Sometimes a review just sticks with you. For me, it’s Rob Sheffield’s two star Rolling Stone review of Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die.” One line specifically echoes every time I replay the 2012 album: the songwriters need “to get the fuck back to med school.” It’s the type of dish one would give for a flash in the pan, 15 minutes of fame act with one hit to their name. Other outlets like Entertainment Weekly piled on, giving the same work a C+ rating. Given that her album release was timed to a maligned Saturday Night Live performance, it made sense (if rather cynically) to believe that she wouldn’t be around long. People don’t hit the scene with that much vibrancy if they plan to last. They have two, maybe three albums tops to prove themselves.
Oh, how time makes fools of us all. “Born to Die” is one of those examples of an album culturally being misunderstood. In 2022, these same outlets are praising her latest and others are running articles reassessing the overall impact of that breakout hit that remains one of the best-selling albums by a female pop star this past decade. A whole generation has emulated her approach, and the world is better for it. Even if nobody could ever match her mix of irony and sincerity, artificiality and bearing one’s soul, the idea of crafting personas has become more frequently necessary. This album busted down a door and nobody was ready for it.
While I didn’t realize it at the time, “Born to Die” as a record was about to change my life. I was 22 and meandering through early adulthood looking for an identity. As much as I tried to shed the silliness of those teenage years, I hadn’t really latched onto something that organically felt connected to me. On the one hand, rock music was about to enter its least interesting Top 40 phase since 80s hair metal so jumping ship made sense. But what was there to even enjoy? What music could I call my own?
The immediate backlash to Lana Del Rey makes sense in theory. Looking back at Billboard’s hit songs from 2011, “Born to Die” was birthed into a world where Katy Perry sang innocuous celebration anthems like “Firework” and Lady Gaga was keeping everyone guessing with the undeniable force of “Born This Way.” Elsewhere there was LMFAO presenting a “Party Rock Anthem” that suggested we had good times ahead. Outside of Adele, most music was all about lavish freedom and excess. The idea of having someone break in and put something called “Summertime Sadness” in the mix feels like a Debbie Downer prank if there ever was one.
At no point does Lana Del Rey make sense as a pop superstar. In 2012, there was the gimmicky decision to call her “The Gangsta Nancy Sinatra.” While Sinatra isn’t a terrible comparison, the idea was goofy and did no favors. Sure her soundscape incorporated hip-hop aesthetics such as sparse beats and a very weird recurring yelling sample, but she wasn’t trying to be the next Nicki Minaj. The only time in her entire career where this made any sense was on the misleading “Off to the Races,” which details a girlfriend’s relationship with a mob boss who has a “cocaine heart” and sings rather cartoonishly “Give me them gold coins!” Never mind that it sounds less gangsta than her just playing Super Mario Bros. in the back room, but it all is fitting with her image as a natural born storyteller.
The difficulty to classify her from a marketing standpoint makes sense because of how against the grain she was, having more to do with indie pop and Tumblr posts than whatever the radio was doing at the time. She wasn’t conventional to the degree that she loved to quote Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” frequently and was suggested to celebrate domestic abuse. Her music was inherently sad, sung from a lower register and harkening back to a time before she was born. “Blue Jeans” recalls a relationship with James Dean, at times doing a pouty starlet imitation to emphasize the melodrama of the piece. There was something performative about “Born to Die,” using cinematic approaches to detail her life in the grandest of fashion. One could envision every small detail, every emotion as she navigates a philosophical search for meaning. It’s a tad nihilistic, but to call her the prototypical sad girl is to miss how well she layers her work with comedy and tragedy within the same end word.
The common trope for every pop star is that they have a loyal, at times irrational fan base who will defend every action they do. Among the most recognized today are Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Beyonce. It makes sense, especially as they’re towering giants in the industry whose every move is met with unprecedented scrutiny. There is something that the fans feel in their music that makes them feel deeply connected to them, and I’m happy for them. I’m happy something could comfort them on such an intimate level. With that said, I’ve never been able to appreciate them in that kind of way. To me, they’re just very talented performers doing their job.
And yet, if I were to die on one hill it’s that I love Lana Del Rey. I’m the type of person who once joined an Instagram Live with her only to jump off for fear that she would directly talk to me. I am so nervous about disappointing her because of everything her music has meant to me. Almost every midnight release of a new album I stay up and listen, eager to hear what she has come up with. In some ways, every subsequent record is much more sublime in accomplishment than “Born to Die” and she’s clearly grown as a performer, but outside of her last three records, I don’t know that she’s ever achieved the heights of her breakthrough.
I think it’s because of how much it lacks authenticity and direction. This isn’t to say that the dissenters were wrong, but more that “Born to Die” is an acquired taste. There are moments that immediately pop like “Video Games,” but others will take a long time to unveil their beauty. As mentioned, there’s a complexity to Lana Del Rey that isn’t immediately obvious. Sure she seems to be the miserable pop star in a sea of confetti, but that is to ignore how her depression fuels a morose sense of humor, where philosophical wit comes into play and turns a phrase into something profound. To be fair, there isn’t a line totally clever or self-aware enough to match later songs (like “Salvatore” from “Honeymoon”) but here she introduces every component that is in the works.
