Lana Del Rey’s Reading headline set opens in paradise. Before the star comes onstage tonight (August 24), clips from her 2013 short film Tropico fill the screens, Del Rey in the Garden of Eden with Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and God. Later in the film, she’ll be cast out of this utopia, but, for now, she’s safe in this divine space.
As the screens change to show the ornate world the singer has created on Reading’s Main Stage – which includes an ivy-covered exterior of a stately home – it feels like Little John’s Farm could become an extension of that heaven. Del Rey walks on beaming and opens with ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’, its blunt first line (“Goddamn manchild, you fucked me so good I almost said, ‘I love you’”) an iconic starting point.
Quickly, though, there are problems, as the pounding bass from The Chevron stage at the other end of the festival is so loud it competes with Del Rey. ‘Arcadia’ seems stunning and ‘Without You’, the ‘Born To Die’ track she resurrected earlier this year after a decade in the cupboard, could be an early highlight of the set. Both, however, are turned into wobbling, chest-rattling discordance. Even if you position yourself directly under a speaker – or are onstage, it turns out – Sonny Fodera’s house beats are still frustratingly audible. “Can you hear me through the techno?” Del Rey asks the crowd after ‘Ride’.
There are some beautiful moments here – if you can shut out the bass. ‘Summertime Sadness’ finds the star and her backing dancers holding up art deco-style mirror boards, turning Del Rey into a 1920s statue. ‘Ride’ is as exquisite as ever: scenes from its music video, interspersed with shots of Lana in real time, fill the screens and pull you into her gorgeous visual world. ‘The Grants’ and ‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’ give her backing singers a moment in the spotlight, their incredible vocals covering Reading in powerful, poignant emotion.
“Thank you so much, Reading. We’re going to play you a couple more songs for as long as we can,” the star tells the huge audience after ‘Video Games’. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Instead, due to a production error (for which the festival later apologised “unreservedly”) that halts the performance five minutes early, the big screens cut to the festival’s graphics, momentarily coming back on as fireworks explode in the night sky and Del Rey looks pensively out into the crowd. It’s a disappointing end to a set that had the potential to go down as a classic and, following Glastonbury 2023, a second big UK festival moment in just over 12 months that could have been something much more glorious. We’ll just have to wait for Lana Del Rey’s return to truly experience paradise with her.
Lana Del Rey’s setlist at Reading Festival 2024 was:
‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’
‘Arcadia’
‘Without You’
‘West Coast’
‘Summertime Sadness’
‘Cherry’
‘Pretty When You Cry’
‘Ride’
‘Bartender’
‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’
‘The Grants’
‘Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd’
‘Video Games’
Follow all of the action as it happens on the NME Reading & Leeds liveblog here.
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