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In 2020, Del Rey took to Instagram to release a piece of writing entitled 'Question for the culture'.

The post became infamous, and created the biggest controversy she has faced to date. Within it, she details her experience of making music about being a more 'submissive' woman in toxic or abusive relationships and how this has resulted in many (arguably reasonable) criticisms that her work has glamorised abuse. She stated ‘Im fed up with female writers and alt singers saying that I glamorize abuse’, and in a later paragraph went on to say ‘I've been honest and optimistic about the challenging relationships I've had. News flash! That's just how it is for many women’.

In the piece she infers that she doesn't feel that theres a place in feminism for ‘women who look and act like me...the kind of women who are slated mercilessly for being their authentic, delicate selves, The kind of women who get their own stories and voices taken away from them by stronger women or by men who hate women’.

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Lizzy Grant pictured in the 2000s (Before she made her official debut as Lana Del Rey in 2011 with the release of Video Games).

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Del Rey's transformative evolution from 'girl next door' to international star.

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Del Rey's transformative evolution from 'girl next door' to international star.

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Lana Del Rey (real name Elizabeth Woolridge Grant) is an American singer-songwriter. She has been actively performing and producing music since 2005; however, her 2011 release 'Video Games' elevated her to iconic status.

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Lana Del Rey (real name Elizabeth Woolridge Grant) is an American singer-songwriter. She has been actively performing and producing music since 2005; however, her 2011 release 'Video Games' elevated her to iconic status.

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Del Rey photographed in 2025 at Paris Fashion Week. (via https://www.vogue.com/article/lana-del-rey-jeremy-dufrene-valentino-paris-fashion-week)

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Lizzy Grant, photographed at 24 years old by Edward Smith in 2009 for Blurt Magazine.

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Lizzy Grant, photographed at 24 years old by Edward Smith in 2009 for Blurt Magazine.

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(found at https://lanadelrey.fandom.com/wiki/Blurt_(magazine)

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She released her debut studio album 'Lana Del Ray A.K.A Lizzy Grant' under the stage name 'Lana Del Ray' in 2010.

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She released her debut studio album 'Lana Del Ray A.K.A Lizzy Grant' under the stage name 'Lana Del Ray' in 2010.

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Her debut studio album was released by 5 Points Records on January 4, in 2010. The album was available via Amazon MP3 and the iTunes Store, before being removed shortly after release due to an issue with funding.

(Found at: https://genius.com/Genius-users-lana-del-rey-discography-annotated )

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Performing inconspicuously as Lizzy Grant in a bar in New York City (exact date unknown).

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Performing inconspicuously as Lizzy Grant in a bar in New York City (exact date unknown).

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Lana Del Rey singing hundred dollar bill before she was famous @ a bar!

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Del Rey's first known LP, 'Sirens', was released under the stage name 'May Jailer'.

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Del Rey's first known LP, 'Sirens', was released under the stage name 'May Jailer'.

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Sirens was her first Long Play, released before her debut album, that she recorded as Lizzy Grant, Lana Del Ray A.K.A Lizzy Grant.

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Hear Lana Del Rey’s Debut LP As May Jailer

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It’s amazing that stuff like this can slip through the cracks even now, but word around the internet campfire this morning is that some unspecified amount of time ago, Lana Del Rey recorded an album called Sirens under the name May Jailer. This would predate the soon-to-be-reissued debut album Lana Del Rey A.K.A. Lizzy Grant, […]

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The first known recorded performance of her song ‘Yayo’, in 2008.

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The first known recorded performance of her song ‘Yayo’, in 2008.

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Yayo (Live @ The Living Room, NYC 12/16/2008)

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Before viral fame in 2011, Lana performed under her abbreviated birth name as Lizzy Grant, she predominantly sang in jazz clubs in New York.

During this period her physical appearance was much more casual and understated- or 'girl next door'.

(Found at: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5xayVRtS5P/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw== )

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@80slollita on Instagram: "Lana Del Rey, then known as Lizzy Grant modeled in various photoshoots for Ford Models from 2003 to 2005."

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80slollita on April 14, 2024: "Lana Del Rey, then known as Lizzy Grant modeled in various photoshoots for Ford Models from 2003 to 2005.". 

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @80slollita

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In 2011, Lana relaunches herself with a new look in her homemade music video for 'Video Games'.

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In 2011, Lana relaunches herself with a new look in her homemade music video for 'Video Games'.

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Arguably one of the most culturally significant moments in pop culture of the 2010s.

The video comprises of found footage of celebrities, teenage boys skateboarding around L.A’s palm tree lined streets, the sign for iconic Los Angeles hotel, The Chateau Marmont, and personal footage.

It marked the birth of the ‘sad girl’ tumblr aesthetic whilst redefining g popular music and birthing a trend for nostalgia and retrospection, especially within American pop culture.

The song and its videos impact and legacy is undeniable.

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Lana's appearance was a hot topic at the time, with her artistic talent initially being overshadowed and focus being on her alleged cosmetic procedures.

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Lana's appearance was a hot topic at the time, with her artistic talent initially being overshadowed and focus being on her alleged cosmetic procedures.

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Embodying the look of a 50's hollywood starlet who has stumbled into a trailer park, Lana's lips quickly and unfortunately became a point of public obsession.

In 2012, T magazine distastefully described ‘the subject of Del Rey’s mouth’ as ‘an irresistible one’.

(found in the article below:

https://www.thecut.com/2012/02/lana-del-rey-lips-t-magazine-fashion.html)

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Naturally, without Lizzy, there would be no Lana.

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Naturally, without Lizzy, there would be no Lana.

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Despite Lana's early work as Lizzy Grant being initially overlooked at the time, this period of her career as a virtually unknown Jazz singer laid the early foundation for the later construction of ‘Lana Del Rey’ and her consequential star image.

In 2012 she discussed re-releasing her pulled album Lana Del Ray A.K.A Lizzy Grant.