As much as I love the other albums, I miss the “Born to Die” era so much because of how it predicted an alternate direction for Lana Del Rey. Had the world been quicker to accept her brand of nostalgic, pseudofiction pop that threw references to The Omen (1976) into “Video Games,” who knows if she would’ve gone in a more classical direction, ditching a lot of the chintzy elements that hold this album back. I love the idea that she could open with one of the most powerful introductions, singing from the bottom of her soul with the amazing chorus:
Lost, but now I am foundI can see that once I was blindI was so confused as a little childTried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't findAll the answers I need
before transitioning into “Off to the Races” where everything is so cartoonish that the tonal whiplash puts the listener in traction. I love how big and crazy the song is, even if it’s the first example of perceived misogyny, where a toxic codependent relationship comes into play. Then again, opening with the suggestion that “We were born to die” is an overreactive phrase if there ever was one. This wasn’t the message that The Party Rock Generation™ wanted to live by. Nothing about this was gangsta. There’s so much farce here that either you get it or don’t. “Diet Mountain Dew” has a pumping beat that throws another wrench into the direction of the album. Another tempo, another pitch change. What is even going on anymore?
If there’s one song that perfectly predicts where things would go, it’s the Americana infused into “National Anthem.” Among the defining factors of Lana Del Rey’s image was the idea of The All-American Girl, who sang about things that made this country great. Here she lays out a list of ideals:
Wining and dining, drinking and drivingExcessive buying, overdose and dyingOn our drugs and our love and our dreams and our rageBlurring the lines between real and the fake
While she would retool her Americana over the next few records, her initial, mostly surface-level approach embodied a sense of escapism meant to hide the pain underneath. As she claims “Money is the anthem of success.” Given that she later sings on “Million Dollar Man” about “why is my heart broke” when dating a rich man, there’s a clear conflict between what is sold as the dream and the reality. The main difference is that “National Anthem” is a celebration. It’s also her undeniable banger on the album, where the chorus booms with such force, the strings creating a sense of awe as fireworks can be heard in the distance. This is the sound of being at a park with a loved one, lying on a blanket, and watching the July 4 magic. So much yearning and purpose.
If I’m being honest, the back half is where the record tends to be the spottiest. “Dark Paradise” is a heartfelt ode to a lost loved one that ebbs and flows like the ocean. Even if lyrically it’s one of the most direct in her career, it manages to convey her ethos clearly. Many have made of her being the sad girl, and it’s easy to think that when she claims “All my friends tell me I should move on.” She seems stuck in misery, focusing on the darkness. While it never gained the heightened acclaim of “Summertime Sadness” I think it deserves recognition for how it embraces a dark atmosphere that feels like sitting on a pier, looking out longingly.
To be completely honest, if there’s any weak spots, there’s “Radio” and “Carmen” which work as B-Tier tracks, but haven’t connected with me as well. However, the original album closes out nicely with “Summertime Sadness” which became a radio hit. Nowhere on this whole album, at least since the opening, had Lana Del Rey’s future image seem almost transparent. Here she contradicted sunny imagery with her dark internal feelings that separated her from the world around her. Whereas most would have depression around the winter months, it’s interesting to see a song about the time often considered joyous and communal. Given that she would later release a song called “Summer Bummer,” this is a mood she helped to popularize.
The closer, “This Is What Makes Us Girls” adds a nice contradiction to the belief that Lana Del Rey is anti-feminist by pointing out the ways that the world pits women against each other while showing the inherent bond she shares with them. It’s a final nostalgic moment and one that has as much fleeting romanticism as it does heartache. As a final note, it reflects the full spectrum of what her career would be.
As mentioned near the start, this is a record that caught me off guard and one I wish could’ve been imitated more. While most artists have embraced a sadness into their music, none have done so with a cinematic force. Every time she releases a new song, she has this lyrical ability to create stories that immerse the listener with an orchestration that overwhelms with beauty. She is a singular voice. One of her greatest accomplishments is being able to live long enough to prove the scrutiny wrong. Sure she still remains a divisive figure and her latest albums aren’t the most radio friendly, but she is still doing something exciting. Even if this is all an act, she embodies the joy that an artist should have, interacting with a wink to her fans and noting that she is just misunderstood.
At times I want to call “Born to Die” one of the greatest albums I’ve listened to. There are definitely six or seven masterpieces on here that rank among her best. Otherwise, it’s more fascinating as an artifact, capable of earning the same nostalgia that it has for the era before it. When thinking about this record, one thinks about the time when everyone wrote her off, when she bombed on Saturday Night Live and temporarily turned audiences against her. It was before “Young and Beautiful” or that she really had proven herself. A lot of the vocals are fun here, but they’re unfocused and I’ve always personally felt like “Million Dollar Man” would’ve been more impressive if recorded five years later. She has challenged herself harmonically since, and I think a lot of these songs are just scratching at better ideas.
Even then, this is where my journey with her started. Like everyone else, it caught me off guard and introduced an unstoppable force. To me, she’s an inspiration because of how much she embraces the mode of storytelling, where she allows herself to incorporate everything she wants into her work and makes it work. Want to quote “Lolita” randomly? Go for it! Want to repurpose lyrics and film references to fit your image? What’s stopping you? She is the modern American artist, at once an original voice but also a consumer. She thinks about the world around her, dealing with complex emotions and questioning what freedom means. She is an all-encompassing artist who provokes and doesn’t settle for generic verse-chorus-verse music. She challenges you to understand her as well as yourself. “Born to Die” was the introduction to that.
Where does she fit within the prism of those 2011/2012 artists? In some respect, she was part of a new wave of pop stars, redefining the medium and creating something that has defined this decade. Whereas Lady Gaga has redefined queerness and Beyonce with Black excellence, Lana Del Rey embodies the deep thinker, the one who is at times so full of themselves that it’s downright comical. She knows the line is off. She knows being self-serious can look delusional. In spite of her sincerity, she has continued to find sincerity within her web of thought. I’m glad that “Born to Die” wasn’t the end point for her or that her songwriters (which was just her by the way, Rob) went the fuck back to med school. They just swung up that middle finger and continued to follow their own path. Everyone eventually caught up, and hopefully, that road only continues to get brighter as it continues.
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