Some of the songs on Lana Del Rey’s new album, Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, are “super long and wordy.” Del Rey herself used that description in a February interview with Billie Eilish for Interview, and she specifically cited “Fingertips,” the LP’s ninth track, as a prime example. Now that Ocean Blvd is finally here, “Fingertips” has risen to the top of the Genius Top Songs chart, where it’s just ahead of the LP’s other 15 selections.
“Fingertips” was produced by Drew Erickson, who was tasked with creating musical backings for LDR’s stream-of-consciousness voice notes. “I’d go on a seven-minute rant with a repetitive melody,” Del Rey told Eilish. “It would be exactly what I was thinking about, mostly family and whether everything was going to pan out alright in the end.”
That familial anxiety is very much at the heart of “Fingertips,” a song about death, motherhood, and mental illness, among other things. In the second verse of the hook-free, string-laden song, Lana gets on the subject of telomeres, the protein structures found at the ends of chromosomes. As cells replicate, telomeres get shorter, a process that’s been linked to aging and death. Out in Silicon Valley, companies like Sierra Science are working to revitalize telomeres in the hopes of helping people live longer lives. Some even believe immortality is right around the corner.
Will I die? Or will I get to that ten-year mark?
Where I beat the extinction of telomeres?
And if I do, will you be there with me, Father, Sister, Brother?
Del Rey isn’t just obsessing over death. She’s also thinking about new life and whether she’s fit to bring one into this world.
Will I have one of mine?
Can I handle it even if I do?
It’s said that my mind
Is not fit, or so they said, to carry a child
I guess I’ll be fine
In the fourth verse, Lana pushes back against the notion of “irony” in her music. She’s writing about real stuff—like her uncle Dave Grant, who apparently took his own life in Rocky Mountain National Park in 2016.
Give me a mausoleum in Rhode Island with Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and Dave
Who hung himself real high
In the National Park sky, it’s a shame and I’m crying right now
Lana evidently learned of Dave’s suicide while she was in Monaco, getting ready to perform for the prince.
Sat in the shower
Gave myself two seconds to cry
It’s a shame that we die
Toward the end of the song, Lana reminisces about a boy named Aaron Greene whom she knew growing up in Lake Placid, N.Y., and dreamed of having a baby with. He’s now dead, possibly as a result of a car accident, as Genius user @bbrager posits, due to a 2007 obituary for a young man by that name. Lana goes from thinking about Greene to remembering how her parents sent her to boarding school in Connecticut to curb her wild ways.
Aaron ended up dead and not me
What the fuck’s wrong in your head to send me away, never to come back?
Exotic places and people don’t take the place of being your child
I give myself two seconds to cry
In the final verse, Lana takes a breath and pushes aside all of these bad feelings. She also gives herself a regal title she first used in an unreleased song from 2015.
Sunbather, moon chaser, queen of empathy
I give myself two seconds to breathe
And go back to being a serene queen
I just needed two seconds to be me
You can read all the lyrics to “Fingertips” on Genius now.
