The 50 Best Lana Del Rey Songs

“Heroin” is Del Rey’s favorite song on Lust for Life, and perhaps her saddest on record. The track, filled with references to Charles Manson and Mötley Crüe, and featuring a haunting chorus, is long-rumored to be about Del Rey’s ex-boyfriend Rob Dubuss, who died of a heroin overdose in late 2011. “I’m flyin’ to the moon again, dreamin’ about heroin/How it gave you everything and took your life away,” she sings on the first chorus. In the song’s second refrain, she makes herself the subject as she longs for change: “I hope that I come back one day/To tell you that I really changed, baby.” —T.M.

On “Chemtrails,” Del Rey hypnotizes us into imagining her version of modern American life. She’s busy in swimming pools and sports cars, drinking coffee, doing laundry, washing her hair, and asking for your astrology sign. “It’s beautiful how this deep normality settles down over me,” she observes. It’s this sense of comforting regularity — as well as time she spent hanging with her friends and siblings — that made her choose “Chemtrails” as the title track for her seventh album. “It mentions wanting so much to be normal,” she said in 2020, “and realizing that when you have an overactive, eccentric mind, a record like Chemtrails is just what you’re going to get.” —A.M.

“Get Free” encapsulates the energy of Del Rey’s 2017 album, Lust for Life: her commitment to change, to taking an optimistic approach to life, and to moving “out of the black and into the blue.” Performing the the song live, she has noted that she wrote “Get Free” with Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston in mind. “It’s about people who don’t get to reach their full potential because they let controlling people stop them from being free,” she told NPR. In its relaxing outro, we hear the sound of waves hitting the beach and seagulls squawking, providing an optimistic close to the LP. —T.M.

“Terrence Loves You” is the gem Del Rey singled out as her personal favorite on Honeymoon. As she said, “It’s jazzy.” It’s full of Hollywood mythology, but especially David Bowie in his 1970s L.A. Diamond Dogs/Station to Station era, when he was the most cracked actor in town. She mourns her distant lover with a plea from Bowie’s “Space Oddity”: “Ground control to Major Tom!” (Terrence, Bowie’s influential big brother, died the year Lana was born.) You can hear this song was a labor of love for her. As she sings, “I lost myself when I lost you/And I still get trashed, darling, when I hear your tunes.” —R.S.

In 2012, pop music was bright and buoyant, not dark and brooding. But the Americana-obsessed, genre-defying Del Rey changed the rules of the game with Born to Die, which would go on to influence the next decade of pop. Even as the weakest single off the album, “Dark Paradise” became a Tumblr-era earworm with its dissonant combination of pulsating drums and cinematic violins. As soon as depressed teens on the Dark Paradise blogging site heard the New York singer croon “I wish I was dead,” she was crowned as their queen of sadness. —M.G.

One of Del Rey’s most heartfelt songs, “Blue Banisters” reflects on the love of female friendship and how it has remained a constant in her life as men have come and gone. When a lover neglects to “come back every May/Just to help me paint my banisters blue,” it’s the women in Del Rey’s life — Nikki Lane, her close friend Jenny, her sister Chuck — who return to paint over her blues with green and gray. Del Rey long ago proved herself to be a compelling lyricist, but here she shines as an exemplary storyteller as well. —C.S.

Backed by a soft drum beat, “How to Disappear” is about male archetypes who and come in and out of Del Rey’s life, telling her lies, doing as they please, and trying to “forget the things they fear” through addiction and violence. The song takes a turn after a trippy guitar solo, as she foreshadows a new future, where she has “a kid and two cats in the yard,” and reminds her past lovers that even though she’s far from them, “I’m always going to be right here/No one’s going anywhere.” She’ll always be around. —T.M.

“Elvis is my daddy/Marilyn is my lover/Jesus is my bestest friend” may as well be a parody of early Del Rey lyrics, especially in such close proximity to both a Walt Whitman poem title and the phrase “drop it like it’s hot.” But that brashness helped make “Body Electric” a Paradise standout and a longtime fan favorite in Del Rey’s catalog. It also soundtracks one of the more iconic scenes in Del Rey’s Tropico short film, in which she stars as Eve alongside Shaun Ross’ Adam in a technicolor Eden. —C.S.

Del Rey has a well-earned reputation of playing the melancholic lover in her songs, but she flips the script in “Black Beauty,” an ode to a partner whose inner darkness stops him from seeing joy in the world around him. “Oh, what can I do?/Life is beautiful, but you don’t have a clue,” she bemoans on the chorus. Despite its dour themes and Alfred Hitchcockian imagery of Del Rey changing her appearance to fit her other half’s mood, the song carries a faint undercurrent of optimism, as Del Rey tries — perhaps in vain — to impart her own lust for life onto another. —C.S.

