#Lana del rey album born to die archive#
#Lana del rey album born to die free#

Lana Del Rey arrived to most of the public as a persona fully formed, but Born To Die was not her first album or her first attempt. On the cover of Born To Die, Del Rey stands stock-still and stares at the camera, as if lined up for a firing squad. Del Rey didn’t cower away from the criticism she leaned into it, fought back against it. After the release of her first proper single “Video Games” in the summer of 2011, she became a lightning rod for debates about authenticity and good taste. At that point, Lana Del Rey frenzy and fury was at a fever pitch. But judging by the immediate reactions on social media and in the comment sections of blogs like this one, you would think Del Rey committed a war crime. For me, that is my story in finding love in lots of different people, and that’s been the second biggest influence in my music.Said performance, though pitchy and all over the place, really isn’t that bad - especially on a show notorious for having awful sound for its musical guests. It’s just my experience of being with different kinds of men and being born without a preference for a certain type of person.

#Lana del rey album born to die free#

Admitting to The Guardian that it could “raise a feminist eyebrow,” she told, “I believe in free love and that’s just how I feel. Directed by Anthony Mandler, who Lana has described as her directorial soulmate, the video was, according to the singer, an accurate representation of her life. It came with another controversial video, this time showing Lana Del Rey with multiple love interests, among them bikers and bandana-clad older men. The lead track from the Paradise EP was co-written with Justin Parker (who also co-wrote “Video Games” and “Born To Die”) and produced by Rick Rubin, who has worked with everyone from Frank Ocean to Shakira. Lana told MTV News, “When I wrote that song, I suppose I had like a Harvey Weinstein/Harry Winston-type of character in mind.” “It was a time in my life when I had let go of my own personal career ambitions and just enjoyed being with him at home.”Ĭentered around a sugar daddy (a recurring theme in Lana Del Rey’s work), the opening line of this song possibly gained more press than the music itself: “My pu_y tastes like Pepsi cola.” Years after the release of the song, following accusations that producer Harvey Weinstein had sexually assaulted women in the industry, the lyric “Harvey’s in the sky with diamonds and he’s making me crazy” came under scrutiny. It was “about this guy I’d been seeing and the way our relationship was at the time”, she told NME. She’d written the song in London while watching her then-boyfriend playing World Of Warcraft.

#Lana del rey album born to die archive#

The clip was shot and edited by Lana on her own webcam and shows her singing with pursed lips, intercut with archive footage of LA. This list of the best Lana Del Rey songs wouldn’t be complete without referencing her debut major-label song, which broke her into the mainstream, primarily due to its music video going viral. Featuring some of Lana Del Rey’s darkest, most graphic imagery (“Writing in blood on my walls and s_t” is a lyric that gets recycled in “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have – but i have it”), it clocks in at almost six minutes long. “Heroin” references many characters associated with California, among them the metal band Mötley Crüe and convicted murderer Charles Manson (“Topanga is hot today/Manson’s in the air”).