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Lana Del Rey · S3 E1
Young and Beautiful
Baz Luhrmann calls: The Great Gatsby needs a torch song, and Lana delivers
Early 2013, and Baz Luhrmann calls. He's finishing The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio, and he needs someone to write a song about the terror of losing beauty, and he thinks the girl who made "Video Games" is the only one who can do it.
"Young and Beautiful" (Lana Del Rey, 2013). The Great Gatsby brought Lana into the world of film soundtracks, and this torch song about the fear of aging fits the doomed romance of Gatsby and Daisy as if F. Scott Fitzgerald had written it for her. This is where Lana proved she could work outside her own albums.
“Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? That's the whole movie in one question.”
— Lana Del Rey, on writing for The Great Gatsby
The Soundtrack
Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby is a $105 million spectacle starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and the soundtrack is stacked with Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Florence and the Machine, and will.i.am. Lana's contribution could have gotten lost in the noise. Instead, "Young and Beautiful" becomes the emotional center of the entire film, the song that plays during the scenes that matter most.
Sources
Billboard
Rolling Stone
The Guardian
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Lana approach writing for Gatsby?
Young and Beautiful, Lana Del Rey (2013)
The song is built on a simple piano figure and orchestral strings that swell like a wave crashing in slow motion. Producer Rick Nowels kept the arrangement deliberately classical, letting Lana's vocal sit in the center like a 1940s torch singer in an empty ballroom. Listen for how the production grows bigger and bigger but her voice never gets louder, creating the illusion that the world is expanding around her while she stays still. The question in the chorus is never answered.
Sources
Pitchfork
NME
Rick Nowels interviews
Young and Beautiful: The Numbers
Old Money, Lana Del Rey
From Ultraviolence (2014). "Blue hydrangeas, cold cash divine." If "Young and Beautiful" is the Gatsby song Lana wrote for someone else's movie, "Old Money" is the Gatsby song she wrote for herself. Same world of wealth, beauty, and decay. Same fear that none of it lasts.
Old Money, Lana Del Rey (2014)
The melody borrows from "Vissi d'arte" by Puccini, and the lyrics read like a letter written on hotel stationery that nobody was supposed to find. This is Lana at her most classically cinematic, writing torch songs for ghosts.
What major award was "Young and Beautiful" nominated for?
Young and Beautiful has proved Lana can work outside her own albums, and now she wants to tear everything about her sound apart. Next: Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys picks up the phone, and Lana heads to Nashville to record the darkest, most guitar-driven album of her career.
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