Lana Del Rey brought her UK and Ireland Tour to Anfield Stadium, Liverpool, on 28th June 2025, in what was one of the most hotly anticipated stadium shows the city has seen. SFN‘s Jack Cinnamond reports.
There is something almost poetic about Lana Del Rey playing Anfield. A venue steeped in mythology, drama, and communal feeling; a cathedral of a place where crowds have always known how to lose themselves in something bigger than the sum of its parts. Del Rey, pop’s reigning queen of mystique and melancholy, has built her entire career on precisely that kind of feeling. On a warm June evening in Liverpool, it turned out to be a marriage that made perfect sense.
Support came from alt-R&B artist BANKS, whose brooding, textured set warmed the crowd up beautifully. Her fifth album, Off With Her Head, provided much of the material, and she delivered it with a cool, magnetic presence that proved she’s more than capable of holding a stadium stage in her own right.
By the time Lana herself was due to appear at 9PM, the anticipation inside Anfield was palpable. She kept the crowd waiting a further half hour, which felt perfectly in keeping with the evening’s cinematic sensibility. When she finally emerged, it was to open with “Stars Fell on Alabama” — not the jazz standard, but her own composition, performed via a projection of Del Rey beamed onto the suburban house-shaped stage set behind her. It was a bold, slightly disorientating opener, and absolutely the right call. This was never going to be a straightforward pop show.
What followed made clear that Lana is in the midst of a creative pivot. New, countrified material dominated the early portion of the set, with “Henry, come on” arriving second, its sparse, dusty arrangement a world away from the lush cinematic pop that first made her name. A cover of Tammy Wynette‘s “Stand by Your Man” followed, which Del Rey dedicated — to considerable roars from the crowd — to Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, who was reportedly in attendance that evening. It was a moment of genuine warmth, and one that the Liverpool crowd absolutely lapped up.
The transition into the deeper back catalogue felt like a tide rolling in. “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” was gorgeous, its laid-back shimmer filling the stadium with ease, before “Ultraviolence” hit like a freight train, the crowd surging with recognition. A lengthy Ride monologue preceded the song itself, Lana holding the crowd in the palm of her hand with just her voice and the silence around it. It was one of those moments you simply don’t get at many shows.
The undeniable highlight of the evening, though, was “Video Games”. There are few songs in contemporary pop that carry the same weight of feeling, and hearing it sung back at stadium volume, tens of thousands of voices rising above Anfield‘s famous stands, was genuinely moving. Del Rey seemed to feel it too, standing still at the mic and letting the song breathe in a way that felt unguarded and real.
Two songs — “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” and “Arcadia” — were delivered via a hologram interlude, a pre-recorded projection of Del Rey appearing in the upstairs window of the stage’s house set while she changed costume offstage, accompanied by a reading of Allen Ginsberg‘s Howl. It’s a creative flourish that divided opinion, and there’s a fair argument that a crowd who paid upwards of £100 a ticket deserved the real thing. But it’s also quintessentially Lana: uncompromising, art-led, and entirely on her own terms.
The home stretch was a masterclass. “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” was stately and unhurried, “Born to Die” sent the crowd into raptures, and “Young and Beautiful” felt positively devastating in the open air. “Summertime Sadness” drew the biggest singalong of the night before the show closed — beautifully and unexpectedly — with John Denver‘s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, during which Del Rey made her way to the barricade to meet fans, lingering for several minutes in what became a genuinely lovely, unscripted finale.
At just under ninety minutes, the set felt shorter than it perhaps should have for a stadium headline slot. But Lana Del Rey has never been an artist who plays by the rules, and there was never a moment tonight where Anfield felt less than entirely in her grip. Liverpool, a city that knows a thing or two about icons, gave her everything she deserved in return.
Words by Jack Cinnamond. Photos by Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for ABA.
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