On the last night of her three-week tour throughout southern U.S. cities, Lana Del Rey surprised fans with an announcement: she plans to donate all proceeds from ticket sales back to the cities she has performed in.
“I just wanted to say thank you to you and just every city I’ve gone to before this,’ she said, as captured in a now-viral video circulating on social media. “I also wanted to let you know, for what it’s worth, every ticket, every dollar, is poured right back into the city.”
The “Video Games” singer made the announcement in Charleston, West Virginia – the tenth and final stop of her tour, which kicked off in Franklin, Tennessee, on Sept.14. She has been promoting her new album, “Did You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” which came out in March and promptly reached number three on the Billboard 200 chart. Unsurprisingly, tickets for her mini-tour were quick to sell out.
Del Rey, who wore a white gown and a beehive hairstyle at her Charleston show, assured fans that she doesn’t tour to make money. “It is not about that for me,” she said. “I know that sounds cheesy, but I tour because I love it.”
This is not the singer’s first large donation to charity. In 2020, she announced she would donate half of the advance she received for her debut poetry collection, “Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass,” to Dig Deep’s Navajo Water Project – an initiative that aims to bring clean, running water to Navajo Nation households across New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
“We hope the Dig Deep Water project will find relief with the $350,000 that we delivered to them last month,” she wrote on Instagram. “I personally have always believed in personal reparations to give back to the people who have shaped our land. I look forward to updating you on the rest of the donations that we make throughout the year.”
And in 2019, following the deadly string of unrelated mass shootings in El Paso, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; and Gilroy, California, Del Rey took to Instagram to share her new song, “Looking for America,” and announce that she would donate all of its proceeds to relief funds for each city affected.
“Thinking of everyone this morning – we finished our song and just want to let you know all of my proceeds are going to Gilroy Garlic Festival Victims Relief Fund, El Paso Community Relief Fund and Dayton Foundation,” she wrote on social media.
Now, her latest act of generosity has reinforced the well-known fact that hosting concerts is a smart move for cities economically – a fact Taylor Swift famously reminded everyone of this summer, after the Federal Reserve published a report crediting her for an uptick in hotel revenue in Philadelphia. This led world leaders – including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – to ask Swift to bring her Eras tour to their countries, in hopes that their economies could reap the benefits of the superstar’s influence.
Now, following Del Rey’s announcement, perhaps world leaders will be asking her to visit them next. While it has not been announced exactly how much money each city will receive, it’s fair to say that Del Rey has done a stellar job in thanking her hosts.
“We’re all about the places we’ve been to,” she said.
