All four were highlights of the show.īut the new songs – which included “White Mustang” and “Love” – got nearly the same reaction, with fans seeming to have memorized the lyrics to those, too.
Songs from “Born To Die,” her 2012 major-label debut, got predictably huge responses from the crowd from their opening notes: “Blue Jeans,” its melancholia drenched in twangy guitar, and the title track arrived side by side early in the show, while the pairing of “Video Games” and “Summertime Sadness” both landed closer to the end. I really wanted to stay in California the first few weeks, see some familiar faces.”Īfter “Shades Of Cool,” an older tune Del Rey said she’d just put back into the set, she went down to the pit between stage and fans for the first of several times in the night, accepting bouquets of flowers, cards and small gifts, signing autographs, the crowd surging toward like a wave.
“We’re all here together just a week after the new record. “This is so cool,” she said between that pair of songs. But that kind of over-emotion works for Del Rey in similar fashion as it does for a singer like Morrissey, creating an adoring bond between performer and audience that makes their shows almost religious experiences for the faithful.įrom her opening number, “Body Electric” and “Cherry,” one of four new songs in her set, fans sang along loudly, eliciting happy grins from Del Rey, who had arrived on staged dressed in casual chic – heels and skinny jeans, a white flower in her now-black hair, which was pulled back in the low ’60s-inspired bouffant she usually favors. Of course she’s always been a little bit of a contradiction, smiling and interacting happily with fans during songs that tell stories of doomed romance and live-fast-die-young nihilism. “It certainly is about moving in a different direction from, I don’t know, maybe where that last song was.”Īnd with that, she shifted seamlessly from the dark and aggressive rock of the older song to the mostly acoustic, piano-driven openness of the new number, a song in which she sings lines such as, “Change is a powerful thing, I feel it coming in me.” “This next song is called ‘Change,'” she continued. “That’s an interesting song for me I gotta say,” Del Rey said of “Ultraviolence.” “There are a couple of lines in there I really don’t like singing anymore.” (She didn’t say which but the lyrics include lines such as “I was filled with poison / But blessed with beauty and rage,” and elsewhere, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss,” a nod to the old Crystals’ song from the ’60s.) The moment that subtle shift seemed certain came midway through the night, at the end of “Ultraviolence” – the title track of her 2014 album, and a song about an abusive relationship with the leader of a cult-like group to which she once belonged, Del Rey has said – and before she sang “Change,” the last song written and recorded for the new record “Lust For Life.” Tuesday – in hopes of getting as close to the stage and the beloved Holy Lana, Mother of the Sad-Girls, as my 16-year-old daughter Anna Lily dubbed her on our way home after the show.īut unless you’ve already spent a good amount of time with the new record already there’s no way you’ll imagine this: Lana Del Rey in her new songs is feeling if not entirely happy, at least a bit optimistic, and doing so without losing any of the unique qualities of her music and persona, all of which made for a terrific night with 17 songs scattered across 80 minutes on stage. You might also rightly reckon that fans got there early – lining up starting at 6 a.m. It’s been more than two years since Lana Del Ray’s last album and tour so when the singer of bittersweet ballads and languid love songs released her new record “Lust For Life” a week ago, and quickly announced a pair of intimate concerts to celebrate, well, you can imagine how quickly the House of Blues in Anaheim sold out for the second of those shows on Tuesday. Lana Del Rey dazzles fans with her ‘Lust For Life’ in an intimate show at the House of Blues in Anaheim – Orange County Register Close Menu