Nepo Baby of the Week: Meet Robert Grant, Lana Del Rey’s Nepo Daddy

There are certain celebrities, usually musicians, who are so mysterious and downright weird that I never considered they arrived on this Earth just like I did. People like Lady Gaga and Doja Cat did not land here from outer space and are, in fact, the ordinary creations of two human, high-waisted jeans-wearing parents.

So I imagine my surprise (and delight) last week when I discovered that one of my favorite enigmatic pop singers, Lana Del Rey has a living, breathing father who dresses like Jimmy Buffett, sails boats and is apparently already a recognizable, beloved figure to her online stans. Now, the man partially responsible for helping give us the song “Summertime Sadness” is leaning into his nepo-daddy status and launching a music career, with the help of his Grammy-nominated daughter.

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Technically, I’ve always been aware of Robert Grant as a part of the Lana Del Rey (or Lizzy Grant) lore. Back in 2012, when she had released her breakthrough album Born to Die, her biography—a rich, white girl from upstate New York, who started drinking young and went to boarding school to get sober—was the subject of discourse surrounding her privilege in the music industry and the authenticity of her “gangster Nancy Sintra” image. I knew that her father worked some sort of lucrative, white-collar job (an executive copywriter-turned-domain investor). But I solely thought of him as a mere side character in the depressing Richard Yates novel she described to be her life.

Now, Grant has become a lot harder to ignore. The 69-year-old has been doling out singles from his own debut, mostly instrumental album, Lost At Sea, featuring “daughter Lana Del Rey.” He’s also appeared in magazine spreads and has been selling “Nepo Daddy” T-shirts. “The nepo daddy thing I love,” he told GQ in a recent profile. “I thought, my God, this would make really cool merch.” Clearly, this is where Del Rey inherited her online savvy and branding prowess.

It’s also where she gained some of her musical skills, too. The GQ article, in which Del Rey is also interviewed, describes the bond that the father and daughter share over music-making. Grant says he tried to be a country singer in Nashville at one point but was told by a producer that his shot at fame, “Big Bubba,” was an offensive parody of the genre. (I love that these two have both been called culture vultures at one point.)

More recently, he’s joined Del Rey in some of her studio sessions. Their first collaboration was the song “Sweet Carolina,” off of Del Rey’s 2021 album Blue Bannisters, on which Grant has a writing credit. Lost At Sea’s title track, featuring Del Rey’s vocals, is another characteristically melancholy and bewitching track that sounds like it could’ve been written for any one of the “Venice Bitch” singer’s recent string of records.

The two also share a penchant for a strong aesthetic. Personally, I’m really digging this man’s nautical, Beach Boys-like vibes—mostly because it reminds me of the cover of my favorite Del Rey album, Norman Fucking Rockwell.

All this is to say that it’s nice to see some positive nepo-daddy representation. When I think of fathers that have achieved fame and money off their children’s hard labor, my mind immediately goes to bottom-feeding leeches like Jamie Spears, Mitch Winehouse, and Michael Lohan. Additionally, I think of influencer parents, who throw cheese slices on their babies for Instagram likes.

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Now that I think of it, there isn't a whole lot of positive nepo-daddy representation in the world. The last time we celebrated a famous girl dad as a culture was the Oscar-winning film King Richard, and we all know how that ended!

Suffice to say, Grant getting to live his Billy Joel dreams through his pop-star daughter seems a lot more endearing than, I don’t know, Amy Winehouse’s dad trying to become a jazz singer, while his daughter lived in agony.

In general, I think you should give back to your parents in some way, shape, or form, once you become an established adult (as long as they weren’t awful to you). Del Rey helping her father make and promote an album is literally just her version of replacing your dad’s tires for his birthday. Besides, anyone who birthed the songwriter of “Young and Beautiful” deserves some reward.

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