Swinging in the backyard
Pull up in your fast car
Whistling my name
Open up a beer
And you say get over here
And play a video game
I’m in his favorite sun dress
Watching me get undressed
Take that body downtown
I say you the bestest
Lean in for a big kiss
Put his favorite perfume on
Go play a video game
Refrain: It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you
Everything I do
I tell you all the time
Heaven is a place on earth where you
Tell me all the things you want to do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It’s better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
Baby now you do
Singing in the old bars
Swinging with the old stars
Living for the fame
Kissing in the blue dark
Playing pool and wild darts
Video games
He holds me in his big arms
Drunk and I am seeing stars
This is all I think of
Watching all our friends fall
In and out of Old Paul’s
This is my idea of fun
Playing video games
Refrain – 2x
[Lana Del Rey is Elizabeth Grant, a singer-songwriter whose music is hard to classify. It's sort of indie rock/neo-disco. The song, especially the vocals, has an angelic, almost ethereal quality. The sad, somber tone of the vocals clashes with the lyrics that seem as if they should be much more upbeat.
The speaker in this song is a character reminiscent of the film "The Stepford Wives" (1974). She is submissive. She wears what her lover wants her to wear. She puts on the perfume he likes. She lets him play all the video games he wants. The titular "video games" create another kind of tension in the song - between old and new. The song sounds like it may have been written forty or fifty years ago, yet the references to "video games" thrust it into the present time, as it seems clear that the man is playing a home console, not arcade Pac-Man.
One part of the song that gets me every time is when the speaker seductively purrs, "I heard that you like the bad girls/ Honey is that true?" There is a bit of a paradox here. If he likes bad girls, should she pretend to be a bad girl because that is what he wants? Or does being a bad girl mean deliberately defying him and thus being something other than what he wants? This song has an unshakable melancholy and it comes from the idea that a good relationship cannot survive on pretense. She's pretending to be his fantasy, but that's not who she really is. She's asking him to love this fake version of herself. Ultimately, she will resent him and he will tire of her slavishness.]