Ethel Cain and Lana Del Rey.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Joseph Okpako/WireImage, Debbie Hickey/Getty Images
If you pass an alt girl in a prairie dress crying on the streets, just know that it’s because her musical parents are fighting. Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain are publicly interacting for the first time, and it’s not going well. Del Rey released a diss track about Cain, Cain responded, and Del Rey made vague accusations in the comments of a Pop Base Instagram post, of all places. Either way, she’s coming for Cain’s tattooed neck, just after the release of Cain’s new album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Below, a breakdown of the feud pitting Florida against California.
There have been rumors/leaks of a Lana Del Rey song called “All About Ethel” for over a year now, but nothing solid materialized until Del Rey herself teased the song in an Instagram Reel posted late at night on August 13. “Ethel Cain hated my Instagram post,” Del Rey coos on the first line of the track, which plays as she sits in a car singing along. The chorus repeats the line “The most famous girl in the Waffle House,” a reference to a memorable 2022 New York Times profile of Cain by Popcast host Joe Coscarelli titled “The Most Famous Girl in the Waffle House.” The post is captioned “TRACK 13” and tags Del Rey’s common co-conspirator, Jack Antonoff.
Cain posted an Instagram Story at around midnight on August 14 with the words “update: lana del rey has blocked ethel cain on instagram.”
Del Rey clarified herself in the comments of entertainment-news aggregator Pop Base. “I didn’t know who Ethel was until a few years ago — when someone brought to my attention the disturbing and graphic side-by-side images she would often put up of me next to unflattering creatures and cartoon characters making constant comments about my weight, I was confused at what she was getting at,” she wrote. “Then when I heard what she was saying behind closed doors from mutual friends and started inserting herself into my personal life I was definitely disturbed.”
Cain and Del Rey have been compared to one another for years, particularly in the wake of Cain’s 2022 album, Preacher’s Daughter. “Like Lana Del Rey’s goth sister, Ethel Cain eulogises seedy all-American glamour over doomy, expansive pop-rock sounds,” a Guardian review of that album begins. Cain did not take well to all the comparisons, posting about the Guardian review in since-deleted tweets. “I love Lana and I love her music but there’s a hundred other things at play here. If that’s an entry way for a review, that’s fine. But sometimes people arrive at Lana Del Rey and stop at Lana Del Rey,” she told i-D at the time. “And yeah, I called it lazy writing because it’s lazy for me and her. I think it’s kind of a detriment to the expansive work of two female artists to just reduce them to being similar to each other.” Pictures have also circulated online of Cain with Del Rey’s ex Jack Donoghue of Salem. However, the alleged photos of Cain fat-shaming Del Rey have yet to surface, if they do exist. If Cain does respond via song, this might end up being the most somber diss-track battle in history.