(found at: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/latest-news/lana-del-rey-to-re-release-her-lizzy-grant-album-79659

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Before Elizabeth Grant created her now infamous Lana Del Rey stage name she was simply known as Lizzy Grant, and in 2010 Lizzy Grant released her debut album. Now with Born To Die due out next Monday (30 January) the 'Video Games' singer has revealed she bought back the rights to her original debut Lana Del Ray A.K.A. Lizzy Grant and will be re-releasing it, perhaps as early as this summer.

Speaking to the BBC she said: "People act like it's so shrouded in mystery, the 'forgotten terrible album'.But if you look on YouTube, all 13 tracks are available with millions of views, so it's not like no-one's heard them. We were all proud of it. It's pretty good."

Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday

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Lana Del Rey to re-release her Lizzy Grant album

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Originally released in 2010 when the singer was still known as Lizzy Grant, Lana Del Rey's 2010 debut is set to be re-issued.

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Lizzy Grant's discography as Del Rey's 'lost era'.

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Lizzy Grant's discography as Del Rey's 'lost era'.

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This i-d article details the music made during her time performing and recording under the name Lizzy Grant that never made it to release.

Some fans and critics now refer to this period of her career as her 'lost era'.

(Found at: https://i-d.co/article/the-greatest-lana-del-rey-songs-that-never-made-an-official-album/)

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the greatest lana del rey songs that never made an (official) album

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Before Lana Del Rey, there was May Jailer, Lizzy Grant, and a whole bunch of excellent tunes.

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Before relaunching herself as Lana Del Rey, Lizzy Grant went through a period of reinvention, her stage name was influenced by American actress Lana Turner and the Ford 'Del Rey' car. Del Rey's 'star image' is officially born.

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Before relaunching herself as Lana Del Rey, Lizzy Grant went through a period of reinvention, her stage name was influenced by American actress Lana Turner and the Ford 'Del Rey' car. Del Rey's 'star image' is officially born.

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Found at: (https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-band-name-lana-del-rey/)

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American legendary actress Lana Turner photographed for Screenland, April 1944.

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American legendary actress Lana Turner photographed for Screenland, April 1944.

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(found at: https://archive.org/stream/screenland4748unse#page/n1003/)

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The car that inspired Lana Del Rey's stage name.

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The car that inspired Lana Del Rey's stage name.

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(found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hugo90/4452457068)

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Criticisms of Del Rey's appearance and remarks on plastic surgery are prevalent in much of the early discourse surrounding her. 

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Criticisms of Del Rey's appearance and remarks on plastic surgery are prevalent in much of the early discourse surrounding her. 

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Like the majority of female stars or women in the public eye, Del Rey has faced comments on her appearance, which were especially rife at the time of her debut. In this article published in January 2012, the journalist writes ‘Let’s ignore the talent, or lack thereof, of Lana Del Rey for a minute...She used to perform under her real name, Lizzy Grant. She looked plain’.

In the next paragraph, they claim: ‘She may or may not have had significant plastic surgery’.

(Quote from: https://pittnews.com/article/15229/archives/lana-del-rey-overly-ridiculed-for-persona-reimagination/)

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Lana Del Rey overly ridiculed for persona reimagination - The Pitt News

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Let’s ignore the talent, or lack thereof, of Lana Del Rey for a minute. To summarize a long… Let’s ignore the talent, or lack thereof, of Lana Del Rey for a minute. To summarize a long and complicated history of this buzzy singer: She used to perform under her real name, Lizzy Grant. She looked…

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At the beginning of 2012, her debut album 'Born to Die' was released.

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At the beginning of 2012, her debut album 'Born to Die' was released.

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Del Rey's debut 13 track album was released on January 27th, 2012, along with a reissue in November of the same year, The Paradise Edition, which included eight new tracks.

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Alongside critiques of her appearance, questions around authenticity shroud Lana Del Rey after her debut in 2011.

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Alongside critiques of her appearance, questions around authenticity shroud Lana Del Rey after her debut in 2011.

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Questions about Del Rey's authenticity have been a running theme throughout her career.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/lana-del-rey-music-buzz-2011-she-real-162024107.html

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Lana Del Rey, music buzz of 2011 -- but is she ‘real’?

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Honeyed vocals, a cinematic pout and a haunting, David Lynch-inspired video clip posted on YouTube was all it took to propel Lana Del Rey to global stardom, hailed as the musical revelation of 2011.

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After the release of 'Video Games' in 2011, Lana Del Rey implicitly began an aesthetic trend for sadness and nostalgia, ushering in a new cultural zeitgeist that would heavily shape pop culture in the 2010s.

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After the release of 'Video Games' in 2011, Lana Del Rey implicitly began an aesthetic trend for sadness and nostalgia, ushering in a new cultural zeitgeist that would heavily shape pop culture in the 2010s.

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With the birth of Lana Del Rey came the birth of the ‘tumblr sad girl’, this in turn contributed to the construction of her star image.

The ‘tumblr sad girl’ era can be defined as one in which female sadness, fragility and vulnerability were made to look beautiful and eroticised on the internet, specifically on the then-popular social media app Tumblr.

This defining cultural archetype of the 2010s can be characterised by the act of digital selfhood and personal confessionalism online, alongside feminine performativity combined with the romanticising of vulnerability and sadness.

https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/36831/1/the-arc-of-lana-del-reys-art-and-her-nostalgia-obsession?

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Lana Del Rey's relationship with nostalgia runs deep. In 2011, the artist formerly known as Lizzy Grant gave us "Video Games," a song rich in sweeping instrumentals that contrasted her delicate voice. Plus, the track was accompanied by a video that worked to establish her as a personification of the past: with winged liner and bouffant hair, she was heralded as the second coming of Nancy Sinatra. And, because nostalgia was still a novelty at the time, LDR's approach to it still seemed fresh. Her music may have evoked Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, but her video featured fuzzy imagery of Paz De La Huerta (then starring on Boardwalk Empire) being hounded by the paparazzi. If anything, "Video Games" could be construed as a type of commentary: through the lens and sound of the past, even harassment at the hands of media could seem dreamy - even romantic.

Which we soon learned was not the case. After a lacklustre appearance on SNL in January 2012, the Del Rey backlash began and eclipsed any real conversations about the release of Born To Die, her debut LP, released shortly after. But thankfully, that didn't stop her. This week, Del Rey will drop Lust For Life, her fourth full-length album that features collaborations with The Weeknd and Stevie Nicks, which continues to build on her melancholic interpretation of the past.

