One of the defining songs of both the Tumblr era and Lana Del Rey’s career, ‘Video Games’ is a pastiche of iconic American archetypes. The swell of the violins and her plea to keep a distant lover happy are hypnotic. You can listen to this captivating song on platforms like Mp3 Juice without any single advertisement interruption
Ambition and romance battle for control on this ode to West Coast icons and golden gods. Her vocal style switches between hard and breathy in a hypnotic dance of tension and release.
1. Music To Watch Boys To
A dramatic, smokey B-side from Video Games, Lana demonstrates the depth of her melancholy personality on this song about unsuitable men. The stripped-back piano and strings make it a more bare and honest depiction of depression than the hyperbolic drama of many of her later songs.
The slow waltz is beautiful but it’s the lyrics that really give this song its power. It’s not your typical summertime jam and reflects the dreadful melancholy of the season. It was experimental Lana at her best.
2. Blue Jeans
Lana’s most personal song to date, this lullaby about lost love and familial connection draws on spiritual and historical patterns to connect with listeners. A powerful track from her most emotionally charged album, Norman Fucking Rockwell.
Ambition and romance clash in this slinky Blue Banisters song, which showcases a more mature extrapolation of her early themes. The breathy vocal style and cinematic chorus melody evoke old mafia movies and summer nights.
The first single that sparked a new aesthetic movement and turned her into a Tumblr darling, this haunting piano ballad is an expertly rendered melodramatic masterpiece.
3. Summertime Sadness
As she developed her style of moody, classic soundtrack anthems, Lana Del Rey turned to the country for inspiration. Her version of a traditional American folk song evokes cowboy movies and the allure of a James Dean lookalike on this 2012 single.
Ambition and romance collide on this psychedelic West Coast cut, where guitars shift from rock to surf to twang. It’s an early example of the experimental Lana that would later emerge on Ultraviolence. It also features a guest appearance from Father John Misty, who became a regular collaborator in her musical universe.
4. West Coast
By the time Lana Del Rey arrived with her 2021 album Blue Banisters and her 2023 follow-up Did You Know that There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, her lyrical themes had become increasingly nuanced. The titular track of the latter sees her describing a doomed romance with a James Dean lookalike and proving that tragedy can be as glamorous as a happy ending.
Woodwind and strings elevate this husky daydream into Bond theme territory. One of the most delicate and cinematic moments on her fifth album Lust For Life, it also features a fairytale carousel piano that could have appeared on Norman Fucking Rockwell.
5. High By The Beach
Del Rey’s loyalty to, for lack of a better word, shitty men has been the downfall of many of her relationships. Here, over a swooning piano and robust woodwinds section she tells the story of one more doomed romance that she’s determined to see through to its bitter end.
It’s a cliched idea but she makes it work with this melancholy anthem. An echoing daydream with rich strings, this is the sound of Ultraviolence grown-up. The result is a dramatic and beautifully intimate song about love that can’t be fixed.
6. Doin’ Time
On the first single from her sixth album, Lana Del Rey reaches out to fans with her most emotionally charged material. The movie-inspired melodrama is a heartfelt call for help as she pleads with a love interest to stay by her side.
It may sound dramatic, but it’s a playful anthem for the woman who has “a cooler-than-ice life with a jazz collection and a musician boyfriend.” The song’s lazy waltz is topped by an unexpected tempo shift and bursting fireworks. The result is one of her most memorable pop songs.
7. Young And Beautiful
A husky piano ballad, this is arguably the strongest track on 2014’s Ultraviolence. It takes the escapist themes of her earlier love songs and morphs them into a dark pastiche of her percieved character.
She sings of her love for a James Dean bad boy over lethargic surf guitar plucks. A powerful statement about the pitfalls of romance, it is no wonder it was used in the Baz Luhrmann film of The Great Gatsby. This is one of her best and most melancholy songs.
8. The Great Gatsby
A minor-key ballad, but it’s one of the most important songs from an album full of them. This Norman Fucking Rockwell song signals a Lana who was embracing enlightened existentialism — and she delivers a classic turn of phrase in the process.
Over stunning jazz piano chords and offbeat drums sampled from a Captain Beefheart record, Bobby Womack and Lana trade musings about the beauty of existence. The result is one of the most moving songs of her career.
9. Save Me Tonight
The biggest song of her career, “Save Me Tonight” is the one that firmly established Lana as a melodramatic storyteller for the Tumblr generation. The iconic music video cast her as both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy Onassis to rapper A$AP Rocky’s JFK, offering a new vision of classic Americana images.
Despite its cheesy lyrical references, it’s one of the most powerful tracks in her catalog. It’s a reminder that the glitz will fade, but the art will endure. That’s what makes Lana so special. She’s the ultimate pop-cultural archivist. If you’re a fan of her work and want to explore her collections, check out platforms like genyoutube, where you can find all of her mesmerizing songs.
10. Born To Die
Lana Del Rey nailed high-end Tumblr fashion and filtered Instagram shots in this anthem about unsuitable men. Psychedelic surf guitar and breathy vocal styles switch back and forth in a hypnotic dance of tension and release on this cut from Ultraviolence.
Following the seismic Video Games, this song confirmed her as one of pop’s best lyricists with sweeping strings that evoked classic epics like Gone With The Wind. It also ushered in her more mature extrapolations of her romantic past. Sheer brilliance. This is her greatest achievement to date.
