Lana Del Rey @ Hampden Park, Glasgow, 26 Jun

Lana Del Rey’s first ever stadium tour poses an enviable problem. Her continued popularity demands a venue of this magnitude, yet the often intimate, understated nature of her music is naturally at odds with it. Cleverly, however, tonight’s show is built around the centrepiece of a beautiful old country house. Set below an ever-changing video sky, it’s immediately stunning; the perfect pillar of visual storytelling to match the box-of-old-photos nostalgia present at the core of her catalogue. Ultimately it becomes the vital backbone to tonight’s performance, grounding it in something familiar; a tangible narrative reality.

Whether singing as a silhouette behind the front door for opener Stars Fell On Alabama, softly swaying on the garden swing or curiously, appearing as a hologram in her bedroom window, Del Rey is very much at home here (literally). No stranger to Glasgow either, the singer declares her love for the city early on and makes sure the crowd are aware of how ‘special’ they are. As indeed is the occasion, which finds her performing one of the biggest shows of her life about ten minutes up the road from where she once spent the best part of a year living in Shawlands. This appreciation is reciprocated by a persistent home game roar as Del Rey struggles to stifle an ear-to-ear smile which might as well be tattooed on her face by the end of the night, often running counter to her vision of melancholic glamour. There are times when she appears to be in disbelief at the scale of the crowd in front of her but is quick to remind them all (and perhaps herself) exactly why they’re here. 

After an early dose of new(er) music in the form of April single Henry, come on and a stirring, if somewhat superfluous, rendition of Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man, Chemtrails Over the Country Club gives us the first BIG singalong of the night. It's followed in similar fashion by Ultraviolence – the latter accompanied by a turbulent visual storm to ramp up the drama. By the time we reach signature hit Video Games, the Hampden crowd are in full 'national anthem' mode, which Del Rey savours by leading a goosebump-inducing a capella chorus which could have easily continued indefinitely without objection. 

Image: Lana Del Rey @ Hampden Park, Glasgow, 26 Jun by Roberto Ricciuti

Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard, Young and Beautiful and Summertime Sadness are performed with sweeping cinematic flair while new song 57.5, a cheeky flex on her ‘millions of listeners on Spotify’ finds Del Rey in a playful mood before sending us off with the world's longest version of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, which almost endlessly soundtracks her valiant attempt to sign and selfie as much as she can before leaving for the night. 

Amid various creative interludes, from holograms to an offstage reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl to a rendition of Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo and two classic country covers, not to mention the pole dancers and accomplished ensemble players, the visual narrative and overall variety of the show sometimes suggests it might be better suited to a long-term theatre run or vegas residency instead. Still, Lana Del Rey’s debut stadium outing is undoubtedly impressive.