Born to Die
Born to Die is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. It was released on January 27, 2012, through Interscope Records and Polydor Records as her major label debut. A reissue of the album, subtitled The Paradise Edition, was released on November 9, 2012. The new material from the reissue was also made available on a separate extended play titled Paradise.
Before the album's release, Del Rey had attracted attention with her 2011 singles "Video Games" and "Born to Die", which contrasted contemporary electronic/dance music with a cinematic sound accompanied by dramatic strings. A predominantly baroque pop and trip hop album, Born to Die features the same cinematic composition. The lyrics are about love, sex, and drugs, and feature prominent references to 1950s and 1960s Americana. The album was the world's fifth best-selling album of 2012. In 2023, it became the second album by a woman to spend more than 500 weeks on the US Billboard 200, where it peaked at number 2, and topped charts in Australia and various European countries including France, Germany, and the UK. In December 2025, Born to Die became the longest charting album by a female artist in Billboard 200 history with 618 weeks.
Born to Die was supported by four further singles: "Blue Jeans", "Summertime Sadness", "National Anthem", and "Dark Paradise". "Summertime Sadness" peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Del Rey's highest-charting single in the US at the time. The album polarized contemporary critics; praise was directed toward the album's distinctive sound, while criticism targeted its repetitiveness and melodramatic tendencies. Del Rey's image during promotion of Born to Die was controversial; tabloid media accused her of inauthentic marketing tactics to gain an audience in the indie music scene. Despite an initially ambivalent reception, the album has been retrospectively ranked in best-of lists by several publications including The Guardian and NME, and helped Del Rey acquire cult status among music fans.
Background and development
In 2007, Elizabeth "Lizzy" Grant signed a recording contract with the record label 5 Point Records, and began planning her debut studio album. But after hiring new management services, taking an interest in adopting the stage name Lana Del Ray, and a perceived lack of motivation during production, she found herself in conflict with the record label and her producer David Kahne. The final product, Lana Del Ray, was digitally released in January 2010, and her stage name was respelled Lana Del Rey shortly after its launch. Grant was successfully bought out of her recording contract at her manager's request; consequently, Lana Del Ray was pulled out of circulation before physical versions were produced.After settling on her current stage name, Del Rey signed a recording contract with Stranger Records in June 2011, and released the track "Video Games". Initially, she had released the song because it was her "favorite" and had no intentions of releasing it as a single, although the video went viral on YouTube after its premiere. During an appearance on the French television series Taratata in November 2011, Del Rey announced that her second studio album would be titled Born to Die.
In an interview with British GQ, Del Rey revealed she was sent to boarding school in Connecticut at age 14 to get sober from alcoholism and said much of Born to Die is written about her experiences with alcohol while living in New York:
I was a big drinker at the time. I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was so fucking cool. A great deal of what I wrote on Born to Die is about these wilderness years. A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I'm writing about New York. And when I write about the thing that I've lost I feel like I'm writing about alcohol because that was the first love of my life. Sure, there have been people, but it's really alcohol.The photograph used on the cover for Born to Die was shot in Carpenders Park, Watford by Nicole Nodland, while Del Rey and David Bowden oversaw the overall direction for its packaging. On behalf of Complex, Dale Eisinger ranked the cover eighth on the magazine's list of "The 50 Best Pop Album Covers of the Past Five Years", commending its usage of the typeface Steelfish and speaking favorably of the "ominous" feeling it evoked, which he credited to "the shadows or whatever the shapes in the background are how properly Lana can affect her detached and still-flawless persona to a simple gaze". The album's track listing was announced on January 9, 2012, while the record was released on January 31 in the United States; it became Del Rey's first album with Interscope Records after she secured a distribution arrangement with them.
