Lana Del Rey Headlines Reading Festival

RIP Elizabeth Woolridge Grant. Born 1985 – Died 2024                  .

At least, if you were watching the screens on the Main Stage at Reading Festival on Saturday night, you could be forgiven for thinking Lana Del Rey had passed away. For the entirety of her set, the screens were filled with little else but her visage, a 75-minute montage of the singer’s life and times.

It must be nice to have such bullet-proof self-confidence, but to arrive 15 minutes late meant that Del Rey was already on the back foot. Not that she seemed remotely bothered, stating that she intended to sing two more songs after closer ‘Video Games’ before the organisers pulled the plug. Even her end-of-show fireworks were late. 

But hey, time is an abstract concept after all: she was on stage for little more than an hour but it felt like four. Slow ballad followed slow ballad, breathy vocal followed breathy vocal. Her back catalogue may be vast, but on the live stage the limitations – namely a lack of variety – are laid bare, even with (mercifully) truncated versions of songs.

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However, Del Rey also had to contend with problems not of her own making. In hindsight, positioning her against Sonny Fodera seems naïve, the Australian’s electronic beats on the Chevron drowning out anything Del Rey could offer. It even brought confusion in the arena; some audience members were visually confused about who was playing what, dancing when phones in the air were required.

Yet when the stars aligned, the set was magical: during ‘Summertime Sadness’ was spine-tingling, ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’ sparkling and ‘Video Games’ saw the biggest singalong of the weekend.

But it was too little, and most definitely too late. 

Words: Richard Bowes

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