When it broke, in 2011, Lana Del Rey, stage name Elizabeth Grant, took the world by surprise with her curious, slow-paced but heavy-tongued sound. Positioning herself as a “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra”, Lana had a big hit with her album – Born to Die – powered by the ballad Video Games.

Today a star of greater magnitude, Lana still delights thousands of fans around the world with her unique sound. He has already written themes for the cinema, such as the wronged and perfect Young and Beautiful, which should have been nominated for an Oscar for The Great Gatsby. Lana’s songs, like her videos, are cinematic. Even her stage name merges the car (Del Rey) with movie legend Lana Turner. It took a while to appear on Westworld, but it came in strong, ending the Season 4 opening episode with beautiful orchestration by Ramin Djawadi.

The song, which revealed Lana to the world, was co-written with Justin Parker, over notes he played on piano and became the backbone of the song. The lyrics, by Lana, are as told later, based on old relationships of the singer, especially the chorus.

It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you wanna do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?

It’s better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
And, baby, now you do

“The verse was about how things were with one person, and the chorus was the way I wish things had really been with someone else, who I thought about for a long time,” she said at the time.

Lana also explained that the description of the scene was talking about being on a swing and hearing her boyfriend whistle, in fact, happened. “He came home and I saw him. But then the refrain, ‘Heaven is a place on earth with you, tell me all the things you want to do’ wasn’t like that. That’s how I wanted it to be – the melody sounds so catchy and heavenly because I wanted it to be that way,” she continued. “It’s a mix of memories and the way I wish it had been. Just because things happened a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the way they are. It’s really what you choose Bad things happen every day, but you won’t be happier thinking about them”, he evaluates, disagreeing that Video Games are a sad song.

Although he bet on the song from the beginning, the industry resisted for a long time, even because of the different tempo. The singer recalled that the reaction was always one of resistance, making Video Games a special song for her. “It’s me in song,” he said.

Paradoxically, Video Games almost ended a career that took a while to take off. Because it was difficult to sing, in both spoken and sung tones, Lana did not perform well on Saturday Night Live she was out of tune and leading to the suspicion that she would not make it live. Nonsense, as we know. With his head held high, he blew up the album and became an international star. Ah, the game her boyfriend would be playing instead of being with her would be Warcraft. Video Games was named Song of the Decade at the 2019 Q Awards in London.

In Westworld, she marks the life of the “new” Dolores, actually “Christina”, a game writer that we are meeting in the 4th season of the series. Just like Dolores in the 1st part of the saga, Christina finds the universe around her strange. In addition to the obvious title reference, the melody marks Teddy’s (James Marsden) return to the plot, as he is seen watching her from afar when the chorus melody is playing. Unfortunately, the couple’s trajectory was marked by violence and attacks, to see how they will get out of this. SPOILER! Remembering that the “real Dolores” is actually Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) we still have to find out how they recovered the body of the original host, destroyed at the end of season 3, who is Christina, and… is Teddy Teddy? Only those who follow the series know that everything I said makes sense.

Below is a video of Lana, in 2014, in a performance in Rio de Janeiro, singing Video Games.