Never cheat on a songwriter. Especially not Lana Del Rey. We learn this at Hyde Park, under a sun-dappled sky streaked with clouds shaped like chemtrails. Appropriately, the American balladeer is caressing the final verse of Chemtrails Over the Country Club, steering its lullaby-like coda to gentle sleep, when she veers suddenly off-road without warning. Squatting, staring inscrutably, she replaces the basic yet romantic line “you’re born in December, I’m born in June” with “he was born in December… and got married when we were still together”.
Shrieks and wails of affirmation greet Lana’s revelation, as she continues, crooning “sometimes I wonder what his wife would think if she knew” and follows that faux-naif savagery with “he got married when we were in couples therapy together”. As a published poet, Del Rey knows that (a) this doesn’t scan, and (b) it doesn’t matter. It’s electrifying, and gloriously odd. What just happened? Did she really call out her ex to 60,000 strangers? Is it true? It’s a goosebump moment, four songs into her biggest UK gig, that proves precisely why her audience are so invested in every second of her every performance.
Weirdness, messiness and dark comedy are what thefans are here for. For them, Lana is more recognisably human, more relatable, than the distant, alien perfection of a Beyoncé, which explains why Del Rey’s abbreviated Glastonbury appearance – when her usual tardiness crashed into an immovable curfew – is an escapade to add to her myth rather than detract from it. Everywhere there are little Lanas in lacy petticoats, white dresses, flower crowns, cowgirl boots, heart-shaped sunglasses, fizzing with Mentos-in-Coke-bottle levels of excitement. A mass wedding of brides, waiting for their mother-wife. On Chemtrails, Del Rey says she’s still “strange and wild”, while describing a life of placid domesticity. It’s clear her fans see themselves in Lana, and her songs are mirrors that they find themselves in.
As this is only the eighth British concert Del Rey has played during a decade in which she has put out seven albums, many here have never seen her live before. Or, judging by the yelps with which they greet the roadies setting up, never seen anyone live before. It proves how loved she is. Some thought BST organisers were ambitious to book her as the final headliner in a programme studded with Rushmores such as Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses and Billy Joel. Yet the sophisticated, mature Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is the UK’s fourth bestselling album released this year, and the transformative power of Del Rey’s ongoing success radiates with every step she takes. While her early gigs were marked by awkwardness, tonight’s careful choreography grants her a confidence to roam and own the stage that she didn’t have 10 years ago.
Even when she seems most effortless, drifting around, attended by six dancers, three superb gospel singers and a four-man band, it’s clear that plenty of work has gone into this remarkable show and its theatrical tableaux. Del Rey doesn’t say much – but doesn’t need to. Like her songs, the set, screens and staging don’t always offer obvious, fixed meanings but artfully employ familiar signifiers or iconography to sketch her cinematic universe of complicated relationships and unresolved trauma.
There are gold arches, a dressing area, two flower-strewn swings and a huge wedding train, which her dancers attach to her floral Zimmermann Wonderland dress during A&W then unfurl for Young and Beautiful. A luminous torch song for a world on fire, it gets a rapturous reception. But then so does Pretty When You Cry, which Del Rey sings draped on a seedbed of writhing dancers. Or Bartender, delivered as she vapes at her dressing table while her stylist gets to work. Perhaps in 1969, Mick Jagger sang flawlessly while having his already immaculate hair gussied up, but it seems more plausible that this is the first time Hyde Park has seen anything like this, and it reacts accordingly.
Mini Lanas hug each other ecstatically, singing along to beautifully arranged, blues-adjacent alt-rockers White Mustang and Cherry, or sway alone to the music, eyes closed. Ultraviolence, with its queasy emotional masochism (“he hit me and it felt like a kiss”), is a narcotic, transgressive swirl punctuated by Del Rey punching herself in the face. These intense, intimate moments shouldn’t really work on a crowd this size, but the strength of her writing and singing swells the newer songs to stadium scale, while classics Born to Die and Ride take flight on the audience’s feral enthusiasm. Even the five minutes she spends greeting tearful front-row stans can’t spike the gig’s serene momentum towards a titanic Video Games, which of course she sings while oscillating back and forth on a giant garlanded swing. With astonishing performances like this, Del Rey will always be her fans’ main character, never a side chick.
