing Del Rey inexplicably working a shift<\/a> behind the counter of a Waffle House in Florence, Alabama, much to the bafflement of her fans, who wondered if it was some sort of publicity stunt. It turned out that the incident involved no labor, contractual or otherwise, on Del Rey\u2019s part for the food chain. Instead, as Del Rey told the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, she, a regular at that Waffle House location, had been given a free shirt and was cosplaying as a server there while some staff took photos and videos of her, and the photos and videos blew up without the context. Some fans are wondering now if, in hindsight, the whole thing wasn\u2019t orchestrated as some comeback aimed at Cain<\/a>. It\u2019s just as likely, however, that the situation went down just the way Del Rey alleged it did\u2014in which case she really lucked out with incredible wordplay to one-up Cain on her song.<\/p>\n Have these two always had beef with each other, or is this new?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It seems as if this has been brewing for a while. Plenty of X threads from fan accounts have sought to chart the full history of Del Rey and Cain\u2019s interactions over the years. Cain was seemingly an open fan of Del Rey\u2019s, apparently mentioning her as a favorite artist in screenshots of an old DeviantArt page<\/a> and even covering Del Rey\u2019s songs \u201cBorn to Die\u201d<\/a> and \u201cMariners Apartment Complex<\/a>.\u201d An X thread<\/a> from a Del Rey fan account then alleges, via unverified screenshots of blog posts and quotes, that Cain began to tire of being constantly compared to Lana Del Rey. Some Del Rey fans also point to a 2021 interview with Our Culture Mag<\/a> in which Cain pushes back against the themes of Del Rey\u2019s popular album Born to Die as evidence of Cain turning on Del Rey. In a 2022 interview with i-D<\/a>, Cain admits that she \u201clove[s]\u201d Del Rey and her music but feels that it\u2019s \u201ca detriment to the expansive work of two female artists to just reduce them to being similar to each other.\u201d The aforementioned X thread also includes some screenshots of alleged tweets<\/a> from Cain riffing on a tweet claiming that \u201clana del rey walked so ethel cain could run,\u201d to which Cain seemingly responded: \u201ci pushed over her when i ran past.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, a Reddit thread from a couple of years ago asserts that Cain used to edit her own Wikipedia page<\/a>, removing her older work and other information, including any references to Del Rey<\/a>. Now Del Rey\u2019s teased song has been dubbed by fans as \u201cAll About Ethel\u201d\u2014a play on All About Eve\u2014and has been transcribed by fans on Genius<\/a>, with two additional rumored lyrics at the end.<\/p>\n It seems as if Cain just has a particularly sarcastic sense of humor and was tired of a, well, tired comparison.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n That might not be all. Del Rey commented to explain her position a bit further on a now-deleted Pop Base Instagram post<\/a> about the snippet. In the comment, Del Rey claims she \u201cdidn\u2019t know who Ethel was until a few years ago\u201d (ouch!), after someone alerted her to the \u201cdisturbing and graphic side-by-side images\u201d Cain would allegedly make of Del Rey \u201cnext to unflattering creatures and cartoon characters\u201d and \u201cmaking constant comments\u201d about the singer\u2019s weight. (Del Rey has been subjected to media and fan scrutiny for her fluctuating body size<\/a> over the years.) Del Rey went on to accuse Cain of bad-mouthing her behind her back to their mutual friends, saying that Cain\u2019s alleged attempts at \u201cinserting herself\u201d into Del Rey\u2019s \u201cpersonal life\u201d left Del Rey \u201cdisturbed.\u201d (Thus far, these claims have gone unverified by fan-found evidence.)<\/p>\n Has Ethel Cain responded to any of this?<\/strong><\/p>\n As far as I can tell, Cain\u2019s only reference to this mess was one post to her Instagram Stories<\/a> last Thursday. The post consisted of white text on a black background: \u201cUpdate: Lana Del Rey has blocked Ethel Cain on Instagram.\u201d It\u2019s unsurprising that Cain has been tight-lipped about the matter, seeing as she\u2019s currently touring for her critically acclaimed album Willoughby Tucker, I\u2019ll Always Love You, which was released earlier this year.<\/p>\n However, leave it to your family to have your back. Cain\u2019s sister, Delilah, responded to Del Rey\u2019s diss with her own captioned selfie directly tagging Del Rey, which she posted to her Instagram Stories before swiftly deleting it. Screenshots of the post<\/a> show Delilah\u2019s caption, which tags Del Rey\u2019s account and reads: \u201cI can\u2019t wait to watch your hologram perform this \u2018diss track\u2019 while you hit your vape backstage diva \u2026 What inspired you to suddenly make a country album?\u201d After deleting the more direct response, Delilah followed up with a secondary photo, which she allegedly left up on her Stories, captioned \u201cKEEP CRYING.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n A lot of the comments on various Instagram posts related to the apparent feud seem to mention Nicki Minaj. What on earth is <\/strong>that <\/strong>about?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In a livestream<\/a>, the Pink Friday rapper praised Del Rey while singing her own rendition of the now-infamous lyric name-dropping Cain. Minaj said that \u201cLana can say anything and it sounds dope,\u201d noting that she\u2019s wanted to sing the opening line about Cain \u201csince the moment\u201d she heard the snippet. (Do yourself a favor and listen to Minaj\u2019s rendition of that line.)<\/p>\n Minaj is not the only celebrity speaking on this brewing feud. The internet\u2019s favorite weirdo<\/a>, Jack Schlossberg (aka JFK\u2019s grandson), also mentioned the feud on his YouTube livestream<\/a>, in case you were waiting with bated breath to hear his opinion.<\/p>\n Surely the fans have been normal about all this.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Original Was a Blockbuster Satire of Modern Marriage. The Remake Takes On a New Era. Netflix\u2019s Star-Studded New Movie Adapts a Beloved Mystery Novel. It Butchers It. What Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s Critics Misunderstand About Her We Officially Have the Most Entertaining Celebrity Trial of the Year For the most part, it seems as if everyone\u2019s main reaction was that of surprise. However, if you riffle through enough tweets and social media comments, it won\u2019t take long before you see some<\/a> Cain fans being fatphobic toward Del Rey, and some Del Rey fans being transphobic to Cain (who is transgender), all of which takes some of the fun out of this whole petty debacle. Additionally, some fans in Del Rey\u2019s comments have chastised her for arguing with someone much younger than she is. While it\u2019s true that styles of humor don\u2019t always translate across generations, and perhaps many of Cain\u2019s public statements have been lost in translation, it is also true that you\u2019re never too old to put a hater in their place.<\/p>\n Really, though, the unsavory fan comments are a shame, because not only does the real meat of this beef seem to involve people we don\u2019t know and evidence of words whispered behind closed doors, but everyone knows that celebrity fallouts often lead to the best music. If any of Taylor Swift\u2019s songs about her ex-beaux or the Kendrick and Drake diss tracks<\/a> have taught us anything, it\u2019s that sometimes it\u2019s better, sonically speaking, if the claws come out.<\/span><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/compote.slate.com\/images\/b4b13078-0768-4dfd-a221-2b90efb7adf4.jpeg?width=140\")
\n <\/div>\nChris Molanphy<\/h4>\n
Netflix\u2019s Most Popular Movie in Years Has Now Birthed a No. 1 Song<\/h3>\n
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