
Lana Del Rey's full-fledged debut album, Born to Die, appeared to considerable anticipation in January 2012. and she won the Next Big Thing trophy at the Q Awards. By the fall of that year, she released "Video Games" on Stranger Records, an independent division of Interscope/Polydor, in the U.K. The first unveiling of Lana Del Rey arrived in 2011 via YouTube videos that quickly became a viral sensation, led by the moody, murky "Video Games" and followed by "Blue Jeans." Much of her success was limited to the Internet but it soon started to spill over into the pop culture of the U.K. Not long after its release, she teamed with managers Ben Mawson and Ed Millett, who helped her separate from 5 Points (rights to her recordings reverted back to her) and moved to England, where she began crafting the Lana Del Rey persona. Kill Kill appeared digitally in 2008 and over the next two years Grant became Lana Del Rey, digitally releasing a full self-titled album under that name in 2010. Reverting to the name Lizzy Grant, she signed with 5 Points Records in 2006, recording an EP called Kill Kill with producer David Kahne, who would prove to be her first pivotal collaborator. Copyright Office and she recorded elsewhere, finishing up an unreleased folky album called Sirens under the name May Jailer. In April of that year, a CD of originals was registered under her birth name with the U.S. While she attended Fordham University, she continued to play music and she started getting serious around 2005. Her uncle taught her how to play guitar and soon she was writing songs and playing New York clubs, sometimes under the name Lizzy Grant. Born as 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. By that point, Lana Del Rey had become 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, with her 2014 second album Ultraviolence receiving positive reviews to accompany her sales her imitators, of which there were many, were merely an alluring accessory. At first, her stylized noir-pop garnered skeptical sneers - the rise of her 2012 debut Born to Die was impeded by a tentative live debut on Saturday Night Live - but Lana Del Rey proved to be tougher than her soft exterior suggested.


Lana Del Rey envisioned a Southern Californian dream world constructed out of sad girls and bad boys, manufactured melancholy and genuine glamour, and then she came to embody this fantasy.
