Lana Del Rey Previews Ethel Cain Diss Track

Some shit is going down. We're looking at a brewing feud between Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain, our two greatest creators of expansive torch songs about American malaise. Last night, Del Rey shared a minute-long teaser for a new song, describing it as "Track 13" and tagging Jack Antonoff, the producer of the new album that she's been working on for a while. The opening lyric: "Ethel Cain hated my Instagram post." What is she talking about?

In the Instagram post, we see Lana Del Rey riding in the back of a car, staring down the camera and mostly keeping her face expressionless, with the occasional shadow of a Mona Lisa smile. Sometimes, she mouths along with her own lyrics. At the end of the clip, she shuts the song off and says, "OK. OK." She rhymes that line about Ethel Cain and her Instagram post with "Think it’s cute reenacting my Chicago pose." Apparently, Cain once shared a photo of herself with Salem's Jack Donoghue, Del Rey's ex-boyfriend. In the image, Cain and Donoghue appear to restage an internet-famous 2022 image of Del Rey and Donoghue outside Chicago's Cook County Jail, though they're not in the same place or dressed the same or anything. The Ethel Cain photo may actually even predate the Del Rey one.

Del Rey, who made headlines for pretending to work an Alabama Waffle House shift in 2023, also sings the line “the most famous girl at the Waffle House," an apparent reference to a 2022 New York Times headline about Ethel Cain.