Lana Del Rey Accepts the Artist of the Decade Award

On the 4^th of December 2021, Lana Del Rey was presented with the Artist of the Decade award at Variety’s Hitmakers Awards Show in Los Angeles; she accepted the award from producer Mike Dean, who collaborated with her for the song “Wildflower Wildfire” and was honoured with the Producer of the Year award. The 36-year-old singer thanked many people who helped her on her journey and gave an emotional speech saying she is grateful for all the criticism.

Lana Del Rey started by thanking her managers, saying, “My managers helped me up the stairs. I still haven’t mastered the art of walking in heels. I’m super grateful for them, Ben [Mawson] and Ed [Millett], and for this award. I’m really glad that they’re here with me. They picked me out of the bar scenes, lounge singer scenes that I was singing in for about eight years before I met them. They got me out of a deal I made for 11 records for nine grand while I was working at a restaurant and living in a trailer park. Ben did that in one hour and then the next day he flew me to London and let me live with him. In a year, I wrote ‘Video Games,’ and I was ready to make good records, I was ready to make a lot of records.”

“Thank you, Variety,” she continued, “I’m really always grateful for any acknowledgement and also super grateful for all the criticism — I get a lot. What’s good about it is I really believe what’s reflected back to you is in some way a mirror to what’s going on in your inner life. It’s given me a huge opportunity to look inward and to look at my family of origin and look at my lineage, see what’s going on up there.”

The singer then took a moment to pay tribute to her grandmother. “I want to take a minute and think about my grandma, who fell ill two days ago. Any of the lightness and funniness and goodness in me I pretty much specifically got from her, so I’m really hoping she takes a turn for the better back in the North Country before I get there.”

The emotional speech came to an end when Lana Del Rey said, “I’ve been very lucky to follow my muse for the last 18 years, since I was 18. Sometimes that has taken me super far away from music into other mediums and other job opportunities that have nothing to do with the arts at all. I’m very flexible and what I’ve come to understand is that if you follow what you’re interested in, you’ll end up being the most creative in that field. Even if you get a 9-5 after you got the decade award, you need to do what feels right. I always like to say that the way I live my life is my poetry, my lovemaking is my legacy, and I get to make music in between.”

Watch the full clip of Lana Del Rey accept the Artist of the Decade award and make her speech below:

Earlier this year in September, Lana Del Rey deactivated all her social media accounts, saying that she is currently working on something that required “privacy and transparency”, though she assured fans that she would continue work on her spoken word albums, her other music projects, and her poetry.

For now, we can only wait to see what she has planned for the coming months, and years; until then, listen to Lana Del Rey’s most recent tracks called “Blue Banisters” and “Arcadia”, which are both on the ‘Blue Banisters’ album released on the 22^nd of October 2021.