But while sixties girl groups and Brenda Lee ballads define a good part of LDR's sound (when "Summertime Sadness" isn't being remixed), it's her approach to visuals that complete her affinity for a narrative defined by nostalgia. Specifically, her approach to album covers - photographed by her sister, Chuck Grant - tell their own story, separate from the one Lana delivers in videos and in interviews.

Born To Die was a blank slate. With Del Rey clad in a white button-up, she stared down the camera and left enough space for us to project our assumptions, which made the backlash easier. Had she buried herself in vintage clothes, she would've established herself as a niche artist, one on-par with The Pipettes or The Like, whose music reflected the decade they represented with what they wore. But instead, her aesthetic morphed her into the poster girl for hipster culture gone rogue by embodying what seemed like a give-and-take approach to nostalgia. She wasn't vintage "enough" - she was too 2012; too flighty, too non-committal. And that was according to critics who commented on her "sexy" image while dismissing her SNL performance as proof of how ready for the big time she wasn't. Pitchfork rated the album a 5.5 and claimed it was "awkward and out of date."

So the singer responded accordingly.

Which is what made her sophomore release, Ultraviolence, so interesting. Released in 2014, the album reaffirmed Del Rey's industry permanence (between 2012 and 2014 she released an EP, a short film, and sang the theme to The Great Gatsby) and also her restraint. Similar to Born To Die, Ultraviolence's lyrics served to reflect the musical world she created and not the world we all lived in. But its album art seemed like an act of self-preservation. On the cover she stands blocked by the door of an old car while wearing a white t-shirt. But unlike the cover of her debut, there's a barrier - the car - to keep us at arm's length. Born To Die and its backlash had made her vulnerable, and she'd learned her lesson.

But there was still a nostalgic element. The black-and-white cover married the worlds of the past and present, but not vividly. Which made sense: In 2014, the masses were bidding adieu to the technicolour found in series like Mad Men and nostalgia was nestled less in romanticising eras in which anyone not white, male, and hetero actively suffered. Instead, it became entrenched in #TBT tributes to childhood, as the nostalgia we shared was defined by our own selective memories. Enter: Honeymoon.

Unlike Ultraviolence (rock-centric, B&W, and much more narratively distant), Honeymoon revived the warmth of Del Rey's "Video Games" aesthetic. Lounging in a convertible in the California sunshine, the cover sees LDR embody the rise of America: Romanticised. And that year, collections from Tom Ford to Ralph Lauren showcased the good 'ol days of old school (white and appropriative) Americana, bathing wearers in denim, stripes, and western wear. But that selective nature of America-as-an-aesthetic also ran parallel to the selectiveness Del Rey opted for on her third album cover. Building on Ultraviolence 's self-preservation by hiding behind a car (again), she adds even more blocks by covering her face with a hat and sunglasses.

"Far from the hidden, blocked versions she presented of herself on covers prior, Lana Del Rey's Lust for Life art tells a tale unto itself"

And to that end, Del Rey's then-brand of nostalgia reflected our own selectivity when thinking about the past. On Ultraviolence we get to see an old car, the bright sun, and half a person - but we don't get to see her face.

Which is even more interesting when you think about the way Honeymoon was received. Heralded by listeners, Ultraviolence (an album on which she is physically most hidden) was the critical antithesis of Born To Die (the album on which she is the most physically vulnerable). So maybe nostalgia-steeped imagery is only okay in small doses.

Or when the subject reclaims it for herself.

Lust For Life is already serving as a type of reclamation. Far from the hidden, blocked versions she presented of herself on covers prior, Lana Del Rey's album art tells a tale unto itself. She's smiling, she's standing proudly in front of us. Channeling the richness of covers by Nancy Sinatra and Dolly Parton, she unapologetically offers us an escape - similar to the escape she and The Weeknd gave us in "Lust For Life," the video performed atop the Hollywood sign.

Because a lot has changed since 2012. Lana Del Rey has changed. Her music has changed, as has our approach to it. LDR's 2011 debut in itself seems nostalgic; a reminder of an era in which we cared way too much about the late-night TV debut of a singer. But our relationship to nostalgia has changed, too. It is now an escape, an invitation, and a reclamation, as artists like Lana use their sounds and imagery to grant us a reprieve from the realities of the world we're currently living in.

And from the cover of Lust For Life, it seems like Lana Del Rey knows it. And finally, unapologetically herself and nearly a decade spent debated, talked about, and finally embraced, we see the image of a woman who's smiling because we're finally ready to stop dissecting her art and to lose ourselves in it.

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The arc of Lana Del Rey's art and her nostalgia obsession

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As her fifth studio album drops, we trace her stratospheric decade through the lens of her rich, unapologetic cover art

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Paul McDonald on the star image, which Lana Del Rey truly embodies.

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Paul McDonald on the star image, which Lana Del Rey truly embodies.

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‘Stars are mediated identities, textual constructions...
...for audiences do not get the real person but rather a collection of images, words and sounds which are taken to stand for the person.’ Paul McDonald (2000), The Star System.

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Del Rey has a deeply rich star persona and image.

She inhibits Eurocentric beauty standards on the surface, with a visible influence by white female stars from the 50s and 60s such as Priscilla Presley and Marilyn Monroe. At the beginning of her career, she branded herself as a 'Gangster Nancy Sinatra'. (https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/music/has-lana-del-rey-earned-her-gangster-nancy-sinatra-reputation-1.357214)

Over her fourteen year career performing and releasing as Lana Del Rey, she has combined pastiche and myth-making to portray herself to her audience and create a layered persona.

Her star persona integrates and weaves together nostalgia, cultural commentary, and classic Americana. Del Rey has always drawn from a broad ouvre of references including other musicians, writers and American iconography and mythology, in order to establish and develop her own image and persona.

