Lana Del Rey | Born To Die (Deluxe) | lyrics

Without You

lyrics:

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everything I want, I have
money, notoriety and rivieras
I even think I found God
in the flashbulbs of the pretty cameras
pretty cameras, pretty cameras
am I glamorous? tell me,
am I glamorous?

hello, hello?
ca-can you hear me?
I can be your china doll
if you like to see me fall
boy, you're so dope
your love is deadly
tell me life is beautiful
they all think I have it all

I've nothing without you
all my dreams and all the lights mean
nothing without you

summertime is nice and hot
and my life is sweet like vanilla is
gold and silver line my heart
but burned into my brain are all these stolen images
stolen images
baby, stolen images
can you picture it?
babe, the life we could have lived

we were two kids just trying to get out
lived on the dark side of the American dream
we would dance all night
play our music loud
but when we grew up
nothing was what it seemed

all my dreams and all the lights mean
nothing if I can't have you.
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analysis:

my thoughts

Without You is the thirteenth track off the deluxe edition of Lana Del Rey's debut LP Born To Die. The song begins with a bouncy, glimmering beat and electronics, and the verses are in a minor key, before the heavy drum kicks in and the tune turns to major in the chorus. Like her song Radio, the song relates love to fame. In this song Lana is saying to her partner that she loves him so much she'll give up fame and everything she's ever worked for to be with him. Once he leaves her, she realises that all her materialistic items she possesses are worthless in comparison to true love.

In the line "I can be your china doll if you want to see me fall" she is using the metaphor of a china doll to mean her heart. China dolls are delicate, meaning they break easily. She states that she can be her lover's doll and by doing so is willing to break as easily as a china doll when dropped, if it meant that's what her lover wished. In future song Black Beauty Lana also discusses this self-sacrifice, where she sings about her unhealthy tendency to put her lover's desires before her own well-being.

"Summertime is nice and hot, and my life is sweet like vanilla is"
In her song Radio off the same album, she also mentions her life being "sweet like cinnamon", another substance associated with sweetness that is naturally sharp and bitter in its own. She is using the simile of "sweet like-something" to write how without her lover she would be a darker, less happy and possibly more bitter person. With her true love she is happy and sweet.

All in all this song tells of how love is much more important than anything materialistic or sugar-coated, like fancy cars, fame or lots of money. It is the real things that truly make us feel happy, like love.

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