Editing Lana Del Rey (section)

===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.