(Photo found at: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/woman-of-the-year-lana-del-rey)

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From the GQ archive: "Video Games" announced her arrival as a fully formed pop star, but it's the No.1 album, Ivor Novello award and the GQ award that confirm the enigmatic-pneumatic bombshell is here to stay

In an expansive, gilded suite in the famous Hôtel de Paris, Monte-Carlo, Lana Del Rey, dressed in a simple grey hoodie, skinny dark-blue jeans and a crisp white T-shirt, sits down on the floor next to a perfectly vacant couch, lights a cigarette as slim as a Mikado stick and explains how pretty she thinks this part of the world is. "It's just the most beautiful place," she enthuses, breathlessly. "I knew it from the moment I saw it." Funny, I say, as Monaco's reputation for being a tax haven for the world's filthy rich brings with it a certain, well, contention. "Yes," smiles Del Rey, sharply. "But some people don't make any money."

I'm not quite sure what to make of this comment. Does she mean those of us who don't make enough cash to become tax refugees in this "exclusif" sunny state should either put up or shut up - or something else? For a split second, I'm thrown. I'm told Del Rey is prone to doing this - cutting unashamedly to the quick, speaking her mind no matter the consequences, not biting her tongue, laying it on the line. Some, like this writer, find it refreshing, others a little too confrontational. This isn't her intention at all; she's as sweet as a peach deep down.

Reserved, even. If not a little weird. I don't mean "kooky" weird.

Kooky is the wrong word as that makes her sound like the sort of girl who collects Hello Kitty lunchboxes, wears American Apparel body stockings and draws pictures of unicorns all day long - or someone like Lena Dunham from HBO's Girls. No, Del Rey is weird weird. Odd. Eccentric. Remarkable. A proper pop star. Not like you or me.

She's also exceptionally beautiful: the cascading, auburn hair, those blown-out lips, the thick kohl-dipped lashes. Del Rey is sexy but with a dreamy apartness, like an old-fashioned movie star whose name you can't quite remember from a film whose title you can't quite place. Forget the Day-Glo cartoonish eroticism of Nicki Minaj, the geisha-cyber-punkiness of Lady Gaga and Rihanna's rude-girl swaggering - Del Rey is a very different sort of modern pop star. Her sex appeal is more refined. Grainier. Vintage-looking. Cloaked in a veneer of prissiness. She's beauty, Instagrammed. Part of Del Rey's charm is how such a projected innocence jars against lyrics that drip with a desire to be corrupted: "I heard you like the bad girls/Honey, is that true?" she sings. For a man, that sort of tease is magnetic.

As Del Rey puffs away cross-legged on the expensive hotel carpet, speaking her mind, she seems more content than maybe she has been for some time. It's little wonder she's feeling buoyant considering the news: last night in London she won an Ivor Novello award for her single "Video Games" - an honour artists crave, as it's vindication of their songwriting ability, awarded by their peers - and now she's been crowned GQ's Woman Of The Year. She's genuinely delighted: "Thank you. Just to have someone acknowledge the material I write is incredibly touching. It's an affirmation of sorts. I just didn't think that this was going to happen. Not any of it."

Fifteen months ago, the world fell in love with Lana Del Rey, or more accurately, the world fell in love with "Video Games"; a record that is about the minutiae of daily life resonating to mean something far greater, far darker. Throughout the song, Del Rey sings with a sort of resigned, melancholic subservience - "I'm in his favourite sundress/Watching me get undressed/ Take that body downtown" - her sophisticated lyrical ennui wafting in a sombre key against the sound of doomsodden harps and soaring strings. Although Del Rey insists it's about being in love and she's singing about being in the throes of a loving relationship, that's not how it comes across. Not at all. The whole record sounds elegiac - sort of a mourning song for a certain type of perceived American dream; the perfect fit for Del Rey's aesthetic.

Del Rey herself made it on her MacBook; composed of clips she found on the internet - vintage-looking Super 8 footage of skaters, pink roses bursting open proactively, Betty Boo cartoons, dappled sunlight over an LA canyon, the Hollywood sign, TMZ video footage of Paz de la Huerta stumbling away from the Chateau Marmont after the Golden Globes, visibly worse for wear. Occasionally Del Rey herself pops up, out of focus with beehive hair and beestung lips looking like a hipster Jackie O. Or an Abercrombie & Fitch model. If you watch the video with the sound off, as I've done, you'd think it a song about the trappings and fragility of fame, a yearning for a more golden, more dignified age of celebrity - knowing Del Rey (someone more aware of her image than perhaps any other pop star working today) such a tone is certainly no accident. "It took me two hours to write," she explains of the track, to be found on her album Born To Die, released in January this year. "It was in the middle of a long writing process where I had moved to London. I was in the Sony Writing Room" - a creative sanctuary provided by the label that acts as a sort of boot camp for wannabe hit makers - "and Justin would write the chords and I would write the words and the melody. We'd written five songs and we took a rest. Then I started to write things that I especially loved, that were just perfectly tailored to me - 'Video Games' was one of them. No one thought much of it at the time; it was just pretty simple with one piano line. But I liked it right away. I knew. I have an instinct about these things. With songs or with people..."

Throughout last summer, as the song spread online and across the globe, so did the critical acclaim for the New Queen Of Sadcore. But with the praise for the song came a backlash against the singer - all before Del Rey had even officially released a single note of music. People were suspicious. It was as if the song was too accomplished, Del Rey too beautiful. Who was this enigmatic artist, the self-coined "gangster Nancy Sinatra"? Some were saying that Lana Del Rey, far from being a fresh talent, was in fact a reincarnation of a folk singer (with a previously released, unsuccessful album) called Lizzy Grant - cosmetically enhanced (those lips were just too pillowy by far, apparently), label-made, ambitious and, rather than a new discovery, she was a bona fide fraud who sang about living in a trailer when really her dad was a millionaire real-estate developer buttressing her career. The online attacks were vicious and unrelenting; the internet trolls feasting on all the digital hearsay. Her American audience was particularly savage. And it hurt. "People were just so mean to me," she admits.

