“Blue Banisters” by Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey gave her eighth album its name with "Blue Banisters", one of three songs she surprise-dropped in May 2021, alongside "Text Book" and "Wildflower Wildfire", to stoke anticipation for the record. She wrote it with Gabe Simon, who co-produced it with her, engineered and mixed it and plays the piano and organ, and it's a ballad of soft-focus piano and hushed vocal runs.

The lyric sits with the ache that follows a breakup and the slow business of getting older, and it winks back at her earlier style with a mention of Russian poetry, plus a nod to her sister Chuck. The album itself slipped from its original July 4 date, and a video for the song arrived that October, just ahead of the record.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.