Editing Lana Del Rey (section)

===''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.