The truth of Del Rey's story is this: born Elizabeth Grant in New York City 26 years ago, she was raised upstate in Lake Placid. Aged 14, she was shipped by her parents to Kent School, a strict boarding house in Connecticut. She left, or, rumour has it, she was kicked out for bad behaviour, moving back to NYC aged 18. She enrolled in Fordham University to study metaphysics, all the while playing in clubs and bars, just her, her guitar and a microphone. Aged 20, two years later, Elizabeth Grant was offered her first recording contract - for a rumoured $10,000 - and moved to New Jersey to live in a trailer park.

This was 2006, and the record label was a small independent called 5 Points Records. Under the guidance of a producer called David Kahne - who apparently signed her on the strength of hearing only one demo - two years later in October 2008, Grant finally released her first three-track EP entitled Kill Kill. A full-length album would follow in January 2010 entitled Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant. Somewhat mysteriously - and this is the bit the sceptics really enjoy getting their teeth into - this first album was only available on iTunes for a matter of months, until it was suddenly withdrawn, with Grant buying back the rights from her label. The artist called Lizzy Grant then vanished. In June 2011, someone called Lana Del Rey - this time with an "e" - released her "debut" single "Video Games" and signed to Stranger Records. A few months later, she signed a joint deal with majors Interscope and Polydor.

You can see why all those nitpicking guardians of pop culture's "authenticity" got so upset - for some it looks like a classic case of a pretty, yet so-far-unsuccessful pop star (Lizzy Grant) being moulded and reshaped (physically via the surgeon's knife as well as sonically) into a more appealing, more exotic package (Lana Del Rey) by some Machiavellian record company suit and a bunch of blowhard lawyers with dollar signs for eyes. What happened couldn't be further from the truth. If anyone here is the Svengali behind the phenomenon of Lana Del Rey, it's Lana Del Rey. Or rather Elizabeth Grant. "People act like I've been trying to rewrite history," she explains when I ask her why she bought back the rights to her first album and took it off iTunes. "I made that first record in 2008, alongside the EP, but my label at the time waited three years to release it. They thought maybe someone bigger would buy it, but they didn't, so in the end they just released it themselves. By that time, three years had passed; I'd moved on. All I wanted to do was own the masters myself and the easiest way of doing that was to buy the rights back. That album is still online for anyone to hear; it's not this terrible lost album I hate and never want to claim ownership of. I'm actually pretty proud of that earlier stuff."

So why, and how, between 2006 and 2011, did Lizzy Grant become Lana Del Rey? Rapper Princess Superstar, who became friends with Del Rey in New York as she was going through this metamorphosis, helping the young singer find a new vision and a new voice, has this to say: "I've never understood this controversy about whether [Del Rey] is real or fake. All artists have a persona. She's not put together by some company. These are her songs, her melodies, her singing - she's always had this Sixties aesthetic." Del Rey's one-time mentor is spot on. Since when has it been "inauthentic" to reinvent oneself if you're a pop star? Isn't that what the being

a pop star is all about? Isn't it this precise aspect of them that keeps us absorbed? Who wants David Robert Jones when you can have Ziggy Stardust? Or Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta instead of Lady Gaga? Or Lizzy Grant. "It was nine years ago." Some of the answers as to tracking the emergence and the evolution of Lana Del Rey can be found in knowing that when she was young, very young, somewhere between the ages of 13 and 18, Del Rey began drinking. Heavily. Even before she had her current persona, Lizzy Grant was seemingly trying to escape from something, or more precisely someone - herself. "It's been nine years since my last drink," she explains, a subject she's never gone on record about so candidly before. "That's really why I got sent to boarding school aged 14 - to get sober." Did it work? "I was a big drinker at the time. I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was so f***ing cool. A great deal of what I wrote on Born To Die is about these wilderness years. A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I'm writing about New York. And when I write about the thing that I've lost I feel like I'm writing about alcohol because that was the first love of my life. Sure, there have been people, but it's really alcohol."

I ask Del Rey how she got over her alcohol addiction: "My parents were worried, I was worried. I knew it was a problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else. I was like, I'm fed. I am totally fed. Like, at first it's fine and you think you have a dark side - it's exciting - and then you realise the dark side wins every time if you decide to indulge in it. It's also a completely different way of living when you know that, it's like being a different species of person. It was horrific. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me." Drugs too became part of her life: "It was everything in the end."

Heroin? "No. But other things just to feel different." In the end, Del Ray ended up leaving school and being sent to rehab. "I moved back to New York and worked at an outreach programme for drug and alcohol addicts in Brooklyn." Such work is something she still does to this day: "It's the only thing that's really important to me. My music is a luxury. Just like being here in Monaco is a luxury."

It was while attending rehab in Brooklyn, aged 18, that Del Rey's musical journey began in earnest. Although it was her uncle who first taught her to play guitar, she looked to other people, strangers, for another kind of inspiration.

She began exploring the city. Alone. Fearlessly. "It's interesting for me to be where people are not," she explains. "When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn't believe in." So she did what any curious 18-year-old recovering alcoholic schoolgirl would do - she started wandering down dark alleys looking for trouble. "I was a secret thrill-seeker. I was putting my feelers out all over the city, in different places with different people, trying to see what felt right."

Del Rey calls her hobby "stranger searching". She adds: "It's still my passion. I would just walk out of my front door in Brooklyn or Manhattan with an intention to meet somebody who has the same energy. You just put it out there. I would always run into somebody and see them and say, 'Oh excuse me, your money is hanging out of your pocket.'"

And what? "We'd ride motorbikes or go somewhere. It's amazing what happens when you put your interests out into the universe and make it known what you want - you just have to know what it is. For me, I didn't want anything except to feel new every day. I wanted to try different things. I felt alive. But you have to put limits on. You can't go too far with it."

This all sounds a little dangerous to GQ. Jumping on bikes with total strangers.

Picking up weird guys on the street just for kicks.

Did she have any bad experiences? "No. Never. I'm an independent operator. It's just f***ing different. I never wanted to lead a normal life." Did she keep in contact with any of the randoms she encountered? "Some of them."

I ask Del Rey whether she believes in soulmates: "I do. But I think there's more than one for everybody. I could meet one person, but like other people too. I've seen it happen before: people who have their true loves, with many great loves around them." She stops, suddenly, blushing. " GQ's Woman Of The Year is a polygamous thrill-seeker!"

