Lana Del Rey's Lambasted 'SNL' Performance Offends NBC's Brian Williams

12:08 PM PST 1/16/2012 by Michael O'Connell

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The anchor refers to the singer the "least-experienced musical guest in the show's history" and "one of the worst."

Lana Del Rey Brian Williams Split - H 2012

NBC/Getty Images

Brian Williams is apparently a fan of Gawker. He does not, however, seem to care for Lana Del Rey.

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Shortly after the singer was skewered for her Saturday Night Live performance over the weekend, the NBC anchor emailed Gawker editor Nick Denton, wondering why the media blog hadn't joined the chorus of dissent.

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"I do wish the main page featured more TV coverage," Williams wrote Denton in an email published on Gawker. "Brooklyn hippster [sic] Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night — booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show's history, for starters."

Del Rey, one of only a handful of artists to ever appear on Saturday Night Live ahead of the U.S. release of their debut album, received a barrage of criticism on Twitter for her visibly nervous performance.

But if its any consolation, she wasn't Williams' only complaint. He took the email to share several other gripes with Denton, namely Gawker's relaxed weekend coverage.

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"In my humble opinion as a loyal customer (you know I love you but the Blog View button will be the eventual cause of my death) and while I know you're in the midst of an editor change, weekends have been allowed to go awfully fallow," he wrote, "and it was a fallow holiday period for those of us who check your shit 10 times a day by iPhone. I know you've been watching NBC Nightly News religiously each evening and I'll no doubt be getting a withering, detailed critique from you straight away."

The email has since gotten Gawker in a bit of hot water with NBC. The network asked the website to remove the post, which instead prompted it to publish the ignored request.