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Lana Del Rey · S2 E5
Summertime Sadness
A Cedric Gervais remix turns a cult ballad into the biggest dance hit of 2013
Summer 2013. A French DJ named Cedric Gervais takes Lana Del Rey's slow, devastating ballad "Summertime Sadness," strips out the melancholy, adds a club beat, and turns it into one of the biggest dance songs of the year.
"Summertime Sadness" (Lana Del Rey, 2012). The original music video is devastating: two women on a cliff's edge, a love story ending in freefall. Before the Cedric Gervais remix turned this into a club anthem, it was this: quiet, gorgeous, and heartbreaking.
The Remix
The original "Summertime Sadness" is a five-minute ballad about loss, delivered at a pace that feels like watching the sun set in slow motion. Cedric Gervais, a French DJ based in Miami, hears something underneath all that sadness: a melody that could move a dance floor. He speeds it up, strips away the orchestral production, and replaces it with a pounding EDM beat that turns grief into euphoria.
Sources
Billboard
Rolling Stone
DJ Mag
TAP TO REVEAL: Did the Summertime Sadness remix win a Grammy?
“It's a strange feeling. Someone took my saddest song and made people dance to it.”
— Lana Del Rey, on the Cedric Gervais remix
Doin' Time, Lana Del Rey (2019)
Lana takes Sublime's "Summertime" and strips it of its ska-punk energy, replacing it with something languid and psychedelic. Her vocal turns Bradley Nowell's party anthem into a late-night drive through empty streets. Listen for how the bass line is kept almost identical to the original but slowed just enough to change the entire mood. Same song, completely different emotional temperature.
Sources
Pitchfork
Rolling Stone
Summertime Sadness: The Remix Era
Bel Air, Lana Del Rey
From Paradise (2012). While the Summertime Sadness remix was conquering clubs, Lana was making songs like this: slow, dreamy, completely uninterested in being played at a festival. "Bel Air" sounds like falling asleep in a mansion where something terrible once happened. The contrast with the remix world is the whole point.
Bel Air, Lana Del Rey (2012)
"Roses, Bel Air, take me there." The lyrics paint a world of faded California glamour, poolside ghosts, and the kind of beauty that only exists in the past. This is the Lana Del Rey that no remix can touch.
What was unusual about how the Summertime Sadness remix reached the charts?
Summertime Sadness is being played in every club on the planet, and Lana doesn't seem to care about any of it. Next: a ten-minute short film, a spoken-word monologue that starts with "I was always an unusual girl," and the most honest thing she's ever put on screen.
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