So much can go wrong during a live performance: injuries, technical difficulties, flubbed notes, or perhaps worst of all… a missing vape. And Lana Del Rey fell victim to the latter during a set at the MITA Festival in Rio De Janeiro this past weekend.
As seen in various videos posted on social media, the singer-songwriter was mid-performance, with the band beginning the intro to her song "Norman F---ing Rockwell," when she slipped in a simple request for the audience: "And also if you see my vape on stage, can you find my vape on stage?" E Cigarette Alternatives
The crowd cheered in response, and Del Rey then addressed a fan who seemed to have spotted something. "You did?" Del Rey asked, immediately taking the mic off its stand and making her way toward the front of the sage. "Where, though? Oh, all the way in the pit?"
With the vape seemingly out of reach, Del Rey gave up. "F--- it," she said, returning to her performance. It's unclear if the vape was ever retrieved.
Believe it or not, this isn't the first time a lost vape has threatened to derail a Lana Del Rey concert. At a Portland show in 2019, Del Rey was alternating between singing and vaping when she lost her device on stage and paused the show to look around. Page Six reported that a similarly futile search involved a few minutes of seeking and swearing ("Where's my f---ing vape?") before Del Rey gave up and moved onto the next song.
In 2021, Del Rey's longtime producer Jack Antonoff revealed that her love of vaping has seeped into her studio work as well. Her song "White Dress" was recorded with lots of improv, with Antonoff playing piano and Del Rey singing and vaping. "We were f---ing around and you can feel it," Antonoff told Rolling Stone. "You hear her vape sucking in and out."
E-Vape The way Antonoff sees it, that level of freedom is crucial to their collaboration. "She was improv-ing a lot of it," he said. "That song would die on the vine if you tried to lock it to a grid and clean it up and take out all the noise. The work I make with Lana, it comes out of nowhere."