Get Free is Lana Del Rey’s most important song on her entire discography, in my opinion.

You may or may not agree, but in my opinion, this is arguably Lana’s most crucial song in her entire music history.

It’s a song that deserves so much more attention and it absolutely deserved to get its own music video. To this day, I’m still so sad that it didn’t.

Get Free is a song about escaping a toxic or abusive relationship with someone you’re not supposed to be with and starting your life over to give yourself a chance at happiness and fulfillment.

The song highlights just how difficult it is to leave a toxic or abusive relationship, and even touches up upon women in the world who were never able to escape their abusive partners and ended up dead because of it.

Get Free is in my top three favorite Lana songs because I deeply resonate with the lyrics after getting out of some very toxic relationships myself in my early 20s.

Fortunately I’m now married to my best friend and chosen life partner, but back in the day, I never knew that could be possible, based on the relationship dynamics I was caught in.

When I heard the lyrics of Get Free, I instantly felt like I connected with Lana and I felt like she wrote those lyrics after magically taking a peek inside my soul somehow.

But it makes sense that she with these lyrics since she herself escaped relationships that were toxic and unhealthy back in the day. A

ll women deserve to be loved properly without manipulation, fear, or abuse. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.

But these are my thoughts on why Get Free is Lana’s most important song since it narrates a woman’s escape to freedom as she frees herself from the chains and shackles of a man who was only going to ruin her.

Let’s talk about the beginning of Lana‘s song where she describes her commitment and modern manifesto. She sings, “This is my commitment, my modern manifesto. I’m doing it for all of us who never got the chance. And all my birds of paradise. Who never got to fly at night. ‘Cause they were caught up in the dance.”

This song is her commitment to speak up on behalf of the women who died at the hands of their abusers. It’s her modern manifesto to put this song out in honor of the women who never got the chance to get away. She refers to them as birds of paradise you never got to fly at night. They never got their sweet escape.

They never got to fly away into the night. Lana says, because they were “caught up in the dance.” And if you know anything about fencing slash sword fighting, it’s often referred to as dancing. Dancing is another way of describing a physical battle between two people. The women who were caught up in the dance ended up dying and never got the chance to fly away into the night as the beautifully free birds of paradise Lana was singing about.

After that, Lana sings, “Sometimes it feels like I’ve got a war in my mind. I wanna get off, but I keep riding the ride.” And these words really hits home with me. They resonate with me a lot because I remember feeling like I had a war in my mind when I was in my past relationship. I felt like I was stuck on his roller coaster ride and I desperately wanted to get off, but I kept riding the ride because I felt like I couldn’t see any other way out.

The war in my mind felt like a battle between fighting for change, hoping things would get better, and trying to see it through in the relationship because I’ve already invested so much of my heart and soul, versus giving up on everything, cutting him out of my life, and walking away forever.

And to some people, the answer might be very simple. But there are layers of difficulty that come with leaving a toxic relationship. Starting over from scratch after you’ve invested years of time, energy, and youth into a partner is really not as easy as people claim it should be.

Then Lana sings, “I never really noticed that I had to decide to play someone’s game, or live my own life. And now I do.” When she said that, I instantly understood exactly what she meant. She realize that it was her decision to keep playing his game or to start living her own life. She didn’t realize before that it was up to her to decide. She had to come to terms with the fact that staying with him would mean continuing to play his game, and leaving him would mean gaining the chance to finally live her own life.

When you weigh your options that way and take accountability for exactly where you are in life, it makes it a little bit easier to pull the trigger on your decision to walk away. But keep in mind that it’s never easy to walk away. Statistically speaking, it takes women at least seven attempts at leaving before they finally officially leave a toxic relationship for good.

Women try to leave toxic relationships all the time, but it’s usually never permanent because men have a very manipulative way of whistling back in through charm, pulling on the heart strings, guilt trips, diminishing your self-worth so you don’t feel like anyone else would ever want you, and more. In some cases, they might even attempt to blackmail you. Which is something I personally went through with my ex who threatened to send inappropriate videos of me to my own parents when I was trying to permanently cut ties with him forever. It’s not easy to walk away, but it gets a little bit easier when you realize you no longer want to play the other person‘s games of manipulation and control anymore.

After that, Lana sings, “I wanna move. Out of the black (out of the black). Into the blue (into the blue).” Originally, when I heard these lyrics, I thought she was describing the way she was moving out of the black, moving out of the darkness of the toxic and unhealthy relationship, and transitioning into the blue. The blueness of freedom, adventure, and embracing a new lease on life with blue representing the open ocean and the never-ending skyline.

