Lollapalooza glided to a close on Sunday night (Aug. 6) on the wings of two very different California vibes. While the Red Hot Chili Peppers helped shut down the T-Mobile stage at the South end of the mud bog previously known as Grant Park, Lana Del Rey did the honors about a mile up the road on the Bud Light stage, drawing a huge crowd of superfans who’d been waiting all day for their beloved queen of disaster.
Del Rey brought a bit of old Hollywood glamour to what was an otherwise not-at-all glamorous, soggy, cloudy day — the second one of the four-day weekend in Chicago — one that reduced so many cute outfits and carefully curated looks to muddy messes as fans tromped through giant puddles.
In the wind-up to her commanding, mesmerizing 90-minute set, the day featured some fun lead-ins, including Afrojack getting the crowd absolutely mental with a taste of the remix of LDR’s “Summertime Sadness” on the Perry’s EDM stage. Just moments earlier, Joey Bada$$ made his fans equally bonkers by inviting hometown hero Chance the Rapper out for a surprise cameo run through Chance’s “No Problem and the live debut of their collab “Highs & the Lows.”
In another tip to Chi-town hip-hop royalty, both A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Lil Yachty shouted out late Chicago MC Juice WRLD during their sets, with the latter wowing the far-as-the-eye-could-see crowd with a rocking performance that leaned hard into the indie guitar vibes of his Let’s Start Here album.
An hour before LDR cast her soothing spell, Rina Sawayama lit up the Bud Light stage with a decidedly more high-energy vibe, literally cracking a whip during “XS” as she playfully teased her back-up dancers with a variety of S&M gear while rocking a red latex bondage outfit. And in a kind of foreshadowing of LDR’s headlining set, Rina took time out during her show to get her hair done on stage, change shoes and have a sip of Bud Light — she was, after all, on the Bud Light stage. She also slipped in a quip to the audience that seemed to allude to the beer brand’s Dylan Mulvaney flap, reminding them that “trans rights is not just for pride month.”
All of that, however, was just a simple appetizer for the tens of thousands who camped out to see Lana, who took the stage dressed as the world’s loneliest bride, complete with a white wedding mini-dress with a colossal train. While her set was low on the pyrotechnics that marked some of the other headliners over the weekend — from Karol G’s history-making appearance, to the 1975’s cheeky, antics-filled show, Billie Eilish’s eye-popping spectacle and Kendrick Lamar’s intense, stripped-down set — what it lacked in flames it more than made up for in smoldering elegance.
Check out the six best moments from LDR’s set below.
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Wedding Bell Blues
You knew Del Ray was going to make an entrance, and boy did she on Sunday night. Walking onto a stage flanked by lit-up two arches featuring sheer screens — behind which twisted two of the singer’s dancers — the California queen strolled out dressed in a white wedding gown. The skirt was short in front, but soon after opening song “A&W” faded away, her six-woman dance crew began to tug at the train and stretch it out for 20 feet behind Lana as they danced under it like kids playing beneath a parachute at recess. “Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?,” Del Rey crooned as the adoring crowd assured her that she should worry about no such things.
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Beauty Break
As befits any Hollywood siren, Del Rey took a moment a few songs in to get a touch-up. Sitting in a chair near the side of the stage at a table with a burning candle, flowers and a mirror, she perched quietly as an assistant fixed her hair with half a dozen glittering butterfly clips while the instrumental intro to “Bartender” played behind her. During the song, the dancers spun and dipped while holding candelabras and red rhythmic gymnastic balls as Del Rey swooned about the “ladies of the canyon,” temporarily turning the massive stage into an intimate jazz lounge.
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A Mid-Set Lie-Down
During a set that featured lots of intricate movements from Del Rey’s dancers, perhaps the most arresting moment came when a stagehand brought out a rug and laid it down so the singer and her crew could form into a kind of cuddle pile midstage. As “Pretty When You Cry” began, LDR laid on her back in the middle of the cuddle puddle, her dancers entwined with their bosses’ limbs, making shifting geometric shapes as they twisted and crawled around the languid singer. In the camera shot from above, the writhing, undulating mass looked like a scene from an Esther Williams aquamusical from the 1950s.
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Swing, Swing
Adding to the pastoral vibe on a stage that also featured a giant tree strung with Christmas lights, during “Ride” two of Del Rey’s dancers climbed onto swings decked out with flower garlands. The women were pushed out over the lip of the stage, swaying back and forth during the swooning track from LDR’s 2012 Paradise EP. Near the end of the set, Del Rey would take her own turn on a swing as she sang the crowd favorite, “Video Games” while kicking her feet and smiling through her 2011 debut single.
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Touching Me, Touching You
A highlight of any LDR show is the bit where the singer makes her way into the crowd to get up-close-and-personal with her adoring fans. During “Ultraviolence,” Lana gingerly made her way down the steps, into the mud — in her black chunky-heeled shoes — and posed for a series of selfies with barely-able-to-maintain Lanatics. One had a pair of red heart-shaped Lolita glasses that she handed to to the “Every Man Gets His Wish” singer to model for a shot. Having just sung the lyrics about a cult leader, LDR looked every bit like a charismatic pop pied piper as she accepted bouquets of flowers, trinkets and took a series of selfies with visibly overcome fans. One even held up a sign that promised, “Lana it’s my birthday, if you sign me my mom will let me get a tattoo.”
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Big Exit
If you start with a dramatic entrance, you better have an equally headline-worthy exit. Which, of course, LDR had. Her festival-closing set matched the glamour and classic L.A. style of her music — at one point her dancer’s moved around her holding those old foil reflectors people used to use to get tan — as Del Rey sang the the Norman F**king Rockwell track “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have – But I Have It” to end her show. In a bit of musical theater, Del Rey swooned toward one handsome man, before tearing herself away and then falling into the arms of another, who picked her up and swung her in circles. Then, two men pushed-and-pulled her, sandwiching the singer between them until she seemed exhausted by the exertion of it all and lay down on her aforementioned long wedding dress train and was dragged slowly off the stage as she softly sang, “Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have/ But I have it/ Yeah, I have it.”
