Lana Del Rey celebrated female expression in music and changing attitudes towards domestic violence in her Ivor Novellos acceptance speech this week.The singer was speaking from the stage of the Ivor Novello Awards in London on May 23, where she picked up the Special International Award.She took the chance to address how perceptions of artists like her have changed since she emerged in the early 2010s.“When I started, I think a lot of things were written about how the songs were sort of naval-gazing just about my experience with challenging relationships,” she said.“Now, what we’ve seen is that those songs were not written about a small microcosm of people and women; we’re seeing an acute amount of things written about difficult relationships. Even when COVID began, the second epidemic in the United States was interpersonal relationship violence – it increased by 300 per cent.“I think it’s amazing that female singer-songwriters have the freedom to write about absolutely whatever they want,” she continued.