Glastonbury waits for nobody, not even Lana Del Rey. The singer-songwriter, best known for her sprawling, baroque anthems that untangle the lie of the American dream, was 30 minutes late on stage. “If they cut power, they cut power. I’m super f**king sorry, my hair takes so long to do,” she told the crowd once on stage. “If they cut the power, let’s keep going!” Come on, Lana – even infamously tardy Guns N’ Roses were on time.
In fairness, the styling comment was likely tongue in cheek and unlikely to be the actual reason for the delay – the meticulously choreographed set, which moved through stagings like a theatre production, featured a segment in which Lana has her hair and make-up done live on stage, seated at an ornate dressing table. At another stage she pulled off a costume change from inside a velvet circular curtain in the middle of the Pyramid.
Dancers wafted elaborate candelabras, threw dramatic shapes behind backlit sheets, and lay in a lackadaisical tangle on the floor with the singer as she performed. If you ignored the special half-height mic stand Lana brought on stage to safely house her disposable vape (did she not get the memo? They’ve been banned this year!) overall, it had the vague appearance of a haunted Victorian stately home.
Many highlights from her back catalogue were specially tailored for the headline set on the Other Stage: 2012’s Blue Jeans, from breakthrough album Born to Die, smouldered out with an extended outro, while that record’s Ride featured amped up injections of new vocals ahead of the chorus.
Gloomy red plumes of flare-smoke and bright, saturated waves that would look at home on the cover of a Seventies surf-rock record raged behind her. As time went on, a disarmingly sexy rendition of the immensely dark Born to Die (complete with exceedingly bendy dancers), Norman F***ing Rockwell, Ultraviolence, and White Mustang gradually picked up the pace.
Though she was poised throughout, she occasionally broke character; smirking as she attempted to wrestle her vape back into its stand, and giggling at the ridiculous spectacle of getting her hair restyled in front of many, many thousands of people.
This was not a set heavy on crowd-pleasing covers, special guests, or tactically-deployed confetti guns; but in fairness, nobody really expected that from an artist who has carved out a path making epic, sprawling classic rock ballads that drawn on American iconography, rock’n’roll glamour, and Beat tropes: bad blokes on motorbikes, getting high on the beach, the great myth of the American songbook itself.
By the time her biggest hit Video Games began to hum into life, it felt as if Del Rey was on the cusp of greatness, sending the fizzling atmosphere she’d cultivated up in theatrical flames; but instead, she was intercepted by a member of production, and spent several moments at the side of the stage in a hurried exchange. “I can’t sing…” she appeared to say (though her microphone was now off) as she walked helplessly back onto the stage. The musician despairingly sank to her knees, tugging her in-ear monitors out as the big screens suddenly plunged into darkness. The plug was officially pulled.
Moments later, a green screen began urging a field full of disgruntled punters to make their way to Arcadia – a giant spider which houses DJs and spews fire up a nearby hill; a fairly jarring suggestion which was met by yells and boos.
As Del Rey reappeared with her dancers and ran down to greet the front row, singing Video Games with them, sans-microphone, roadies began packing down the stage behind her as she scrambled to give some sort of meaningful farewell. It all just felt rather sad. What should have been a bold, career-defining moment instead felt like a wasted opportunity.
