The Army, which was founded in 1775, wants you to know it’s not a regular grandpa, it’s a cool grandpa. And cool grandpas want you to know that they listen to Lana Del Rey... except they probably don’t.
In a motivational #SoldierSaturday tweet, the service shared a line attributed to the pop star, which has never been confirmed as a quote Del Rey actually said, and it certainly isn’t found in any of her lyrics.
An Army public affairs officer told Rolling Stone that the quote “was found during an online search for motivational quotations about bravery,” adding, “we often use motivational quotations in our social media content.”
Unfortunately, as some Del Rey fans on Twitter pointed out, failing at being a soldier might mean dying, which is, in fact, forever. That’s not exactly motivational.
Moreover, the soldier in the photo, rocking her sleek braid like a badass warrior queen, is in no way failing. She is skillfully low-crawling under barbed wire during training at Grafenwoehr in Germany.
Maybe next time they’ll pick an airborne photo and pair it with Taylor Swift’s, “I think fearless is having fears but jumping anyway.”
Truly inspired.
Interestingly enough, director Dylan Park weighed in on the irony of the Army’s decision to share the unconfirmed quote after the service was rejected for a proposed military-themed Del Rey music video over an attempted recruitment play.
“Lol years ago I was going to direct a LDR music video,” Park tweeted. “The theme was WWII to present-day military Americana. Like some Marilyn Monroe USO shit. The Army was going to finance it. Tanks, helicopters, the works. But Army wanted to use the video for recruiting and LDR said fuck that.”
Sarah Sicard is a Senior Editor with Military Times. She previously served as the Digitial Editor of Military Times and the Army Times Editor. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose, and Defense News.
