Yesterday Lana Del Rey tweeted her disapproval and sense of betrayal over the Guardian article with her infamous quote about wishing she was dead. In the since-deleted tweets, she claimed that the author Tim Jonze (whom she misidentified as Ultraviolence reviewer Alexis Petridis) posed as a fan but had “sinister” intentions and that she was drawn into the salacious quotes by “calculated” leading questions:

Today, Jonze fired back with an essay in defense of his work and a recording of the interview. Here’s the recording:

And here’s an excerpt from Jonze’s piece:

Besides the fact Lana doesn’t remember who actually interviewed her, there are a number of things about her statement that sound a bit iffy to me. She may well have not wanted to do the interview but it certainly didn’t seem like it – she was delightful company for the 70 minutes we spent talking, and was happy to continue over the allotted time when the PR knocked on the door, an hour in, and asked how we were getting on. I was not “masked” as a fan, I genuinely like her music and really liked her too – her life story is fascinating, she was refreshingly open when answering even the most difficult question and she seemed completely in love with music. As for the rather vague “sinister ambitions” she claims I had — well, my colleagues sadly refused to comment on how sinister I am, but they were all adamant that I’m “not in the slightest bit ambitious.” Thanks, guys.

It’s not pleasant asking a pop star if she thinks the idea of dying young herself is attractive — it’s a dark question, but it’s not a leading one. She has every opportunity to say no. And she can hardly complain about the subject matter: she’d been talking about her icons all dying young, she named her debut album Born To Die and had spent much of the 50 minutes previous to this point telling me how miserable she was.

Ultimately, the problem with Lana’s complaint is that she doesn’t seem to know what she’s actually complaining about. She’s not alleging that I made up her quotes, nor is she claiming that they’ve been “twisted” or that we’ve printed them out of context. Instead she seems annoyed by the fact I wanted her to say interesting things and asked questions that caused her to do so. Well sorry, Lana, but that’s just me doing my job.

In other news, Ultraviolence is really good.

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.]