Songfacts®:

• "Fingertips" is a six-minute song that reads like an intimate diary entry. The production takes a backseat as Lana del Rey dives into her thoughts on motherhood, family, death, and mental illness. There are no choruses in this string-heavy tune, but it examines the emotional baggage from her past experiences and intricate relationships while pondering her future.
  
  "'Fingertips' is not a good song or a big song but it definitely explains everything. I felt like that was important because everyone was always like 'explain yourself,'" Del Rey told Rolling Stone. "And I was like, 'Okay, let me do this really quickly, I'll tell you everything I'm thinking in two minutes in a seven-minute song and just rip through it and edit it.' That song kind of says it all."
• The song title comes from the first verse where Del Rey longs to express the intricacies of her work without being misinterpreted.
  
  When I look back, tracing fingertips over plastic bags
  Thinking, "I wish I could extrapolate some small intention
  Or maybe just get your attention for a minute or two
  
  Del Rey traces her fingertips over plastic bags, yearning to deduce some small intention and catch the attention of those who don't take her seriously. The singer previously reflected on the same topic on "Get Free," the closing track on her 2017 album Lust for Life.
• In the second verse, Del Rey riffs on telomeres, which are repeating sequences of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres protect the genetic information encoded in the chromosomes from being lost or damaged during cell division. They function like the plastic tips on shoelaces that prevent them from fraying, keeping the chromosome ends from sticking together or getting damaged.
  
  As cells divide, their telomeres gradually become shorter until they reach a critical length that triggers cellular senescence, a state in which the cell can no longer divide. When the telomere is exhausted, the chromosomes fall apart, the cell is no longer able to divide, and dies. The process has been linked to aging and death.
  
  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?
  
  Silicon Valley's Sierra Science is among the companies striving to rejuvenate telomeres, with the ambitious goal of prolonging human life. There are even those who believe that immortality is within reach.
• The third verse finds Del Rey pondering whether she will ever have children and if she could nurture and raise them.
  
  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
  
  Del Rey previously sang about the prospect of motherhood on the title track of her 2021 album Blue Banisters, where she hoped a love interest would "give me children, take away my pain."
• In the fourth verse, Del Rey reflects on her Uncle Dave, who died by suicide in July 2016 while climbing in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
  
  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
  
  In verse five, we learn Del Rey was told the bad news of her uncle's passing while she was in Monaco getting ready to perform at the Red Cross Gala for the prince.
  
  Sat in the shower
  Gave myself two seconds to cry
  It's a shame that we die
  
  Del Rey also references her uncle's death in another Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd track, "The Grants."
• As the song draws to a close, Del Rey reflects on her childhood in Lake Placid, New York, and a boy named Aaron Greene she once dreamed of starting a family with.
  
  All I wanted to do was kiss Aaron Greene and sit by
  The lake, twisting lime into the drinks that they made
  Have a babe at sixteen in the town I was born in, and die
  Aaron ended up dead and not me
  
  Sadly, Greene passed away, possibly through a car accident.
• In the final verse, Del Rey takes a deep breath and sets aside her painful memories.
  
  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
  
  Del Rey refers to herself with a majestic title she previously used in an unreleased 2015 track called "Serene Queen" that was leaked.
• Drew Erickson, a behind-the-scenes musician who previously worked on Lana Del Rey's Blue Banisters album, produced the track. He contributed to five songs on Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
• Erickson played all the instruments on the song: synth bass, synth pads, piano, Wurlitzer piano, Hammond B3 organ, Mellotron and strings.
• Discussing Ocean Blvd with Billie Eilish for Interview magazine, Del Rey said several songs are "super long and wordy."
  
  She tasked Drew Erickson with creating musical backings for her 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."
  
  "There was a lot of editing, because it was mostly a stream of consciousness, but every now and then I'll have a complete song come to me fully formed," she added to Billboard. "The song 'Fingertips' I created in one sitting, voice memoed it, and sent it to Drew Erickson. He came back to me the next day with a full orchestra."