Del Rey and California are so inextricable it’s easy to forget she’s a New Yorker. But outsiders have a knack for pulling that cliche trick of distilling all that’s beautiful and brutal about the Golden State into something personal and true. The titular tunnel under Ocean Boulevard — closed since 1967, its Art Deco splendor left to crumble — is such an apt symbol it could feel hackneyed even if Del Rey wasn’t the first person smart enough to put it in a song. But in her hands, it anchors a mesmerizing ballad about that deep yearning to at least be seen, let alone remembered, by someone, anyone. —J.B.

“I feel like we’ve always been talking to each other through our music,” the Weeknd once said of Del Rey. “She is the girl in my music, and I am the guy in her music.” While probably no longer the case, circa 2016, their focuses circled like binary stars. Del Rey, playing opposite Starboy’s titular boy, first echoes through “Party Monster” as a vision of excess, before on “Stargirl” we catch the pair, goaded by some slinky guitar and boom-bap drums, midcoitus in a kitchen. Abel Tesfaye would return the favor on Lust for Life, but this slim interlude is the duo’s most enduring collaboration. —C.P.

You could collect at least five albums’ worth of material from all of the leaked unreleased Del Rey songs that exist online. “Serial Killer,” originally meant for her debut, Born to Die, stands out as one of the best, and one of the few she’s performed live. It peaks with an unforgettable midsong moan. “Serial Killer” is the only unreleased song on this list, but they’re all worth checking out — especially tracks like the dreamy TikTok favorite “Queen of Disaster,” the A$AP Rocky-featuring “Ridin’,” and the upbeat, Eighties-steeped“BBM Baby.” —T.M.

Del Rey is a huge Leonard Cohen fan. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t kind of break my heart that I never got to tell you how much you changed me,” she wrote after the legendary singer-songwriter passed in 2016. In 2013, she delivered this haunting rendition of Cohen’s classic 1974 song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2.” In the video she recorded when she shared the song, she looks like one of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea girls. Since Cohen’s passing, Del Rey has continued to pay homage by performing “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” with Cohen’s son, Adam Cohen. —M.G.

The palpable desperation in Del Rey’s voice on “Fuck It I Love You” makes it one of the most powerful tracks on Norman Fucking Rockwell!. Throughout the song, you can hear her deep need to get that feeling of intense love off her chest as she rap-sings the track’s pre-chorus over a soft drumbeat, and later admits, “Wish that you would hold me or just say that you were mine.” She’s willing to lie to herself to just get that moment of satisfaction, as she makes references to California pop classics like the Mamas and Papas’ “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and “California Dreamin’.” —T.M.

Del Rey and Stevie Nicks are a match made in rock heaven on this duet, which celebrates complicated love as only these two can. Del Rey references her own “Video Games” on the first verse as she laments how simple life used to be, while celebrating a love that feels good and true. Nicks joins in on the next verse to place herself in a romance with a blue-collar man. “My heart is soft, my past is rough,” sings Nicks, in a line that could fit in any of her solo material. Together, the pair wonder if it’s “wasted love” before settling on trying no matter what to make it work. As an added bonus, the song features blue and green references, hopefully an intentional callback to the “blue-green colors flashing” of Nicks’ Fleetwood Mac cut “Silver Springs.” —B.S.

Tucked toward the end of Honeymoon, “The Blackest Day” captures Del Rey in deep desolation after a breakup. The song opens with the singer setting the scene before she admits that “ever since my baby went away, it’s been the blackest day.” Through the verses and over an orchestral backdrop, she attempts to live a fantasy where at least for a moment things are OK. The track’s bridge is Del Rey at her angriest. She’s willing to play mind games on her man. By the end of the song, Del Rey’s reached the final stage of grief: acceptance. “I’m on my own again,” she repeats, drowning in her sorrow. —T.M.

“Pretty When You Cry” is one of her most raw moments on Ultraviolence. She made it up on the spot, improvising lyrics while guitarist Blake Stranathan played. “The way you heard it recorded is the way I freestyled it,” she told NPR. Her ragged voice cracks as she sings “All those special times I spent with you, my love/They don’t mean shit compared to all your drugs.” But her shaky vocal fits the character. As she explained, “The fact that I didn’t go back and try to sing it better is really the story of that song.” —R.S.

A cinematic overture and a deeply ingrained sense of nostalgia is a clear signal that Del Rey had made a standout track, and that’s the case with “Love.” In the dreamy ballad, she delivers a straightforward message about the sacred innocence of being young and in love. But unlike some of her other work, she’s dropped the victimization narrative here — only the endless possibilities of life after such a dramatic romance are in her purview. —I.K.

