Lana Del Rey accepts the Decade Award onstage during attends Variety's Hitmakers Brunch presented by Peacock | Girls5eva on December 04, 2021 in Downtown Los Angeles. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Variety)

Lana Del Rey Comes Clean about Her Waffle House Shift

READ TIME: 3 MIN.

In July everyone wondered why Lana Del Rey was working a shift as a waitress at an Alabama Waffle House. At the time, The Insider reported: "Lana Del Rey has left fans puzzled after she was spotted working a shift at a Waffle House in Florence, Alabama, on Thursday."

"In photographs circulated on social media, the singer of "Blue Jeans" was photographed behind the Waffle House counter, brewing coffee while wearing a Waffle House uniform and a name tag that read 'Lana.'"

Her career move was captured in a 8-second video that begins with Del Rey serving a customer before turning and walking towards the restaurant manager, who was taking a video of her.

At the time, The Insider continued, fan forums "speculated that she might be recording a music video, while others suggested that it could be a publicity stunt for upcoming songs. Others jokingly suggested that she might be exploring a new career path."

And though she admonished the manager for filming her without her permission, Del Rey laughed about it to the Hollywood Reporter this week in a lengthy interview.

It turns out her waitress stint was not intentional. "But after seven days of seeing the same faces during a visit to Florence, Alabama, and a July morning's worth of shooting the shit with her brother and sister in the same plastic booth, the singer-songwriter found herself wearing the Southern chain's familiar uniform: a polycotton, working-class blue button-up garnished with a name tag bearing the crudely stickered letters L-A-N-A," THR reports.

"We were on our third hour, and the servers asked, 'Do you guys want shirts?' " she says. "Hell yeah! We were thrilled."

"Listening to her laugh about this two months later, it's not clear whether Del Rey is more amused by the memory of the experience or the fuss made in its wake. Either way, she happily fills in the gaps:

"This guy, a regular, comes in every day and orders two things, so they were like, 'Just go get it for him!' I brought him a Coke. No ice. And an empty cup.

"For dip," she clarifies, miming a spit of chewing tobacco over a Coke of her own (this one a Diet). "I didn't see anyone take a video of me."

Reflecting back on the video, Del Rey mused: "I wish my album had gone as viral."

Earlier this year the 38-year old Grammy nominee released her ninth album, "Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd."

"I woke up to, like, 10,000 texts the next morning – some from folks I had not heard from for 10 years. "Saw your picture at the Waffle House!" (Laughing.) I was like, "Did you hear the new album?"

In the interview, Del Rey touches upon the growing respect she is receiving from critics and that she may have been ahead of the curve in terms of the spiritual mood of the nation. Asked if the world was catching up to her, she says: "One hundred percent. I also feel, maybe spiritually, there was something I needed to learn from having people be so adamantly and vocally against it. There was room for me to look at why. It's possible there are some things I might not have delved into [in my music] had I not heard the same critical throughline over and over and over again. Possibly, there was a bigger-picture reason for that. I wish it had not lasted for 10 years. That would've been helpful. But we're in a good place now."

Asked what makes her happy, Del Rey responds: "Everything! I like getting all the props together [for projects]. I bought this fucking couch for this photo shoot. It's fire. I like getting a bagel, down at Western Bagel, with a hot coffee and just sitting on the street – checking in with myself. If nothing's going wrong, I feel great. At this point, I'm really happy."


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