Lana Del Rey was honoured with the Billboard Women in Music Visionary Award 2023. This recognition comes after Del Rey’s 14 years in the industry, during which she is credited with putting out 9 studio albums that defied the rules and expectations of genres.
Lana Del Rey was presented the award by Olivia Rodrigo who was named the Woman of The Year at last year’s awards. As Rodrigo presented the award to 37-year-old Del Rey, the latter mouthed the words ‘I love you so much’ before walking on to the stage.
Lana Del Rey’s acceptance speech
The Ocean Blvd songstress started her acceptance speech by expressing how happy she was to stand next to the writer of Driver’s License, referring To Olivia Rodrigo. She then gave a shout out to SZA who was awarded the Woman of the Year Award. Del Rey said that she knew she wanted to know SZ from the moment she heard her sing.
Continuing further, Lana Del Rey articulated that in contrast to the award she has received, she does not have a long-term vision, but is extremely happy. The singer said that when she first debuted in the music industry in 2008, the ‘waters weren’t as warm’. However, she added, that she feels happy for the people who feel like they can be themselves in the present culture.
Concluding her speech, she said that she feels like being happy is the ‘ultimate’ goal and that is why she ‘did it’.
The Billboard Women in Music awards is an annual awards event that recognize and honour influential female artists in music. This year, the event took place at YouTube Theatre, Inglewood, California. Apart from Lana Del Rey, other artists who were recognized this year include, SZA (Billboard’s Woman of the Year), Becky G (the Impact Award), Lana Del Rey (Visionary Award), Kim Petras (the Chartbreaker Award), Latto (the Powerhouse Award) among others.
The show was live streamed on Billboard.com and the official YouTube channel of Billboard.
