Born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant in New York City to a pair of wealthy parents, she was raised in Lake Placid, not starting to pursue music until she was out of high school and living with her aunt and uncle on Long Island. Lana Del Rey's journey to this stardom was a long, steady climb. With subsequent albums like 2019's Grammy-nominated Norman Fucking Rockwell!, 2021's Blue Banisters, and 2023's Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, Del Rey grew more and more into the ideal she intended to be: a damaged torch singer designed as the tragic romantic icon for her age. Following a hit remix of her single 'Summertime Sadness,' she steadily gained not only popularity but respect her second LP, 2014's Ultraviolence, received positive reviews that accompanied its sales, and her imitators (of which there were many) became merely an alluring accessory. It was a stylized noir-pop vibe she conjured from the start on her 2012 debut album, Born to Die.
Lana Del Rey envisioned a Southern California dream world constructed out of sad girls and bad boys, manufactured melancholy, and genuine glamour, and then she came to embody this fantasy.