Until recently Del Rey's one true love, other than alcohol, was America, in particular her home city of New York.

Part of the fallout from all the criticism she received at the beginning of this year - the greatest vitriol reserved for her performance on Saturday Night Live in which Del Rey's pitch was, admittedly, a little flat in places - is her despondency at how certain parts of her country attacked her so savagely. The mauling truly blind sided the singer, the wounds yet to heal: "It didn't affect my writing, but it affected my happiness. I became depressed. Because I love New York so much. I was born there; it was my city. I was going to die there." Even now, almost a year on, performing live is one of the hardest things for Del Rey - difficult to avoid when you're a pop star. When she saw the hologram of Tupac Shakur performing at Coachella festival this year, she said to her manager, "Right there is the future of my live tours." She was only half joking.

To compound her insecurities, not only were critics saying she hadn't written her own songs, Del Rey was sued for the video she put together for "Video Games", having failed to obtain any copyright permission. Does she feel betrayed by America? "No, just like the love of my life isn't with me any more. The Hollywood community has been so good to me and they didn't have to be, but not New York.

As a person who becomes really attached to places for their energy and their beauty, for me New York was a match. To lose it, it really felt like my life was over. It's a totally different life experience when you have to learn to love the things that don't love you back. It's the last great life experience. Not that many people have to live like this - live without their icons or their idols or their country. I know people won't be listening to my music next year, but I still will have lost those places I cared about so dearly."

Such was the criticism, and Del Rey's heartbreak, that, from the sounds of it, either this year or last year, she came close to pressing the self-destruct button once again: "Yes. It hasn't been activated in some time.

In the last two years I do feel more upset, which kind of triggers those feelings, making me feel as if not everything is in my control. The bigger things get, the bigger this whole thing gets, the easier it is for things like that to start happening again. When I feel like I'm being overwhelmed it's hard to remain a guiding force. That's one reason to keep things small, play small venues, that sort of thing, which is what I always wanted to do."

The trouble is, Lizzy Grant may have had a chance of keeping things small, but Lana Del Rey hasn't a hope. B orn To Die went to No.1 in 14 countries this year.

Keeping this thing small, keeping incognito while roaming the streets, trying not to let the critics get to her, learning to live with lost loves - none of it will be easy for Lana Del Rey. For someone who strives so hard to be free, containment, even amid Monaco's moneyed splendour, is perhaps harder than it appears. The turmoil for this fantastically original pop star - and the great appeal of Del Rey for her audience - is that all this friction bubbles to the surface, through her voice. In some ways, the singer couldn't be more like this beautiful, damned town: a gilded place with a dark heart; real yet fake; a paradise from the outside, a prison from within. It's a true spectacle. After all, what's more beguiling than a very bad girl, desperately trying to be good?
Originally published in the October 2012 issue of British GQ.

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Watch Lana Del Rey's GQ Woman Of The Year acceptance speech and see her naked British GQ cover

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Within this review of Born To Die, published by The Guardian in 2012, the writer raises questions they have about Lana's star persona or 'character' vs the reality of who she is.

The reviewer suggests that Del Rey’s comfortable background and supportive father (mentioned in the review) doesn't align with the narrative she describes on the album. For example, in Radio, she sings ‘no one even knows how hard life was’.

The article claims, ‘There’s always the chance that she’s playing a character’, demonstrating the beginning of inauthenticity accusations that Lana Del Rey has faced her whole career, and has frequently claimed are baseless.

However, despite the questions about authenticity, the reviewer awards the album four out of five stars, and acknowledges its strong musical production and melodies, however, is less enthusiastic about her lyricism.

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The ‘Tumblr’ aesthetic of the time was perfectly visualised and captured in her homemade music video for her song 'Carmen'.

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The ‘Tumblr’ aesthetic of the time was perfectly visualised and captured in her homemade music video for her song 'Carmen'.

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Carmen was released on Born To Die in 2012.

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Lana's disastrous Saturday Night Live performance.

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Lana's disastrous Saturday Night Live performance.

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Lana Del Rey performed her songs Video Games and Blue Jeans on Saturday Night Live on January 14, 2012, to promote her upcoming album Born to Die.

The performance was extremely badly recieved, with critics and audiences confused by her lacklustre stage presence and drowsy, flat voice. (https://www.theringer.com/2019/08/29/music/lana-del-rey-born-to-die-video-games-snl-norman-rockwell-brian-williams-hipster-runoff)

(performance available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I62I3r2f-8&list=RD2I62I3r2f-8&start_radio=1)

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Lana Del Rey sketch on Saturday Night Live.

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Lana Del Rey sketch on Saturday Night Live.

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The performance had repercussions for her career and perceived image at the time, with Saturday Night Live airing a comedy sketch a few weeks later featuring Kristen Wiig appearing as Lana, mocking both her intellect and her physical appearance.

Wiig as Del Rey also notably joked that ‘Based on the public’s response, I must have instead clubbed a baby seal while singing the Taliban national anthem.’ (regarding Del Rey’s SNL performance).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTR-dS4lptc

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Lana Del Rey is compared to a young Priscilla Presley.

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Lana Del Rey is compared to a young Priscilla Presley.

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Del Rey's star image thrives on subversion, individualism and contradictions.

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Del Rey's star image thrives on subversion, individualism and contradictions.

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In Del Rey's music video for National Anthem (2012) she recreates John F Kennedy's assassination and casts rapper A$AP Rocky, a black man, as JFK. By deliberately reimagining one of America’s most mythologised moments in this way, and reworking such a familiar symbol of American patriotism and tragedy, she challenges conventional depictions of US history, whilst politicising nostalgia, asserting her individuality from the very early days of her career.

In the video she juxtaposes traditional old Hollywood aesthetics with the 'modern', or 'provocative' casting choice of JFK, also reflecting her general tendency to both romanticise and critique beliefs about America.

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Del Rey's star image as a ‘mediated identity’ and ‘textual construction’.

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Del Rey's star image as a ‘mediated identity’ and ‘textual construction’.

