ten rare songs to enjoy before Rock en Seine

Melancholic ballads, mischievous songs, a cover, original soundtracks and a protest song released after a shooting in the United States: here is a series of little-known gems to keep you going until the American star’s concert at Rock en Seine.

A self-confessed serial lover, Lana Del Rey is above all a serial song writer. Diving into her rare and unreleased songs is a shock. The cave is full to the brim with gems. We had in mind about twenty songs at most, but in reality there are almost two hundred! And among them, a hell of a collection of hits, not always easy to find (posted, unposted, reposted constantly on YouTube and social networks). We offer you a handful of our favorites before the singer’s highly anticipated visit on Wednesday, August 21 at Rock en Seine.

1“Say Yes To Heaven”

Recorded for the album Ultraviolence released in 2014, this haunting song with liquid guitars had been discarded with a few others after being leaked prematurely and while the album had changed its sound. Remaining unreleased for a long time, Say Yes To Heavenvery popular on TikTok where it has been used more than a million times to illustrate videos, was finally officially released as a single on YouTube and platforms on May 19, 2023. A move that suggested that other new tracks could appear in the process, such as Queen of Disaster Or Serial Killeralso viral on TikTok, including in accelerated versions. Alas, we are still waiting…

2“Driving In Cars With Boys”

Arguably one of Lana Del Rey’s best unreleased tracks, which deserves to be released on an album, this song was recorded in 2010 and 2011, which suggests that it is an outtake from the album recordings. Born to Die. The languid melody, the choruses, the vocal commitment and the production make it a real gem. As for the lyrics, it’s one hundred percent Lana: she claims to be a bad girl with red lipstick, “Miss America” ​​living a rock’n roll life, spending her time drinking, dancing and driving cars with boys, and having no intention of stopping.
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3“Watercolor Eyes”

Written and recorded in 2021, this lovely, melancholic love song was originally meant to be included on the album Blue Banisters. She eventually emerged on the soundtrack of the second season of the series. Euphoria with Zendaya (on HBO) and it was released as a single in January 2022.

4“Kinda Outta Luck”

Canned around 2010, before her fame exploded and for which she had produced one of the first video montages that got her noticed, Kinda Outta Luck is perhaps the funniest and fastest song ever recorded by Lana Del Rey. Probably because this nod to the sixties, which looks at the These Boots Are Made for Walking Nancy Sinatra’s “The Last of Us” didn’t fit in with the glamorous and mysterious persona she later deployed, and it didn’t fit on any of her albums. Yet it has all the makings of a hit, with its haunting chorus and lyrics in which she plays the dangerous ingénue, who enjoys knocking someone out from behind with a rifle – “Is it wrong, that I think it’s kinda fun when I hit you in the back of the head with a gun?” she repeats in the chorus.

5“Queen of Disaster”

Recorded in 2011, probably during the sessions of Born to Die (2012), this is one of Lana Del Rey’s most famous new releases in the last ten years, and its notoriety continues to grow since it has gone viral in recent years on TikTok. With its very Motown retro tone, its catchy rhythm and its chiming touches of glockenspiel, it is a beautiful declaration of love in which the bad boy she has always dreamed of makes her head spin like a ballerina, she, the self-proclaimed queen of disaster.
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6“Serial Killer”

Another one of her unreleased songs that fans love and know well, since Lana Del Rey has sung it in concert many times since 2015. Recorded during the sessions for her second album Born to Die (2012), and not retained, she sums up well the obsessive lover that she is in her songs: “Baby, I’m a sociopath, a lovable serial killer, because I love you a little too much“. Devilishly seductive, her voice is too, rising into the high notes, like a siren prancing on a wave of trap beats.

7“Your Girl”

Recorded in late 2013 during the sessions for her third album Ultraviolencethis blues rock ballad of which there are different versions, had finally been inexplicably excluded. It fits perfectly with the sensual climate of this record and would have found its place there naturally. Perhaps the reason is the lyrics, which explicitly evoke his exhaustion at the end of a too long tour, his first of this magnitude – “Been on tour too long”, she sings in particular, “Carry me off the stage / I can’t do this anymore / Been gone for 3 years“. But it is still a love song that the siren addresses to a man who has caught her eye, her voice full of desire sometimes changing into a painful howl.
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8“Season of the Witch”

Bright idea to cover this song by the Scottish Donovan for the soundtrack of the horror film Scary Stories by André Ovredal released in August 2019. The original, released in 1966, is considered one of the first psychedelic rock songs. Menace and paranoia hover there. In Lana Del Rey’s version produced by Jack Antonoff and released a few days before the album Norman Fucking Rockwellthe mysterious atmosphere is further enhanced by the gothic arrangements and R&B choirs, on which Lana’s voice and whispers play on velvet.

9“Looking for America”

Recorded in a hurry in his studio with his producer Jack Antonoff following the shootings that successively brought mourning to the United States in August 2019 – on August 3 in El Paso (Texas) and on August 4 in Dayton (Ohio) – this song is a protest song of unprecedented gentleness.I continue to search for my own version of America, [une version] without weapons, where the flag can fly freely”, she sings delicately.I’m not a politician and I’m not trying to be so excuse me for having an opinion”she wrote to accompany an excerpt in an Instagram post on August 6, before officially releasing the song a few days later. A timeless folk gem that is (alas) still relevant today.

10“Young and Beautiful”

Originally registered for ParadiseLana Del Rey’s third EP released in 2012, this title recorded by Rick Nowels and produced by Rick Rubin was finally reworked for the soundtrack of the film The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann with Leonardo DiCaprio, released in 2013. With its orchestral strings and loving, nostalgic lyrics, haunted by the fear of growing old and no longer pleasing, this dark and plaintive ballad consolidated the singer’s notoriety in the aftermath of her vocal faux pas on Saturday Night Live.