Lana Del Rey
Anfield, Liverpool
28th June 2025
The world’s most idiosyncratic pop star marches to the beat of her own drum in Liverpool.
Should Lana Del Rey be playing stadiums? There is probably a legitimate case to say that she shouldn’t; as somebody who has sometimes had an awkward, arm’s-length relationship with live performance, she has always sought to foster a sense of intimacy onstage. That makes this stadium tour of the UK and Ireland her first and her biggest challenge to date. With no new album since 2023 – an age by her own prolific standards – you wonder which version of Del Rey we’re going to get: the all-American pop star of the Born to Die era? The dark purveyor of alt-pop who gave us Ultraviolence and Honeymoon? Maybe the re-inventor of Americana who turned out Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Blue Bannisters?
Actually, the more committed of her fans will know that she’s been flirting with country music lately, and has promised that an album in the style is forthcoming, called Lasso, or possibly The Right Person Will Stay. It’s clear from the outset that that’s the road she’s headed down tonight; taking to the stage a full half hour after the advertised time, she opens with Stars Fell On Alabama, which is not a cover of the 1934 jazz standard but her own composition, written in tribute to her husband. She performs in front of a stage set that resembles a suburban house, which feels fitting as the American heartland plays such a crucial role tonight; in the new, countrified songs she sings (Henry, come on, 57.5) and in the covers she plays, including an early take on Tammy Wynette’s Stand by Your Man.
She dedicates that, perhaps improbably, to Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, who is in the house tonight; photos emerged of Del Rey meeting him after the show. She is apparently a Liverpool and Celtic supporter, and dusting off her stunning rendition of both clubs’ signature song, You’ll Never Walk Alone, seems an obvious choice, but we don’t get it. What we do hear is a raft of classics, roared back with gusto by the crowd; the gorgeous balladry of Video Games is chief among them, alongside stormy anthems like Ride and Summertime Sadness. The hint of nerves audible in her voice during the opening numbers has dissipated by this point. She’s encircled by dancers throughout the show, but the star attraction is her fabulously smoky, endlessly evocative voice, especially on classic cuts like Born to Die and Young And Beautiful.
Which perhaps makes it all the more frustrating that we don’t get all that much of it; this is a festival-length set, running less than ninety minutes, and even then, two of the songs are delivered pre-recorded; Norman Fucking Rockwell! and Arcadia are sung by a hologram Del Rey up in the bedroom window of the house set, while the real singer heads for a costume change. There are two ways of looking at this. The first would be to view it uncharitably; most of the tickets tonight cost north of £100, and there is the sense that perhaps Del Rey is short-changing her fans. But on the other hand, you could see the show as an admirable refusal, even to such an enormous stage, to compromise her own artistic vision, to give use anything other than the exact show she envisioned herself.
By the time the show closes with a mass sing-along to her cover of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, it would appear that those in attendance have adopted the latter view.
~
Lana Del Rey can be found at her Facebook | Instagram
Words by Joe Goggins: find him on X here
Photos by Nicky Sims (used with approval from Satellite 414 PR)
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