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Del Rey’s star image illustrates the idea that stars are mediated identities rather than real people. She has created a distinct character who acts as separate from Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, her real self. Her persona of ‘Lana Del Rey’ has been carefully constructed over a number of years through her use of visuals, songwriting, and social media presence, amongst other means through which her audience can both access and engage with her. However, her audience doesn't directly engage with the ‘authentic’ person but with a creation that symbolises her. In such a way, her star image therefore exists as a textual construction.

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The Telegraph states: new album Born to Die is 'a beautiful thing'.

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The Telegraph states: new album Born to Die is 'a beautiful thing'.

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As the controversial Lana Del Rey prepares to release a new album of voluptuous and bittersweet pop, she reveals what it's like to be suddenly both fêted and vilified.

Lana Del Rey is the girl of the moment. On a freezing New York afternoon, wind-chill factor -8C, she breezes into the lobby of an exclusive members' club with the untouchable aura of someone transported within their own micro-climate. She looks immaculate, as indeed she has always looked since the world first sat up and took notice - perfectly turned out in tight blue slacks, green shirt and a suede jacket, like a beatnik princess. Long auburn hair falls in perfect lines around her face, deep brown eyes casting a frank, steady gaze beneath long, false lashes.

In the flesh she still has a girlish slightness of frame, but in front of cameras she is capable of shifting swiftly from a kind of coltish innocence to vampish knowingness. It's a quality that is hard to pin down but is present in the videos, songs and photo shoots that have suddenly and dramatically elevated her from the obscure margins of the internet to the centre of the pop zeitgeist, a kind of doubleness, a sense of duality and merging contradictions. She is a person into whom you can read a lot.

Which is what the world has been doing. In May 2010, the unsigned Del Rey posted a home-made video on YouTube of a deceptively simple song called Video Games, in which she sang in a low, sultry voice about a remembered moment of idle and possibly idyllic love to an achingly sad melody, set to found footage of old Hollywood and sun-bleached shots of Del Rey. It's a clip that has a strange, otherworldly power, emphasised, perhaps, by the absence of beats, the quiet poise of its artful construction, allied to intense yet understated emotion.

By the end of the year, it had been viewed 20 million times, become a top 10 hit single on British indie label, Stranger Music, earned her a big deal with Universal Music, put her on the covers of magazines and at the top of ones to watch polls, and helped make Del Rey the most talked about new star of the year, hailed, in her own pithy phrase, as the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra". Yet a lot of what was being said wasn't particularly nice. She was accused online of being a fake, created by backroom Svengalis in some kind of nefarious pop conspiracy, a Botoxed, manufactured, spoiled, super-rich airhead being sold to a gullible world as an indie pin-up. Insults flew fast and furious, as commenters called her authenticity to account. It was as if Del Rey was too good to be true.

"Its funny," says Del Rey, although she's not laughing. "I don't really have any gimmicks. I don't actually do anything that's strange. I don't even wear weird things. I have taken taking my music to labels for years, and everyone just thought it was creepy. They thought the images with the music were weird and verging on psychotic. And then, one day, its like people decided it wasn't actually too strange, it was actually too perfect. The fact that it could even be considered pop is a revelation to me. You know what changed? It got played on the radio."

Behind a poised, deadpan expression, Del Rey shifts subtly between bruised defiance and vulnerable anxiety. These are qualities you can hear in her music. But the surprise is that, beneath the artfully composed image she has presented to the world, her sensitivity is so close to the surface. Because it turns out that there is nothing ironic or conceptual about Del Rey. "I'm 100 per cent sincere," she asserts.

On January 30, Del Rey will release an album, Born To Die, which should establish her as not just a big star, but a real talent. It's a literate, emotional collection of beautifully crafted, pithily memorable songs about good times and bad love, teenage drinking, existential angst, memory, loss and revenge. It has sinuous, clever lyrics set to dreamy soundscapes, lush melodies and trip hop beats. "I think it's beautiful. I think it's gorgeous. This album is my self in song form. So if they sort of sound like everything fits perfectly together, it's because it does. There is nothing altered, nothing compromised, they are perfectly me. For better or worse, it's like a person in song and video form."

At the album's core is a kind of dichotomy - a quality of being sad without being unhappy, that is reflected in the title song. "There is a sense of loss underpinning things. I used to wonder if it was God's plan that I should be alone for so much of my life. But I found peace. I found happiness within people and the world. So there is a sad tone, but also real joy. It seemed like a mix of two beautiful worlds coming together."

So does she really think we are born to die?

"No, I think we're born to live."

Del Rey's given name is Elizabeth Grant. She was born 25 years ago, and raised in the small town of Lake Placid in rural New York State. Her father is a real-estate investor, her mother an advertising account executive and, while they were comfortably middle-class, she snorts that, contrary to internet speculation, "they're not millionaires. There wasn't any money. It was just a life." Despite the setting, it would appear that Del Rey's inner life, at least, was anything but placid. "When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn't believe that we were mortal. For some reason that knowledge sort of overshadowed my experience. I was unhappy for some time. I got into a lot of trouble. I used to drink a lot. That was a hard time in my life."

She often alludes to teenage drinking, and says she hasn't touched a drop in eight years. Pressed on how bad it got, she replies: "Bad enough that I had to stop." When she was 15, she was sent to boarding school in Connecticut, an event that she recalls on the closing track of the album, This Is What Makes Us Girls, reminiscing about her schoolgirl gang, "a freshman generation of degenerate beauty queens", and the moment she found herself on a train platform, waving them goodbye, and "crying 'cos I know I'm never coming back."

At 18, she moved to New York, studied metaphysics at college, and taught herself guitar. "I've always written. It's the only thing I've ever been good at. It's not difficult, like math. I'm not bad at it, like I am with everything else. But it didn't have to be music. I like to sing. I also enjoy editing, splicing films together. And so I've been doing all those things, but my only ambition was to be a great writer." Her subject matter has been her life, particularly a relationship that went sour, and that infuses songs like Off To The Races ("I'm your little harlot, starlet, Queen of Coney Island"), Blue Jeans ("You fit me better than my favourite sweater") and National Anthem ("We're on a quick, sick rampage / wining and dining, drinking and driving / On our drugs and our love and our dreams and our rage / Blurring the lines between real and the fake").