Ocean Blvd’s second single is a seven-minute freakout that encompasses Del Rey’s full musical and life journey in a near-Lynchian manner. The first half is a folk saga, as she recalls her life and battles, whether it’s her fraught relationship with her mother, her response to criticisms of her image, or romantic liaisons that have her “looking like a sidepiece at 33.” Her “experience of being an American whore” escalates into a sexy, psychedelic, trap outro she sings about a character named Jimmy, who treats her like she’s a drug. Eventually, she makes a threat only Lana Del Rey effectively can: “Your mom called/I told her/You’re fuckin’ up big time.” —B.S.

Del Rey’s discography is teeming with songs about the push and pull of toxic relationships with men, and the Norman Fucking Rockwell! cut “Cinnamon Girl” hones in on the crushing devastation that comes with it. As Del Rey mines through the chaos of her relationship with a drug-addicted lover, there’s an innate tenderness that surfaces despite the barrier of pills between them. And despite it all, there’s this lingering hope that her lover will be able to truly see her: “Hold me, love me, touch me, honey/Be the first who ever did.” —I.K.

The timeless love story between a woman and her ice cream man. In “Salvatore,” she’s riding in limousines with an Italian signore who gives her everything she craves: sex, death, and “soft ice creams.” “It has a little bit of an old-world Italian feel,” Del Rey told the BBC. “It’s filmic.” It’s a Neapolitan-style ballad where Lana says with a sigh, “Ciao, amore” to her Salvatore, between mouthfuls of soft-serve. “Catch me if you can, working on my tan,” Lana croons. “Dying by the hand of a foreign man happily.” —R.S.

“This Is What Makes Us Girls” is one of the earliest examples of Del Rey’s expert storytelling. In a song that unpacks the Lake Placid native’s struggles with addiction as a teenager in New York, she zeroes in on images like Pabst Blue Ribbon beers on ice and her friend’s “Bambi eyes” to create a critique of American girlhood. The symphonic quality of the song only pushes the story further — you can almost see the film reel of the former Lizzy Grant’s troubled past as crashing cymbals and tantalizing strings punctuate each verse. —M.G.

Lana Del Rey songs sometimes sound like they were written by a ghost; “Shades Of Cool” sounds like it was written by someone actively ascending to heaven. A bluesy, candlelit vigil for a lover who may or may not show up, the track achieves transcendence with the chorus, during which the singer’s angelic soprano takes flight. Eventually you realize that it is not the sound of reunion but of resignation, and Lana crying with a sort of sovereignty: “But you/Are unfixable.” The song’s torrid bridge suggests that for at least one more night, nothing needs fixing. —C.P.

“Gods and Monsters” is Del Rey’s commentary on her experience entering the “garden of evil” of Los Angeles after the release (and success) of her debut Born to Die. Featured in the gorgeous short film Tropico, the song holds the same orchestral-pop backing as much of BTD with lyrics that reference her lost innocence: “I was an angel looking to get fucked hard.” Jessica Lange also gave the song new life with a spooky cover in American Horror Story: Freak Show in 2014. —T.M.

The title track and opening to Del Rey’s underrated third album is one of her most cinematic songs to date, making use of swooning strings and vocal overdubs across nearly six minutes. This is Del Rey at her most Lynchian, dreamy and seductive yet tortured and eerie all at once. “Our honeymoon, our honeymoon/Say you want me, too,” she repeats over and over, like a ghost haunting the Chateau Marmont. She even throws in some jazzy scatting at the end for the film-noir cherry on top. —C.S.

“Radio” is a rare, happy gem in the middle of Del Rey’s dripping-with-sadness debut. As the singer reflects on her journey of success, she showcases her vocal range; you can almost feel the warmth of the “paradise” she has found. Her syrupy voice and confident swagger carry clever lines like “Lick me up and take me like a vitamin/’Cause my body’s sweet like sugar venom” over the crackling static of an old radio, helping Del Rey channel her self-proclaimed “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” persona. —M.G.

If you’re a woman in the arts who hasn’t been accused of exchanging sexual favors for your hard-won success, you’re probably pretty new here. Derided as an industry plant early on in her career — as ifdating a label head who neversigned her was her golden ticket — Lana Del Rey gave it to her detractors hard on thisUltraviolencetrack, in which she tells them what they want to hear. As usual, though, Del Rey is tongue firmly in cheek on this song; she’s not really copping to anything, she’s sneering at the naysayers — all while proving her exceptional musical chops.Lazy and languorous, Del Rey’s vocals pillow-whisper to you until building into a crashing crescendo that proves that this really is her show. —B.E.

“Very sexy,” Del Rey called this Honeymoon highlight, going all the way into her West Coast 1970s Endless Summer fantasy. In “Freak,” she invites her “easy rider” to come to California, where they can be freaks together by the ocean. She promises, “We could slow dance to rock music/Kiss while we do it/Talk till we both turn blue.” Her voice is so spaced out, she makes kissing sound like some incredibly taboo kink that only the freakiest of freaks do. She also directed the trippy video, where she joins a sex cult to worship at the feet of guru Father John Misty. —R.S.