As anticipation for Lana Del Rey’s tenth album, Lasso, continues to build, it was only appropriate that the singer began to tease a new song a few months back. Specifically, a collaboration with Quavo that was hinted at as early as February of this year, when the two were seen leaving The Fleur Room together after the Pre-Grammy Gala hosted by Clive Davis. Being that, back in 2021, Del Rey cited Migos as the one group she wanted to collaborate with (gushing, “I love them. I love everything they do. There was a kind of like, new, revolution of sound eleven years ago in the singer-songwriter community which I loved seeing. And then with Migos, I think they kicked off a new super fun, super autobiographical and completely different style of rap”), those dreams seemed dashed by 2022, when the death of Takeoff effectively ended the group. Two years on and Del Rey has decided a collab with Quavo is perhaps just as good (after all, it was good enough for Madonna on “Champagne Rosé” and “Future”).
Enter their single, “Tough,” a supposed glimpse into Del Rey’s country destiny, though the song still has the Migos sound ephemerally hidden by some twangy overlays of acoustic guitar. In fact, by the twenty-nine-second mark, with Del Rey’s second utterance of the word “tough,” the backing track breaks out into the erstwhile hip-hop stylings of Migos as Quavo urges, “Come on, take a ride with me/Like the 808s beating in the trunk in Atlanta/It was tough.” Quavo continues for a few more verses before passing the mic back to Del Rey, who continues the chorus, “Tough like the scuff on a pair of old leather boots/Like the blue-collar, red-dirt attitude/Like a .38 made out of brass/Tough like the stuff in my grandpa’s glass.” And therein lies the most country aspect of the song: its “subtle” misogyny. And yet, it’s not subtle at all, so much as blatant.
This isn’t exactly a surprise considering Del Rey is the person singing. After all, she doesn’t have the most stellar track record with “feminism,” being the girl who once said, “Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested” (a straight man’s wet dream, of course). That much has been made apparent in many of her lyrics and music videos. Yet, Del Rey also clarified in the same 2014 interview with The Fader, “My idea of a true feminist is a woman who feels free enough to do whatever she wants.” If that’s the objective definition, then, sure, one could argue Del Rey is, in actuality, a “true feminist” rather than a “guy’s girl.” A moniker that easily applies to someone who helmed the visuals for the “Ride” video. Ironically, however, Del Rey would do something of a one-eighty in terms of being more embraced by women in the latter part of her career than men who appreciated her long-standing “be my daddy” shtick. That much was crystallized in a 2023 interview with Rolling Stone UK, during which she stated, “Love the girls. Girl’s girl.” The antithetical term to what she has often represented in her videos: a “guy’s girl.” (In the same interview, she also added, “I definitely wrote Born to Die for the boys.”)
The video for “Tough” would seem to confirm she’s back on that side of things as she does, indeed, “take a ride” with Quavo through the backwater roads of the South. Showcasing mostly scenes of the two being all lovey-dovey with one another (even more so than Del Rey was with A$AP Rocky in “National Anthem”), the country vibe of the song is mostly reliant on the video itself. This includes the parading of an American flag with Del Rey’s image on it, shooting a gun together, Quavo sitting in a rocking chair on a porch while Del Rey sits in his lap with a guitar sporting cowboy boots and jeans and various “average” Americans peppered in to prove the “authenticity” of this duo’s “down-home” nature. Being that the South is arguably still the region of the U.S. that’s most rooted in patriarchal values, Del Rey and Quavo perhaps also chose to go with “grandpa’s glass” in regard to describing a “tough” liquid (a.k.a. “stuff”). Because it wouldn’t be “proper” or “ladylike” for a grandma to be drinking the same kind of hard stuff as a grandpa, now would it? That’s not the image best-suited to a “country” song. Or the South. Where the old rules about gender conventions still apply. And yes, the notion of a “sloppy,” alcohol-swilling woman goes against the tropes about women being “dainty,” “polite” and “nice.” Nice girls don’t get wasted. And nice girls can’t handle “tough stuff” in their glass without doing just that.
At least, that’s the undercutting message of the language Del Rey and Quavo opt for in this line. Though, to be fair, maybe neither of them came up with that one, just chose to go along with whoever did (and there are many people who could have—the writing credits rack up to eleven: Del Rey, Quavo, Cirkut, Benny Negrin, Clayton Johnson, Elysse Jane Yulo, Jack Antonoff, Jaxson Free, Josh Dorr, Maddox Batson and Nick Bailey). A mistake on both singers’ parts, as the last thing the world needs is more sly chauvinism. Of course, this isn’t the first time that women have had to, evidently, “fight for their right to party.” Or rather, to be seen as worthy of drinking on a man’s level. In the late sixties, the National Organization for Women helped orchestrate a protest against the Oak Room in New York City for this very reason (side note: Betty Friedan was part of it).
They walked in during the afternoon, a time when the bar was reserved strictly for male drinkers. The hours of restriction were from noon until three, lest the womenfolk distract the men from their “business-related” (ha!) wheeling and dealing. The patriarchal commitment to keeping bars closed to women at certain hours and if they were “unaccompanied” prompted feminists of the day to liken the restrictions to “Jane Crow laws.” Because, hey, women want to get fucked up too. But they weren’t “allowed.” And, thanks to continuing exclusionary language like this, it seems the sixties are still alive and well (as it happens, that seems to be Del Rey’s favorite decade). All the more reason why it can’t be emphasized enough that language has insidious power.
Del Rey herself was once an avid drinker to the point where her parents felt the need to send her away to boarding school in order to straighten her out, keep her off the sauce. So perhaps, in some way, she doesn’t see herself as “tough” enough to have handled drinking without becoming addicted. Ergo, favoring “Grandpa’s glass” over Grandma’s. Even though, with the right delivery, the line could have just as easily been: “Tough as the stuff in your grandparents’ glass.”
Gender neutrality is, after all, so key. That is, if everyone really is who they say they are at this moment in time. To that point, if we’re being honest, men and women (of limited means) both start to look pretty much the same after a certain age (particularly hairstyle-wise). A full-circle moment, as most babies are indecipherable from a gender standpoint as well. And since the babies of the present who are about to grow up to be teetotalers/sober-leaning à la Gen Z will likely only have “Tough” as a frame of reference for who used to drink, it will probably be assumed that only “sluts and spinsters” dared to imbibe the “hard stuff” “back in the day.” Otherwise, only “hearty” men had a strong enough constitution to take it, n’est-ce-pas?