Editing Lana Del Rey (section)

==Career==

===Early Recordings and Independent Work (2005–2011)===

Grant recorded and released music independently throughout the late 2000s under various names. Her earliest album, ''Sirens'', was recorded around 2005–2006 and released quietly online without significant promotion. A more polished debut, ''Lana Del Rey'' (also known as ''Kill Kill''), was released on a small independent label in 2010 and failed to attract mainstream attention. These early recordings, while rougher and more conventional than her later work, contain clear seeds of the aesthetic that would eventually make her famous — a fascination with vintage pop and film noir imagery, a melancholy romanticism, and a vocal quality already moving toward the deep, languorous tone she would refine on ''Born to Die''.

The turning point came in the summer of 2011, when she uploaded a stripped-back, self-shot video for ''Video Games'' to YouTube. The clip — grainy found footage spliced with footage of Grant lip-syncing against a plain background — went viral almost immediately, attracting millions of views and generating widespread critical excitement. The song itself, built on a slow, orchestral arrangement and Grant's voice in its full atmospheric depth, was unlike almost anything else circulating in mainstream or indie pop at the time. Within months she had signed to Interscope Records and its affiliated label Polydor in the UK.

===''Born to Die'' and Controversy (2012)===

Her major-label debut ''Born to Die'' was released in January 2012 and debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 and number one in the UK, France, Germany, and several other European markets. The album — sweeping, cinematic, populated with gangster imagery, doomed romance, and conspicuous Americana — was a commercial success of the first order, eventually selling over eight million copies worldwide and becoming one of the best-selling albums of 2012.

Critical reception was sharply divided. Many reviewers praised the album's atmospheric ambition and the originality of Grant's persona and voice; others dismissed it as manufactured, affected, and lyrically shallow. Her Saturday Night Live performance in January 2012 was widely criticized, generating a media cycle around her perceived inauthenticity that overshadowed the album's commercial performance. Questions about the degree to which her persona and image were self-created versus industry-constructed followed her throughout 2012 and into the following year.

The controversy, in retrospect, says more about the critical establishment's discomfort with a new and genuinely unusual kind of female pop artist than it does about the work itself. ''Born to Die'' and its accompanying '''Paradise Edition''' EP produced enduring songs — ''Summertime Sadness'', ''Young and Beautiful'', ''National Anthem'', and the title track — that have only grown in cultural resonance in the years since.

===Consolidation and Critical Rehabilitation (2013–2017)===

''Ultraviolence'' (2014), produced by [[The Black Keys]]' [[Dan Auerbach]], marked a decisive sonic shift toward guitar-driven dream pop and a rawer, more understated production aesthetic. The album debuted at number one in the United States — her first US chart-topper — and was received considerably more warmly by critics who had dismissed ''Born to Die''. Its sound, darker and more static than its predecessor, foregrounded Grant's voice in new ways and introduced a willingness to let silence and space do emotional work.

''Honeymoon'' (2015) deepened the orchestral and cinematic qualities of her work, drawing on influences ranging from [[Ennio Morricone]] to [[Elvis Presley]] to [[Nina Simone]] and producing what many fans consider her most emotionally immersive listening experience, even if it attracted less mainstream attention than ''Ultraviolence''.

''Lust for Life'' (2017), her most overtly political album, incorporated guest appearances from [[The Weeknd]], [[A$AP Rocky]], [[Stevie Nicks]], and [[Sean Lennon]], and reflected a new engagement with contemporary social and political reality that marked an evolution in her artistic identity. It debuted at number one in multiple countries and was received as another significant step forward.

===''Norman Fucking Rockwell!'' and Critical Apex (2019)===

''Norman Fucking Rockwell!'', released in August 2019 and produced almost entirely by [[Jack Antonoff]], was the album that settled the question of Lana Del Rey's artistic standing definitively. A sprawling, unhurried meditation on California, failed idealism, aging beauty, and the American cultural moment, the album was received with near-universal critical acclaim — ending the year atop virtually every major critic's poll and earning a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Its range was remarkable: from the devastating piano ballad ''Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have'' to the wry pop confessionalism of the title track to the stunning orchestral closer ''sublime'', the album demonstrated a songwriter and vocalist operating at the absolute peak of her powers.

The accompanying single ''Mariners Apartment Complex'' and the album track ''Venice Bitch'' — an extended, guitar-drenched piece of psychedelic drift running nearly ten minutes — were particularly celebrated and demonstrated her growing ambition as a sonic architect as well as a lyricist.

===''Chemtrails'', ''Blue Banisters'', and ''Ocean Blvd'' (2021–2023)===

''Chemtrails over the Country Club'' (2021) and the companion release ''Blue Banisters'' (2021) consolidated the more intimate, confessional direction established on ''Norman Fucking Rockwell!'', with Antonoff again central to the production. Both albums were received warmly, with ''Chemtrails'' in particular praised for its autumnal melancholy and lyrical precision.

''Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd'' (2023) was her most ambitious and wide-ranging album to date. A double-length record featuring collaborations with [[Jon Batiste]], [[Father John Misty]], [[Tommy Genesis]], and others, the album drew on country, folk, spoken word, and orchestral pop, and was received as a summative artistic statement of extraordinary reach and confidence. Critics placed it among the finest albums of the year and many of the decade, and it further cemented her reputation as one of the great American songwriters of the contemporary era.

===''Lasso'' (2024)===

''Lasso'' (2024) marked another sonic departure, leaning fully into country and Americana influences in a manner that felt both unexpected and entirely logical given the trajectory of her work. Recorded in Nashville with a new set of collaborators alongside returning ones, the album was received as a genuine and unaffected engagement with country music's traditions rather than a commercial calculation, and drew praise from both her existing fanbase and country music listeners encountering her work for the first time.