After her performance on “Saturday Night Live” on January 14, the Internet sensation of a songstress Lana Del Rey felt backlash from all corners: anonymous Twitter users to news anchor Brian Williams all poured on the hate. It was the worst performance in history of SNL, they claimed. Some have even suggested that her career is over before it even began. As a Del Rey fan, I refuse to believe any of this, and having watched the episode again after its live airing, I have a much different opinion.

The performance itself wasn’t that horrible. It clearly wasn’t good, but it was nowhere near the worst ever. It’s not like SNL has a history of great performances anyway. Performers with great live voices, like Adele and Lady Gaga, have sounded awful in Studio 8H. Del Rey didn’t lip sync like Ashlee Simpson did. It wasn’t bonkers like Ke$ha and her memorable “Have you guys ever thought that maybe we’re the aliens?” performance in appropriated Native American garb. And how many times are we going to forgive Taylor Swift for being constantly and consistently awful in her live performances? We reward Swift with Grammys, and yet Del Rey is suddenly a national joke because she had one bad and one just-about-average performance? She was nervous, and so her deeper register was too deep, and she relied too much on a falsetto that sounded worse the longer it went on. She also tried to change up her songs and improvise lyrics, failing at both. She certainly wasn’t overconfident, and she didn’t wear an outrageous costume or have some weird dance routine. She just stood there, looking stunning yet terrified in a white gown, and sang. Incidentally, whose decision was it to not give her a mic stand? The fact that she didn’t sound good was amplified by her doe-eyed swaying on stage that seemed straight out of a David Lynch film.

This was her American television debut as well. If you search for videos on YouTube of her live performances abroad, Del Rey can clearly sing. Can you blame her for being nervous? She’s discussed in numerous interviews that she has a bad case of stage fright. She shouldn’t be vilified for it. If anyone is to blame here, it is her management for choosing such a visible venue for her American debut. If she had debuted quietly on one of the late night shows, I doubt Brian Williams would have found time to tweet about her. Hopefully her career, already on a strange path, continues—and she turns in a good, well-publicized performance to quiet the critics.