But I did have someone in my comment section mention that the color blue isn’t always seen as the happiest color. And that’s true. Blue is often associated with gloom, sadness, and depression. That being said, I also consider want moving out of the block and into the blue as her possibly leaving the shadowy darkness and entering her healing era. Blue is a color that is very calming and soothing, which means it certainly aligns with the concept of entering your healing era after walking away from a toxic relationship.

The color blue is a deeply symbolic color for Lana, and you know that to be true since she incorporates it in many of her song lyrics. Including one of my other favorite Lana songs, which is Blue Banisters. Get Free came out in 2017 and Blue Banisters came out years later in 2021. But the inclusion of the color blue wasn’t random in Blue Banisters either.

Banisters found inside a home represent stability and safety. Banisters are what you grab when you’re trying to safely walk up and down the stairs. Lana choose to paint the banisters blue and her song, which was her way of explaining that despite her tragic disappointment over broken promises from the man who let her down, she was still willing to embrace her sadness, turn it into something beautiful, and not live in denial about it. Rather, she made it clear in the song she was better off feeling all of her emotions thoroughly by paintingthose banisters blue instead of denying herself the grieving process that she needed to go through. The color blue is really meaningful to Lana.

The last part of Get Free I want to break down is the climax of the song when she sings, “There’s no more chasing rainbows and hoping for an end to them. Their arches are illusions, solid at first glance. But then you try to touch them (touch, touch). There’s nothing to hold on to (hold, hold). The colors used to lure you in (shut up, shut up). And put you in a trance (ah, ah, ah, yeah).”

And this is probably one of the prettiest climaxes to a Lana song of all time. And that’s because she’s describing the moment the illusion broke. She’s describing the moment she realized she was better off without him. She’s describing the moment she knew she needed to end things and leave. She describing the moment she knew she needed to “get free,” as stated in the title of her song. There’s no more chasing rainbows and hoping for an end to them. When people chase rainbows in fairytales, they are hoping to find a pot of gold at the end. They’re hoping to find something mystical and magical. But in reality, you won’t find anything at the end of a rainbow.

She sings, “Their arches are illusions, solid at first glance.“ You can reach out to try and touch the raise of light and color of a rainbow, but you won’t be able to actually touch it. The arches are illusions. The arches of rainbow look solid at first glance, but you can’t actually touch them. And that’s exactly how a toxic relationship feels. It’s all an illusion. It looks solid at first glance because you were clinging to the good times and the happy memories, usually whatever the relationship felt like in the early days at the very beginning when you were still in the honeymoon phase. But when you actually touch it, actually analyze the depths of where your relationship has gotten, you realize that the illusion of happiness, connection, and longevity is all fake.

Lana sings, “But then you try to touch them (touch, touch). There’s nothing to hold on to (hold, hold).” And this is the moment when you realize there’s nothing left to hold onto in your relationship. You’re still maybe reaching out with hope that things can get better or that you don’t actually have to walk away. But there’s nothing to hold onto. And this is always a challenging moment for people leaving toxic and abusive relationships because when you genuinely love someone, you don’t want to walk away, even if that person is hurting you. You just wish they would be better. You just wish the relationship could heal. You just wish you could be normal and happy with each other. You would prefer that more than the concept of leaving them forever. But you are left with no choice because there is no hope for the relationship. There is nothing to hold onto, as long as things.

And Lana sings, “The colors used to lure you in (shut up, shut up). And put you in a trance (ah, ah, ah, yeah).”

The beauty and bliss of what you believed your relationship could be used to love you and put you in trance. It used to make you think anything was possible and that you were on top of the world with that person in the good times. You were in a trance. You were blinded by confusing feelings of passion and love. So I really appreciate that Lana poetically described it as being lured in and put into a trance, because that helps explain the fact that you’re not necessarily fully in your right mind when you’re going back-and-forth with a toxic partner. You’re not always thinking clearly. You’re not always thinking straight. You’re emotionally intertwined with this other person, even though the person isn’t good for you and even though the person has a history of hurting you. You’re still caught up in a trance, and you’ve still been lured in, which is why the purpose and premise of this song is so powerful. And the song title says it all. Breaking free of the trance, letting go of the illusion, moving out of the black and into the blue, deciding not to play someone else’s mental games of manipulation anymore, deciding to finally get off of the ride, and choosing not to let the war in your mind be the end of you.

Get Free is about becoming one of the beautifully free birds of paradise that gets to fly away into the night. Not being the one who gets caught up in the dance, potentially never making it out alive.

I also need to note that all of these thoughts are my own personal opinions and I’m not saying I am 100% correct or that I know what Lana was thinking when she put this song together. But these are just my own opinions and how I connected with this song myself.