Composition
Born to Dies music style has been described as alternative pop, "sultry, overstated orchestral pop," baroque pop, indie pop, sadcore and trip hop. Of the style of her vocals on the album, Del Rey said: "people weren't taking me very seriously, so I lowered my voice, believing that it would help me stand out. Now I sing quite low... well, for a female anyway".The singer's first singles, "Video Games" and "Born to Die" were described variously as "quasi-cabaret balladry", "woozy and sometimes soporific soundtrack soul", and "pop". Del Rey described "Video Games" as "Hollywood sadcore". Tim Lee of musicOMH noted the songs are extremely similar, commenting that "her agents clearly having stumbled upon a formula with which they can print money and further consign Lana's secretive, real debut LP to the annals of history. You didn't hear it from us, right?". Del Rey was described as a "gangsta Nancy Sinatra", although she cites Britney Spears, Elvis Presley and Antony and the Johnsons as her musical influences. When asked about her musical style, Del Rey said:
I would have loved to be part of the indie community. But I wasn't. I was looking for a community, I don't even know any people who are musicians. I never met that indie popular indie, whoever the fuck that is. Who IS indie? First of all, I can't really get my head around what indie music is. Because if you've heard of it, it's sort of pop music, right? Because it's, like, popular? Or is it just that it's not on the radio? It's not like I was in an indie community and then I blew up. It's like, I was living on the street and I'm not – like, for real, you know what I'm saying?
The lyrics of "Off to the Races" have been called "a freak show of inappropriate co-dependency", with a chorus that recalls Sheryl Crow's "down and out drunken loner persona" in her 1994 single "Leaving Las Vegas". Pryia Elan of NME noted that the track "almost falls under the weight of this persona. There's none of 'Video Games
Del Rey's vocals on "Off to the Races", "National Anthem", and "Diet Mountain Dew" were described as "chatty" and "almost rapping". Her vocals on "Million Dollar Man" were likened to those of "a highly medicated Fiona Apple". Compared to soundtracks for James Bond films, Born to Die contains trip hop beats and a cinematic sound reminiscent of the 1950s. Thematically, Born to Die refers to sex and drugs, with Del Rey playing a Lolita-esque persona. Bill Lamb, a reviewer at About.com, wrote that "National Anthem" seems "lost in a messy blend of money, sex, and corporate greed, but it is the rousing yet graceful arrangement that solidifies the song's point of view as a clever critique of a society that is just as messy as these words". "National Anthem", Lamb says, fits into the lyrical structure of Born to Die in that the theme is that of a "bitter, albeit narcotized, criticism of all of the wealth and emotional artifice Lana Del Rey is accused of embracing". NME'' observed that Del Rey sings like a "perfect mannequin" on "National Anthem", criticizing the track for baldly revisiting the beat-driven chorus of "Born to Die".
Promotion
To promote Born to Die, Del Rey embarked on the Born to Die Tour from November 4, 2011, to September 25, 2012. Mainly consisting of concerts in Europe, the tour also visited North America and Australia."Video Games" was featured for the first time on The CW's Ringer on September 28, 2011, during a pivotal scene, propelling Del Rey into the mainstream. Del Rey also promoted the album with performances in a number of live appearances, including for MTV Push, and at the Bowery Ballroom, where, according to Eliot Glazer of New York, "the polarizing indie hipstress brought her 'gangsta Nancy Sinatra' swag". Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone commented that, despite Del Rey's nervousness and anxiety while performing live, she "sang with considerable confidence, though her transitions from husky, come-hither sexuality to bratty, girlish petulance could be rather jarring". Del Rey also performed "Video Games" on Dutch television program De Wereld Draait Door, on British music television show Later... with Jools Holland, and on a show at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, California.
She gave several interviews to newspapers and online magazines such as The Quietus, The Observer, and Pitchfork, while creating her own music videos for several tracks such as "Blue Jeans" and "Off to the Races". On January 14, 2012, Del Rey appeared on Saturday Night Live to perform "Blue Jeans" and "Video Games". Her performance soon came under scrutiny, and was criticized by NBC anchor Brian Williams, who called it "the worst in SNL history". SNL cast member Andy Samberg and the host of that week's episode, Daniel Radcliffe, came to her defense, with the latter stating that the criticism towards her was less about the performance and more about "her past and her family". Ringer played another Del Rey song, "Blue Jeans", on February 14, 2012, during the last scene of episode 13.