Lana Del Rey’s Young and Beautiful: meaning, scene, legacy

A love song built for a film about illusions was always going to haunt the decade that followed.

Young and Beautiful arrived in April 2013 for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, a modern torch ballad written by Lana Del Rey and Rick Nowels that slipped neatly into Daisy Buchanan’s world of gold leaf and glass hearts.

The song threads through Gatsby and Daisy’s romance, including the grand reunion sequence, and appears in trailers and marketing.

Del Rey’s question is short and piercing: “Will you still love me” when the lights fade and the party ends.

She sketches a high-gloss past in a few images, “I’ve seen the world, done it all,” then “Hot summer nights, mid-July,” and lets the fear show.

In the chorus she cuts closer to the bone, asking if love survives when there is “nothing but my aching soul.”

The record works because of proportion. Nowels keeps the piano and strings generous but not syrupy, and Dan Heath’s orchestral colours on the film version gives it that Gatsby haze without drowning the vocal.

It sits around B minor at roughly 113–115 BPM, slow enough to breathe yet steady enough to carry the refrain in big rooms, which is why it lives at weddings and on late-night playlists alike.

The video lands the same idea in a single image. Del Rey, in mise-en-scène that nods to Art Deco, sings with “diamond” tears fixed to her cheek while an orchestra flickers in and out of the dark.

The effect is devotional rather than theatrical, and it has helped the song feel unmoored from its release year.

The hook poses a universal fear about ageing and conditional love, which keeps resurfacing in fan conversations from Reddit to TikTok.

There is a pop story here too. The single peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 23 on the UK’s Official Singles Chart, respectable in the moment and stubbornly relevant ever since.

Across 2024 and 2025 it re-appeared on Billboard’s Global Excl. U.S. chart and remains one of her most-played tracks on Spotify, proof that a slow-burn ballad can outlast a meme.

Critics were split in 2013. Some called it the soundtrack’s centrepiece, others thought it too restrained, yet the consensus was that Del Rey’s theme fit Gatsby’s ache.

That split says something about her appeal. She writes for the quiet part of the party, the minute you realise you cannot hold youth still, and you say a small prayer anyway, “Please, let me bring my man.”

If you are here for the practical bits, here they are inside the story.

The track was cut for Luhrmann’s film with JAY-Z serving as soundtrack executive producer, released 23 April 2013, and supported by a Chris Sweeney and Sophie Muller-led video on 10 May.

The original is credited to Del Rey and Nowels, with a DH Orchestral Version on the deluxe album. A Cedric Gervais remix later leaned into club dynamics.

And if you are here for the meaning, the song is speaking plainly.

When Del Rey sings “Your pretty face and electric soul,” then circles back to the question, she puts surface and spirit in the same frame.

It is not a hymn to vanity. It is a dare and a hope, set to strings that sound like memory.

Full Young and Beautiful Lyrics from Lana Del Rey

Verse 1
I’ve seen the world, done it all
Had my cake now
Diamonds, brilliant,and Bel Air now

Pre-Chorus
Hot summer nights, mid-July
When you and I were forever wild
The crazy days, city lights
The way you’d play with me like a child

Chorus
Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?
Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will, I know that you will
Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?

Verse 2
I’ve seen the world, lit it up as my stage now
Channeling angels in the new age now

Pre-Chorus
Hot summer days, rock and roll
The way you’d play for me at your show
And all the ways I got to know
Your pretty face and electric soul

Bridge
Dear Lord, when I get to Heaven
Please, let me bring my man
When he comes, tell me that You’ll let him in
Father, tell me if You can
All that grace, all that body
All that face makes me wanna party
He’s my sun, he makes me shine like diamonds

Chorus
And will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?
Will you still love me when I got nothin’ but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will, I know that you will
Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?

Outro
Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful?
Will you still love me when I’m not young and beautiful?