Lana Del Rey is a polarizing figure in music and pop culture. Some praise her as one of the best artists of the new generation, some think she is a con artist who has hardly any talent. Love her or hate her, it is unarguable that this woman is impactful and has birthed a new era of branding and amassing a core demographic young people in New York City and the United States as a whole. It all started with Born To Die, Del Rey’s first major release in 2012, which she released to mixed reception. Many praised the album for being unconventional and genre-pushing, while many wondered if the album sold for reasons outside of the actual music. The album artwork, for example, is a display of what one can call unattainable beauty. It shows Del Rey looking dead ahead, smileless, wearing thick red lipstick and a see through button down partially showing a red bra. What is for certain, though, is that Lana Del Rey spoke a certain perception of herself into existence and turned herself quite literally overnight into a pop star. The themes of Born To Die touch on very relatable topics to young music listeners including love, happiness, depression and even the rags to riches archetype. This album is shamelessly New York because there is nothing more New York than flashing one’s sexuality and money around while being depressed.
Lana Del Rey was born as Elizabeth Woolridge Grant in NYC to an affluent family, but raised in Lake Placid, New York. After dealing with substance abuse problems through high school, Grant moved in with her aunt and uncle in Long Island, who taught her to play the guitar, eventually attending Fordham University, in which she began to earnestly consider her musical career. Grant eventually signed with 5 Points Records in 2006, with the stage name Lizzy Grant, and recorded an EP titled Kill Kill, which was only released digitally, and the combination of that and the fact that her label was not acclaimed can be accredited as the reason why the album flopped, even despite a self-titled album that she released in 2010 with her current stage persona, “Lana Del Rey” (Harris). Eventually, Grant began working with different managers that wanted a more distinguished career for her (Ben Mawson and Ed Millett), revoking 5 Points Records’ rights to her music and moving her to the United Kingdom to work on her new stage persona “Lana Del Rey” in 2010 (Billboard). By 2011, (now) Del Rey released the videos for “Video Games” and “Blue Jeans,” under Stranger Records, an independent Interscope subsidiary label, which were watched over a million times each on YouTube. From that point on, Del Rey blew up and became the face of grunge-pop/hip-hop with her unique “bad-girl/country/vulnerable/yet-urban” persona (Harris).
The way Lana Del Rey fit into mainstream music and pop culture was by creating her own genre of music that intertwined hip-hop, pop, and alternative. With her soft, whiney voice Del Rey recorded this album with a group of very important producers who would help her craft this unique blended sound. Kanye West’s classic 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy served as one of the largest inspirations for Born To Die, as this was a very eclectic, genre-bending album. Also, many of West’s producers joined forces with Lana to produce her album. Producers like Jeff Bhasker (who went on to produce hits like “We Are Young” and “Uptown Funk) and Emile Hayine (who also produced many early Kid Cudi hits) took Lana’s narrow range and allowed her to explore over multi-layered, intricate beats. Songs like “Blue Jeans” and “Off To The Races” are made up of programmed drums that sound ready for any rapper to rhyme on, but also have alternative components like piano and guitar leads. “Off To The Races” even has real background noise from Coney Island! Fans of alternative, pop or hip hop can all find elements of their favorite genres on Born To Die, making it even more accessible.
Because Lana Del Rey is a modern pop-star, who serves as America’s “not-so-good girl,” social media websites like Reddit and Tumblr have a plethora of fans that idolize her, making her the subject of a myriad of GIFs, which would be quite aesthetically pleasing on the class website as a representation of what NYC idolizes as a hard-shell, soft-core NYC woman. Del Rey also mentions in an interview with Complex’s Ernest Baker that she picked out all of the video snippets for her music video for “Video Games,” making sure that specific music video was unique to her and her album, although it is mostly composed of fragments of other videos, therefore making it a video that is an accurate representation of what she stands for and her career: a compilation of already established classical themes tailored for the 21st century. Her music video for “National Anthem” is also very New York-esque because a big part of it features A$AP Rocky, a native Harlem rapper, thus also making this music video an excellent candidate for a cameo on the class website.
The title of the album is the title of the first song of the album, but the significance of it delves deeper than that. Throughout the album, Lana makes stark contradictions between happiness and depression. For example, in her song “Diet Mountain Dew,” she starts off the song by singing, “You’re no good for me, But baby I want you, I want, Diet Mountain Dew, baby, New York City, Never was there ever a girl so pretty.” The contradiction between the tone of her insecurity in that she wants this person, even though they are not “good for her,” to her talking about being the prettiest girl in New York City is an accurate depiction of the attitude of New York City. The attitude of New York City is one that is not humble. New Yorkers are notorious for being rude and prideful of their city, and Lana brings this out in Born to Die, but she also incorporates the insecurities and depression that people face in secrecy when having fun, creating a beautiful, relatable and always relevant narrative
This album ultimately touches the hearts of young girls in a way other albums by different mainstream pop artists haven’t. Del Rey hits young New York women with genuity of the dichotomy of the importance of being beautiful, youthful, living “the good life,” along with with the all too familiar depression of being lonely or falling in love with the wrong person. She displays this dominant theme of preserving beauty and youth in her later singles “Young and Beautiful,” but the bud of this theme is seen in the lyric “Money is the anthem of success, so put on mascara and your party dress” on “National Anthem,” signifying how despite all of the problems and complexities of the female experience, a woman should still look and dress her best. This very superficiality is the essence of Born To Die. Like New York City and Lana Del Rey herself, the album is half beautiful and half ugly. It’s very deep in its exploration of growing up, relationships and heartbreak, while also very fake in its obsession with exuberant wealth, much like the classism that makes New York the city it is.
