Lana Del Rey Postpones Tour After 'SNL' Debacle

Lana Del Rey performs on 'Saturday Night Live.'

Dana Edelson/NBC

Lana Del Rey will be putting off touring for the foreseeable future, presumably to sharpen up her performance skills in the wake of harsh criticism for her appearance on Saturday Night Live. According to the New York Post, the singer was set to announce a 30-date theater tour in support of her album Born to Die, but her tour managers, booking agents and the top brass at Interscope scrapped the plans, believing she was not ready to hit the road.

"[Lana] and her manager decided to cancel [the tour] after SNL," a source told the Post's Page Six, noting that Del Rey was upset over the decision. "They figure it allows time for her to clear her head, then go back to selling tickets. More importantly, they figure, the extra time gives them more distance from SNL."

Del Rey is still scheduled to perform at a Grammy event honoring Interscope head Jimmy Iovine this week, and the Post's sources say she will soon begin rehearsals to work on her live presentation. Del Rey has only played a handful of gigs in her career to date, including a recent gig at Manhattan's Bowery Ballroom that was met with generally lukewarm reviews from critics.

Update: Del Rey's representative has told Rolling Stone that the singer has not dropped plans for a spring tour, and had always planned to launch a proper North American tour in October. At the moment, she is still very busy promoting Born to Die in Europe, where the record has enjoyed major commercial success throughout the continent.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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