Now, I don’t know why Del Rey went on 15 minutes late – albeit it’s certainly not in the league of her half hour late arrival at Glastonbury in 2023. But it looked like they were still building her set minutes before she made her belated entrance, whilst bass heavy electro dance music wafted from the Chevron stage on the other side of the site.
“Can you hear me over that techno?” Lana Del Rey asked from the so called Main Stage. The question deserves to printed on a t-shirt and handed out to every live musician forced to perform amidst the cacophony of clashing sound systems. There were chants of “turn it up, turn it up!” amongst Del Rey’s devoted audience as they gamely sang along, carrying her delicate melodies above the interference.
Del Rey smiled and kept on singing, clearly appreciating the audience’s voluminous support, whilst frequently tapping her in ear monitor and saying things like “2 decibels up, please” to her crew. There is a huge dynamic range in Del Rey’s songs, rising to fulsome emotional crescendos and descending to soft intimate lows. But the pulsing techno of DJ Sonny Fodera booming from over 500 metres away set everything ajar.