What Do Salvatore Lana Del Rey Lyrics Mean?

To me, 'Salvatore' is a short film. Daydreaming and warning, set to the images of the Mediterranean: beaches, lemons, a white car, names whispered. The title, 'Salvatore', or 'savior', implies the lover as idealized rescue as well as, potentially, empty fantasy. Lana sings this scene as if she were acting in a role: glamorous and slightly theatrical, yet not entirely believable.

The song’s tension between wanting to be saved and wanting to be admired as someone who wants to be saved is relished throughout the lyrics, set against music that is bright and nostalgic but laced with irony. The result is a song that is both wistful and keen, like a warm but nevertheless squinty breeze. It’s a song to play when you’re feeling glamourous but also worried about the cost of it all. And I’m left feeling wistful but also smiling.

I was immediately drawn in by the first line of the song, which introduces us to the name of the man that Lana is singing about in hushed tones. Salvatore is a pretty name and one would think that a name like that would be common knowledge to all, including the wind. However, in this song Salvatore is used as a dress-up trope of Italian glamour and decay, and Lana’s lyrics explore the theme of desire.

Of course there is also a level of self-commodification in this, in that the narrator wants to be adored and photographed and idealized by this man. Yet she also seems to realize that this is all a performance that he is putting her up to. The man-as-savior is a much-appealing-but-suspect trope, and here it is used to explore the tension between escape and self-commodification. The song’s nostalgic feel is paired with the cool, off-key lines sung by Lana within sunny arrangements.

This song is so beautiful and nostalgic and it makes me think of all the times I’ve been manipulated by the romance of a situation and how the situations of romance are architectures that we move through. This song is a really great example of her bittersweet storytelling.

Sunlight, cheap perfume and cinematic mischief – this is how I perceive the song ‘Salvatore’. The song seems to be written from the perspective of a postcard from an imaginary Italy full of images of lemons, the beach and a white car. This is an old-school romantic fantasy. The song could have been written for a European film from the 1960s. As always with Lana, the playful and flirtatious surface is layered with her typical slow-burn of melancholy and irony. The sweet endearing pictures are fragile.

As I said, I hear ‘Salvatore’ (both the song and the name of the romantic lead in this little movie) in a couple of ways. On the surface he is a lovely romantic lead who takes our heroine around Capri showing her all of the local sites. He even feeds her lemons from a tree and all. But symbolically ‘Salvatore’ means ‘savior’ and here in this song he is both the man who saves her and complicates things to the point where she needs saving in the first place. We know that Lana often writes about wanting to be saved from her own little world of chaos and that she can also glamorize the said chaos that needs saving in the first place. This song is a bit of a flirtation with the above mentioned contradictions.

Mood piece. Song about a role that’s being played. So stunning. Lance Armistead’ed up this song about longing. And performative romantic gestures and the slight cruelness of romantic myths. The song is packaged up so beautifully. The notes of this song will be stuck in my head for so long after this song is played.