Lana Del Rey at Wembley Stadium in London review: Spellbinding… and Addison Rae was exalted

Young women with flowers in their hair sitting quietly reading poetry. Straight men – many of them with whimsical, disconcertingly good dress sense! – doting on their partners. Attitude has never seen an audience in anticipation quite like at Lana Del Rey‘s gig at Wembley Stadium last night. They were just so chilled. And we say this having seen fights break out at both a Spice Girls concert and a Beyoncé concert.

The lo-fi vibes continued as our elegant queen floated on stage. As Lana performed to a mind-bogglingly huge crowd — Wembley Stadium’s 90,000 capacity marking, by our calculations, the biggest coup of her career – spectators stood dumbfounded. There were surprisingly few of the incessant histrionics you might find at a Taylor Swift show. (For that matter, there were few overwrought pyrotechnics, either.) Instead, during the quieter songs, fans swayed gently in strange, reverent silence; during others, they sang along in perfect, voluminous harmony. At times, it felt less like a blockbuster pop concert and more like being at a vast, outdoor cinema — and all the more refreshing and arresting for it.

I remember reading a LDR review of old, and within it a hot-take (make that a piss-take) that the star sings the line “I’m feeling electric tonight” from ‘Summertime Sadness’ with comical reverse energy, as if the song didn’t explore heavy themes; as if it weren’t performed with restraint and vital self-consciousness; as if the sombre directness were not delivered with tongue firmly in cheek. She does exactly this tonight, and it feels so right.

I’m lucky: I’ve seen her in countless venues of multiple sizes – the 500-capacity Jazz Cafe in Camden in 2012; 45,000 people at Latitude in 2019 and beyond – and as a diehard fan, I know exactly what to expect from her and am never disappointed. She is the last person who would change who she is just because her live offering happens to be reaching unprecedented highs, and thank god for it. Pop needs artistic vision of this purity.

So it was that last night’s setlist was heavy on latter-day ballads – the overwhelming ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’, the surprisingly minimal newie ‘Henry, Come On’ – over Born To Die bombast. Although ‘Born to Die’ and ‘Video Games’ – the latter the genetic blueprint of so many of her more delicate songs – wisely get an airing. (One of my only criticisms of last night’s show was the gigantic porch swing she sits on for her signature song – I’ve seen it too many times. The holograms also didn’t work for me.)

But it was cheering beyond words to see tens of thousands singing along to the later, more challenging works you’re less likely to hear on the radio – the hazy, languid ‘Venice Bitch’; the solemn ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club’ – as if they were the global number ones Wembley is used to hearing. Her listeners are very much still with her, and this reception bodes well as she ventures further into uncharted waters, with her hotly anticipated country era gathering pace — a shift underscored by her cover of Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand by Your Man‘, slotted pointedly third in the setlist.

That said, the epic ‘Ride’, slightly rearranged with country twangs stepped up a gear, is epic, and ‘Ultraviolence’ stops me dead in my tracks. This dark, daring and widely misunderstood gem of her discography is performed tonight with a chilling, searing conviction I haven’t seen from her in years. It’s elevated by the staging: Lana spends much of the set drifting around a cute little cottage; during ‘Ultraviolence’, it glows blood red from within as a retinue of seemingly possessed dancers clamber through the windows and onto the roof like demons. It was giving The Virgin Suicides, it was giving Carrie, for crying out loud, it was giving The Evil Dead — a haunting, cinematic fever dream climaxing with strobe lighting.

She communicates so much with so little. Facial expressions stoic, body language understated, a costume change from gold Valentino dress to (broadly similar, at least from where we were standing) lemon Gucci… she leans amusingly into consistency rather than spectacle. Then there’s her voice – thick, heavy and astonishingly beautiful, but unfussy. Its originality pierces your heart much as it does on record, especially her low tones.

A lesser star might wilt in the presence of such powerhouse backing singers (Porctia Symone, Jasmine ‘Jazzy’ Rose Chelsea ‘Peaches’ West bring the house down on more than one occasion) but Lana knows what works. On 2023 album track ‘The Grants’, her deep control and birdlike beauty proved the perfect counterpoint to such pure gospel force, and it’s much the same tonight. What’s more, there’s a touching humility about her when the others sing; she looks as bowled over by them as the rest of us.

She’s similarly uplifting when bringing support act Addison Rae on for a duet of the Lana-coded ‘Diet Pepsi’. Rae looks beside herself with excitable deference, and yet it’s plain as day that Lana is herself a super fan of this rising star. (For the record, Addison’s blood-curdling scream on ‘Fame is a Gun’ earlier that night was one of the most thrilling things we’ve witnessed in popular culture this year.) Basically, a star was born – and Lana was the midwife.

All in all, this is probably my favourite Lana show to date, and the only reason this review is four stars rather than five is because of the set’s brevity. At just 16 songs, many of them shortened, the show was over before you knew it. But you get the feeling she’s just warming up. If she does another round of stadiums in the future, she’ll surely build on this solid foundation.

After all these years in the game, Lana is reaching new peaks. For those of us who have been with her from the beginning, it’s a joy to behold.