This is Lana Del Rey's only visit to France this summer. “Sales took place very quickly, a first for us”, reports Matthieu Ducos. We knew there was a lot of expectation for this artist, an ideal synthesis between our regular audience, who saw her 10 years ago and the younger generation who grabbed her with the last album.
Between pop and Hollywood glamour
Despite its sprawling title, “Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” released in Spring 2023, this disc made its mark, carried by the code-breaking, 7-plus-minute track “A & W” and that splits between the crystalline melody and the muffled hip-hop beat.
Things have changed a lot since the days of Rock en Seine ten years ago. Especially on stage, where after more or less happy beginnings, the artist found his place and imposes his universe between today's pop and the Hollywood glamor of the 1950s-60s. Lana Del Rey, 39, succeeds “perfectly today, through her presence and her aura, to embody her persona on stage and expand her images and videos that were very elaborate from the beginning,” describes the person in charge of Rock in. Seine.
The singer's concerts, followed by 18.5 million people on Instagram, are now the talk of the town. Seasoned this time by the prospect of a new album, “Lasso”, hoped for in the autumn.
In July 2023, for his visit to L'Olympia in Paris, more than 42,000 tickets were requested for the approximately 2,800 seats available in the famous red-letter hall. His ultra-fans had slept the day before the show in sleeping bags on the pavement to secure the front row. Lana Del Rey appeared there accompanied by thirteen people, including musicians, singers and dancers. The diva took the stage between piano, swing and written intermission for a hair match.
The Garden of Eden
We should expect at Rock en Seine a singer who is still very much surrounded, in a fanciful setting in the Garden of Eden. His appearance at the Olympia had triggered fainting spells. Rock en Seine assistants are experienced. In 2023, the festival had already started with an evening around another American megastar, Billie Eilish, causing the quota of evacuations under the influence of emotion and a heat then more pronounced than that planned for Wednesday. The two singers also met on stage at Coachella last April.
On Wednesday night, Lana Del Rey will headline an all-female program at Seine with Rori, Nell Mescal, Towa Bird, Rachel Chinouriri, Pomme and Yoa.
“It wasn't premeditated, but we reconstructed a first evening in the same way [NDLR : que l’an dernier]our desire is in any case to get as close as possible to parity in the entire program, this year we are 45% female artists”, states Matthieu Ducos. We especially remember PJ Harvey, The Last Dinner Party or even Zaho de Sagazan, a French revelation known abroad since his performances at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival and at the closing of the Olympic Games in Paris.