Christmas At Graceland: Watch Lana Del Rey Cover “Unchained Melody” And Post Malone Jump In Elvis’ Pool Fully Clothed
Earlier this month, Sofia Coppola told E! News that she tried to get Lana Del Rey to contribute a song to her new film Priscilla, about Elvis Presley’s ex-wife. This would’ve made perfect sense. Lana Del Rey’s personal style probably takes some cues from Priscilla Presley, and she radiates the same kind of doomed, oppressive glamor that the movie conveys. Coppola said, “We were hoping she could do a song for it, but it didn’t work out with the timing.” Instead, we’re getting a different piece of Lana Del Rey/Elvis Presley content: Lana singing “Unchained Melody” at Graceland, for an NBC TV special.
Last night, NBC aired its Christmas At Graceland special after its annual Christmas At Rockefeller Center show. Riley Keough, movie star and Elvis’ granddaughter, produced and hosted Christmas At Graceland, which was filmed at Elvis’ Memphis estate. The special had people like Lainey Wilson, Kacey Musgraves, Alanis Morissette, and Kane Brown singing in the strange, evocative confines of Graceland, with no live audience, which lent an uncanny quarantine-era feeling to the whole enterprise. Lana Del Rey was not going to let timing mess this one up.
“Unchained Melody” isn’t exactly an Elvis song. Elvis didn’t record the original version of the track, which was written for the 1955 movie Unchained, and he didn’t record the definitive version, either. (That was the Righteous Brothers, who turned it into a hit in 1965.) But Elvis did sing “Unchained Melody” on his last TV special, recorded just before his death in 1977. Thanks in part to the recent movies about Elvis, the song has become a big part of his iconography. On Christmas At Graceland, Lana sang “Unchained Melody” with only a pianist and a trio of backing singers accompanying her. She looked and sounded cool as hell. Here’s her performance:
Post Malone was also an enthusiastic participant in Christmas At Graceland. Rocking an amazing leopard-print suit and playing a giant hollowbody guitar, Posty sang an honestly very good version of Elvis’ 1963 single “(You’re) The Devil In Disguise” entirely solo. Then, he immediately launched himself into the Graceland swimming pool. Off-camera, you can hear someone — presumably Riley Keough — laughing that the pool isn’t heated. Here’s that:
Here’s Lana Del Rey and Riley Keough having a pleasant conversation about loving Christmas, with Del Rey describing the “good vibes, all the way around” at Graceland:
