Lana Del Rey has covered ‘Unchained Melody’ with country star Paul Cauthen at Stagecoach Festival in California – check out the footage below.
The duo sang the song, made famous by The Righteous Brothers in 1965, to close out Cauthen’s set at the festival.
“I’m so happy to be up here with him right now,” Del Rey said, before introducing the song. “He decided he wanted me to do a nice slow one to finish it off. I actually got to sing this song at Graceland and it’s so exciting.”
Watch the performance here:
As she referenced, Del Rey performed the same song in December as part of NBC’s Christmas at Graceland special. As part of that Elvis Presley tribute show, she covered the song that the King recorded less than two months before his death in 1977.
Del Rey recently headlined both weekends of Coachella 2024, and was joined by guests Billie Eilish, Jon Batiste, Jack Antonoff and Camila Cabello.
On weekend one, Del Rey brought out Eilish to perform a duet of ‘Video Games’ and ‘Ocean Eyes’, as well as Batiste to perform ‘Candy Necklace’, and Antonoff to play piano for ‘Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It’. For weekend two, she turned to Cabello to perform the latter’s ‘I Luv It’.
She subsequently revealed that she had only recovered from laryngitis “a few hours” before taking the stage for the first weekend, while also hitting out at her former tour manager, who she said had “quit for no reason” just over a month before the set.
In a four-star review of the weekend one set, NME wrote: “Some festival-goers and critics have pointed to Del Rey as an “odd” choice of headliner – someone not exactly known for putting in energetic, flashy performances. Tonight, unswayed by those opinions, she sticks to what is true to her and instead focuses on something artful rather than gimmicky.”
Her second set, which ran 13 minutes over its allotted time, is reportedly set to cost the festival a fine of around $28,000 (£22,585).
Last June, the ‘Video Games’ singer-songwriter ran into a similar problem with her performance at Glastonbury, where she arrived on stage late and was subsequently cut off due to hitting the curfew.
In other Lana news, Courtney Love recently said that she thinks the singer “should really take seven years off”, after having previously labelled her as a “true musical genius”.
“I haven’t liked Lana since she covered a John Denver song, and I think she should really take seven years off,” said Love. “Up until ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ I thought she was great. When I was recording my new album, I had to stop listening to her as she was influencing me too much.”
Del Rey is set to be one of the headliners at Reading & Leeds 2024, alongside Liam Gallagher, Blink-182, Fred Again.., Gerry Cinnamon and Catfish & The Bottlemen. The festivals take place from August 21-25 and tickets are on sale now for both locations; purchase here (for Reading) and here (for Leeds).
