Lana Del Rey nabbed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week with her third studio album, Ultraviolence, which dropped on June 17. It beat out fellow album premieres from Sam Smith, Linkin Park, Willie Nelson, Jennifer Lopez and Deadmau5.
The 28-year-old artist sold 182,000 copies from June 17 to 22, according to the data from Nielsen SoundScan. Billboard notes this is the largest album sales week for a female artist in 2014 and the biggest since Beyoncé's surprise visual album arrived in December.
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Del Rey premiered "West Coast" from Ultraviolence at Coachella in April, helping her become the most-mentioned artist on Twitter during the festival's first weekend.
Del Rey's chart-topping album is a chill, emotional effort filled with songs touching on the subject of sadness, love and violence. You can listen to it in full right here:
Her chart success coincides with a media frenzy about her recent death wish statement ("I wish I was dead already") in an interview with The Guardian, which incited Frances Bean Cobain, the daughter of the late Kurt Cobain, to fire back on Twitter in a series of tweets:
@LanaDelRey the death of young musicians isn't something to romanticize (cont)— Frances Bean Cobain (@alka_seltzer666) June 23, 2014
@LanaDelRey I'll never know my father because he died young & it becomes a desirable feat because ppl like u think it's "cool"(cont)— Frances Bean Cobain (@alka_seltzer666) June 23, 2014
@LanaDelRey Well, it's fucking not. Embrace life, because u only get one life. The ppl u mentioned wasted that life.Don't be 1 of those ppl— Frances Bean Cobain (@alka_seltzer666) June 23, 2014
@westcoastkilos @LanaDelRey I told her to not waste her life. How is that attacking. I literally said embrace this life because u only get1— Frances Bean Cobain (@alka_seltzer666) June 23, 2014
@LanaDelRey ur too talented to waste it away.— Frances Bean Cobain (@alka_seltzer666) June 23, 2014
I'm not attacking anyone. I have no animosity towards Lana, I was just trying to put things in perspective from personal experience.— Frances Bean Cobain (@alka_seltzer666) June 23, 2014
Del Rey has said that her death statement was taken out of context, going so far as to blame the reporter who published it.
I regret trusting The Guardian. I didn't want to do an interview, but the journalist was persistent. [He] was masked as a fan, but was hiding sinister ambitions and angles. Maybe he's actually the boring one looking for something interesting to write about.
In response, The Guardian published a recording of the Del Rey interview:
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