Lana Del Rey Live In London Reviewed: A bold, brave and beautiful turn from the US superstar

On the first of two headline sets at London’s Wembley Stadium, Lana Del Rey mixes revered favourites with country classics and a few surprises.


by George Garner |
Updated on

Lana Del Rey

Wembley Stadium, London, Thursday July 3, 2025

“I want to let you know how lucky we are to be here,” says Lana Del Rey early on tonight as she surveys the sold-out Wembley Stadium gathered before her. It's the biggest headline date of her career on these shores, and the first of a double-header at that. The myriad feelings bound up in this ascension are clearly not wasted on her. “Thank you so much,” she continues, walking the stage in a cream and gold dress that oozes old school Hollywood glamour. “And for always singing with us over so, so many years.”

As far as making herself at home onstage at Wembley goes, the fact that Del Rey has an actual house onstage certainly helps. She first emerges from the doorway of a life-sized replica clapboard house. Said house is replete with potted plants on a rustic porch, plus fake trees and swing sets gracing its astroturfed front garden. Above and around it, fairylights and screens mimic the night sky as she begins, boldly, with the unreleased Stars Fell On Alabama. To hear it live is to disappear into its narrative. As Del Rey proceeds to sing of watching "the baby alligators play" and "the horses run" the stadium suddenly feels more like a misty bayou than anything passing for North West London. It’s certainly enough to make you forget there is a large Sainsbury's local within a stone’s throw of the venue.

“London, this is so beautiful, thank you so fucking much," she says during this mesmerising opener. It’s a telling moment. Often, Del Rey is a performer lost in her own songs, fully inhabiting every lyric, yet this is actually the first of many times tonight that she struggles to suppress a wide smile, vibe of the demand of the song be damned. It’s just that kind of occasion. The sheer chutzpah of tackling Wembley headfirst with a still-unreleased track epitomises Del Rey’s decisive victory tonight. The particular nature of it did cause some initial grumblings in her fanbase after the tour’s debut in Cardiff in June, some pockets taking online to express their wish for a longer set or lament the absence of fan favourites like A&W, West Coast, Love, National Anthem and Blue Jeans. None of which appear tonight, either. Yet to waste time focusing on omission is to miss the beauty of what she meticulously presents here. This is a stadium show conducted on her terms, not the other way round. Tonight, Del Rey clearly has a different trail to blaze than her last two outings in the UK prior to this at Reading and Leeds Festival in 2024 and BST Hyde Park in 2023.

Del Rey has been teasing this new path for a while. This tour comes ahead of the planned arrival of her long-mooted country album. Its latest offering Bluebird is sadly not aired tonight, but its first single, Oh, Come On Henry, thankfully, is. Accompanied by string section, pedal steel guitar and more, she sings it from that none-more-stadium-primed piece of staging: a rocking chair. As far back as 2020 Del Rey was prepping for this moment, telling MOJO she had “a cover album of country songs” locked and loaded. We are treated to a further glimpse of what that could sound like with her stirring rendition of Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man. Her audience has clearly embraced the yee-haw memo, too, with the cowboy boots to trainers ratio seeming incredibly balanced.

With a trio of country and Americana-centric tracks dispatched, a significant gear shift occurs that puts paid to any notion that this setlist shortchanges on hits. A perfectly curated throughline of five different Del Rey releases begins. First, of this initial burst is the title track of her fifth album Chemtrails Over The Country Club – a beloved song, but one that perhaps still remains frustratingly undiagnosed for what it boasts: her most gorgeously crafted chorus to date. An entry from her darkened third album Ultraviolence follows. Last time around in the UK it was represented with West Coast, but now it is the title track’s turn, having not appeared in her 2024 sets. It is paired rather brilliantly with Ride, Del Rey holding her mic up to the crowd during the latter’s chorus who, clearly, require no further amplification to rise to the occasion.

Interestingly, Video Games – often a signature home run of a set closer – is now redeployed to make a grandstanding appearance mid-set. Delivered by Del Rey from her rope swing, her breakthrough song still strikes with all the haunting power it did when it first dropped on an unsuspecting public in 2011.

The interludes that divide the set have become fodder for online forums. Such is the understandable reverence for the song in question, some have taken issue with the likes of Norman Fucking Rockwell only appearing via a recording accompanied by footage of Del Rey in one of the house’s windows during an interval. Would it have been better for the song not to feature at all, rather than as a tease during a changeover? It would certainly have made for an excellent live moment, but then again NFR remains quite the spectacle. Wembley stadium still sends it’s opening line "Goddamn, man child, you fucked me so good that I almost said, 'I love you'" far beyond the reach of the famous Wembley arch and up into the night sky.

When Del Rey does make her return, it is an emphatic one. Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is accompanied with backing singers to steer it into gospel-infused overdrive, with Quiet In The South served as a chaser. The latter plays out as Del Rey’s dancers pretend to douse the house in petrol before flames are projected onto it. All of this a perfect precursor to a holy trinity of fatalistic hits: Young And Beautiful, Summertime Sadness and Born To Die. There is a unity of effect to these songs, delivered in this order, this way, and with their orchestration segueing so perfectly. During Young And Beautiful, Del Rey’s dress boasts a billowing train long enough to run the entire length of Westminster Abbey, and yet this isn't the most impressive thing. Nor is the sight of her standing between a garden arch that lifts up into the air. Nothing trumps Del Rey’s voice.

As the set comes into the final straight, the feeling is that Del Rey is sticking to her playbook. Until she rips it up. “We haven't done this song in a while,” she smiles as she introduces Venice Bitch to rapturous applause. That alone would have been enough to make it feel special, but then she welcomes her support act – fast-rising popstar Addison Rae – on to the stage for a duet. So it is that the icon that wrote Cola duets with Rae on her own soft drink of a track Diet Pepsi, and it works staggeringly well. Rae is in it for the long haul, too, as she sticks around for the moment of the night.

For conclusive evidence of Del Rey’s Wembley success, look no further than 57.5 – an unreleased song which has already gone viral and which, impressively, the crowd knows every word to. As does Addison Rae, still singing onstage beside her. Christened after her number of monthly Spotify listeners (her figures stand closer to 58.9m), Del Rey wastes no time in establishing this as a new live classic, especially as she takes a blow torch to controversial country star Morgan Wallen’s ego in the lyrics. No, she’s not playing all of her hits, she’s doing something much braver. Wembley is a hell of a place to road test a song but it passes with flying colours. No pyrotechnics required. Just a stadium full of people hooked on its atomic wit.

The night ends with a cover of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. For a set that has featured nothing played live from Honeymoon, Lust For Life or Blue Banisters (Arcadia does, however, appear during one interval via a mood-setting recording), some might argue that this slot should have been reserved for a Lana original. In truth, save for the already played Ride, it’s hard to think of a more perfect parting note. The biggest danger of all right now would be for Del Rey to play it safe, to adhere to some prescribed notion of what a stadium show must entail, be it adrenalised showboating, exhaustive length or song selection. Tonight is the kind of show that the longest careers are made of; a unique vision carried out with real intimacy, emotion and gratitude.

"Take me home," she sings, bidding farewell. "Take me home"

Strange that. From our vantage point in Wembley Stadium, it seems she’s already there.

Lana Del Rey Wembley Stadium 2025 Setlist:

Stars Fell On Alabama
Henry, Come On
Stand By Your Man
Chemtrails Over The Country Club
Ultraviolence
Ride
Video Games
Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Quiet In The South
Young And Beautiful
Summertime Sadness
Born To Die
Venice Bitch
Diet Pepsi
57.5
Take Me Home, Country Roads

Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty

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