Lana Del Rey admits to casting spell on Trump

Lana Del Rey, the spiritual music priestess of Californian longing and despair, may have done America and the world a favour: she cast a spell on Donald Trump. Or, at least, she claims to have done so. While we can’t be sure of Del Rey’s witchy sensibilities, we can follow the clues.

Way back in late February, when Trump’s inauguration was still relatively fresh, Del Rey tweeted the following: “At the stroke of midnight / Feb 24, March 26, April 24, May 23 / Ingredients can b found online.” In response, her fans traced the dates in the tweet to an online post calling for an international gathering of witches to stop the president from embroiling America into any further controversy.

In an interview with NME, to promote her new album Lust for Life, she was asked if she really did cast a spell on Trump. Her answer? “Yeah, I did it. Why not? Look, I do a lot of s--t.” She continued, as only Lana Del Rey can, “I’m in line with Yoko and John and the belief that there’s a power to the vibration of a thought. Your thoughts are very powerful things and they become words, and words become actions, and actions lead to physical changes.”

“I really do believe that words are one of the last forms of magic and I’m a bit of a mystic at heart,” she added. “And I’ve seen how I feel about changing those people’s lives and I’ve been on the other side of that as well — on the other side of well-wishes and on the other side of malintent. And I’ve realized how strong you have to be to be; bigger than all of it, even bigger than your own vibrations.”

But has her magic done the trick? Trump not only remains president, but he’s still making controversial decisions and tweeting about it everyday — which has pushed the singer to stop using the American flag as a backdrop at her shows. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, Del Rey said, “It’s certainly uncomfortable. I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing Born to Die.”

Her album also has more of a political theme than any of her music in the past: “Things have shifted culturally. It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe. It was a good time . ... I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent toward women. I saw it right away in L.A. Walking down the street, people would just say things to you that I had never heard.”

Lana Del Rey