We traveled 2,000 miles to finally see Lana Del Rey in concert at Outside Lands

SAN FRANCISCO — As the high-energy boom and buzz of the Foo Fighters faintly echoed from the other side of Golden Gate Park, Lana Del Rey lay still and sullen on the stage and sang with a matching flatness, "I'm pretty when I cry."

It was the fifth or sixth slow, dour song in a row by the mysterious pop star in her co-headlining set Saturday at the three-day Outside Lands Festival. She seemed to let the gloomy layer of fog and mist that crept in over the park set the tone for her performance.

As she sang "Pretty When You Cry," I thought to myself: We traveled 2,000 miles, fought a crowd of 75,000 people, and paid $100 extra per person for access to flush toilets — and skipped the Foo Fighters — for this?

Such is the unusual allure of Lana Del Rey and her elusive ways. I certainly don't regret getting sucked in, though.

The "we" in this case included my two daughters, a teen and tween. They turned me from a curious admirer to a full-blown member of the Cult of Lana in recent years. When I asked them what they most wanted to do this summer, their only answer was, "See Lana in concert."

Easy enough, right? Wrong. The singer, 38, has played only five U.S. dates since the pandemic ended, all festival gigs except one. Her 2018 date at Target Center has been her only Twin Cities concert in the 12 years since her breakout single "Video Games."

Del Rey's reluctance to tour likely explains why her T-shirts vastly outnumbered Foo Fighters wear at Outside Lands on Saturday — why one in three young women in attendance seemed to either be wearing bows in their hair or heart-shaped red sunglasses (Lana trademarks), and why more people selected Lana on their Outside Lands app schedule than the Foo (about 20K vs 15K).

The bulging crowd size and palpable excitement around the festival's woods-lined Twin Peaks stage as she hit the stage Saturday reminded me of Coachella in 2019, when I saw a then-cultish Billie Eilish unequivocally steal the show from Tame Impala as the Saturday night headliners.

Unlike with Eilish, though, there were no madcap bursts of excited dancing or raised fist-pumping in Del Rey's set Saturday. Fists stayed clenched throughout this one, reflecting the angsty romance and desperate drama of songs like "Chemtrails Over the Country Club" and "Young and Beautiful."

"Will you still love me when I'm not young and beautiful?" she and the crowd sang in miserable unison.

The wildest that Lana's 1¼-hour set got from a physical-outburst standpoint was either when the singer — wearing a tufted white dress and dangling curled locks like a young Priscilla Presley — casually pushed herself around on a swing in the title track to her latest album, "Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd," the night's dramatic finale. Or when she let a couple of male dancers carry her around ever so slowly and gently in "Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have — but I Have It."

So why was it still a rather thrilling performance that seemed worth going the extra 2,000 miles?

For starters, it was unlike any other festival headlining set I'd seen. The mellowness was somehow intense. The songs' nonstop emotional calamity sounded beautiful. The writhing vocal delivery — hers and the crowd's — ended up being inexplicably fun.

Lana judiciously picked songs from throughout her career, going back to "Video Games." But she hardly picked any that were up-tempo or required her longtime drummer Tom Marsh to break a sweat. Even her cover of Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" — channeling her oblique and much-debated approach to feminism — was slowed down compared with the original.

Mostly, though, we just got a kick out of actually seeing Lana in the flesh, after she's become so enigmatic and shifty. She came off surprisingly content and down-to-earth between songs, too, talking about friends in attendance and "how many years we've been doing this together." She even made a shoutout to her pastor (who has a writing credit on her new album).

"It's been an interesting few years," she said at show's end. "It's not lost on me how lucky I am today."

Of course, it's probably easier for a singer to really feel grateful and enjoy themselves on stage when all they do is perform at a few festivals per year.

Deemed worthy enough by Lana, Outside Lands also proved to be a festival well worth planning our vacation around. Other performers Saturday included the far cheerier "Light On" hitmaker Maggie Rogers, vibrant Canadian rock band Alvvays, clever Atlanta electro-R&B upstart Mariah the Scientist, and another downer dramatist like Lana, her "Let the Light In" duet partner Father John Misty.

Like Lollapalooza in Chicago and the Austin City Limits Festival, San Francisco's big bash is held in a scenic, centrally located city park and not some giant field in the boonies. Unlike just about every other major music festival, though, it doesn't come with blazing heat or fear of a sunstroke.

And more than most fests, Outside Lands strongly reflects its host city's cultural history. Its 15^th year saw a fun, new all-LGBTQ stage and trippy visual nods to San Francisco's flowery psychedelic past, which combined literally kept the grounds shining rainbow-bright even when the weather — and the performers — turned glumly gray.