Lana Del Rey‘s “West Coast” has officially surpassed one billion streams on Spotify.
First revealed in 2014, “West Coast” was the lead single off of Del Rey’s third studio album Ultraviolence. It debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release—at the time, the artist’s highest debut ever and third-highest charting single in the U.S. It’s the singer-songwriter’s fifth song to enter the Billions Club, joining “Young And Beautiful,” “Video Games,” “Summertime Sadness,” and “Stargirl Interlude” with The Weeknd.
Del Rey penned “West Coast” with veteran writing partner Rick Nowels. Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys produced the track. It features an interpolation of the opening riff of The Beatles’ 1964 hit “And I Love Her.” After originally collaborating with Auerbach at New York’s Electric Lady Studios, Del Rey traveled to Nashville to re-record the song, and others off Ultraviolence—during a three-week session at his studio Easy Eye Sound.
In a 2014 interview with the BBC, Auerbach marveled that the recording was sung “99% live” by Del Rey, while a seven-piece band accompanied her from a separate room. Del Rey has said she wrote the song as an ode to the titular area of the United States, looking to incorporate the sounds of Laurel Canyon, the Beach Boys and the Eagles into a slower-tempo track that brought together the different strands of Americana she’d been exploring since Born To Die.
“[Auerbach and I] really had this West Coast sound in mind, but with an East Coast flavour,” she told Clash Magazine in 2014. “And then we recorded it in the middle of the country. It was an American amalgamation.”
“West Coast” joins the Billions Club just as Del Rey begins to gear up for the release of her tenth album, The Right Person Will Stay, set to arrive later this year. She shared a lead single, the country ballad “Henry, Come On,” last month.
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