"It's not my fault that love went bad. I met this person I was going to spend the rest of my life with. We were both clean and sober. We lived together and then he started getting into trouble, and he had to leave. There's a lot of facets to my life, they don't all seem like they would come together. It's been a strange ride."

In her years in New York, working "odd jobs" and "helping out in the community, in alcohol and drug awareness programmes" and playing the singer-songwriter open-mic circuit, Lizzy Grant reinvented herself as Lana Del Rey. But there is a sense in which this was not so much the arch self-marketing, suspected by her internet detractors, as the normal, youthful process of self-discovery. "It's not like I'm torn between two personalities. There's no distinction. Not even a little bit. I wanted a name that sounded as beautiful as the music. Just like the only reason I use old footage of Hollywood was because I like the colour and texture, not to give subliminal Americana messages, or hint at the glory of past decades. I don't feel the need to slip into another world or character, because I've inhabited the same world and the same person for a long time. I'm very happy with it. Anyone will tell you that."

Del Rey could have been invented by the internet, and in a way she was. She is a child of these times and this technology. She took an identity that suited her and discovered a way to present her inner world in music and imagery, compiling clips of old images. She released an independent album in 2008 that sold so badly that the record label withdrew it: "There was no money to support it, so they just thought they'd save it for another time." She had been telling her own story, in her own unique way, to an audience of herself and her peers. And then the world spotted her, exalted her, and then, in the accelerated mania of new media, a backlash started before she had even begun.

It gets colder in the room as the interview progresses, as the New York chill penetrates. "I know what people think about me," says Del Rey, pulling her suede jacket around her shoulders. "I don't understand it, I don't see why that's the angle. And I'm a smart person. I mean, like, why that?"

What the gossip-mongers and trolls of the internet haven't seen is the effect all this cyber bullying is having on the person at its centre. Del Rey has made a record that deserves to be heard, but says she doesn't want to tour, doesn't want to leave New York, that she wants "to keep things small. All I wanted to do was make something beautiful, and I think I've done that."

Her nervous appearance on popular US TV show Saturday Night Live last weekend led to more internet abuse. But the thing is, Del Rey is nervous, and with good reason. "I don't want to talk about how it made me feel because I think it's disrespectful to God to go to a dark place with this kind of thing. People just want to see me go off the rails. That's the only reason they're watching. They just want to see what happens." Her critics have questioned her authenticity, but Del Rey seems all too human. I ask if she is afraid of what she has unleashed. "Do you think I am?" she ponders, voice trembling, hand dabbing at her eyes. "Well, you might be right. But I wouldn't tell."

Lana Del Rey's album 'Born To Die' is released on January 30.

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Lana Del Rey interview: new album Born to Die is 'a beautiful thing'

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As the controversial Lana Del Rey prepares to release a new album of voluptuous and bittersweet pop, she reveals what it's like to be suddenly both fêted and vilified.

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Still from the National Anthem music video.

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Portraying herself as both Jackie and Marilyn.

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Portraying herself as both Jackie and Marilyn.

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In the National Anthem video, Del Rey portrays herself as both Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, opening the video by imitating Monroe's infamous performance for JFK, of Happy Birthday Mr President.

While in a broader sense Jackie symbolises grace, composure, and dignity, Marilyn symbolises vulnerability, sensuality, and tragedy. By embodying both, Lana positions herself as complex, and resistant to being reduced to just one female archetype. Her star image is deliberately layered, and rather than aligning herself with one 'type' of woman, (in this case, 'the wife' or 'the other woman') she embodies both, confusing two contrasting cultural ideals of American femininity together.

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Lana Del Rey - Happy Birthday Mr President

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In July 2012, Del Rey was named as the face of H&M's 'LA Noir' collection. As a part of the brand campaign, an advert/ music video was released to promote the collection, in which she performed a cover of Blue Velvet from David Lynch's 1986 film of the same name. Del Rey fronting H&M’s 'LA Noir' collection reflects her star image as consistent with being a highly stylised retro-influenced icon, who connotes nostalgia for an America of the past.

The video takes inspiration from Lynch's recognisable surrealist style, and both the video and overall campaign play into Del Rey's vintage Hollywood aesthetic and soft femininity. Despite her being perceived as a more niche musician than her contemporaries, a mainstream fashion brand such as H&M choosing to use her as the front woman for the collection demonstrated how her nostalgic, 'sad girl' image also had broad commercial appeal. Furthermore, this also in hindsight reflected the 'tumblr' aesthetic of 2012 (as mentioned previously).

(advert available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwCitgDib-g&list=RDBwCitgDib-g&start_radio=1 )

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The singer fronts 'LA noir' collection for the Swedish high street retailer

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I am Lizzy Grant, and I am a singer... ( Lana Del Rey)

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Del Rey has cited David Lynch as one of her significant influences.

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Del Rey has cited David Lynch as one of her significant influences.

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Lynch shares a video of himself reflecting on Video Games

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From the davidlynch community on Reddit: david x lana del rey

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Explore this post and more from the davidlynch community

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Del Rey shares her desire to work with David Lynch.

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Del Rey shares her desire to work with David Lynch.

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Del Rey’s connection to Lynch’s work develops her star image in a sense, as the association between the two positions her as a more cinematic artist and asserts her cultural significance when it comes to interpreting American fantasy and storytelling through her work. Like Lynch, Del Rey's artistry often unravels a mixture of vintage, traditional or idealised America, whilst something emotionally and psychologically dark lurks beneath the surface.

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Lana Del Rey open to David Lynch collaboration: ‘I would love to do anything with him’

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Lana visits Anfield Football Stadium in 2013 and develops a relationship with Liverpool Football Club.

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Lana visits Anfield Football Stadium in 2013 and develops a relationship with Liverpool Football Club.

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In 2013, Lana Del Rey went on a stadium tour at Anfield and attended a football match. In an interview on the Liverpool FC website she states that the relationship between her and the club occured because her manager was a huge Liverpool fan, due to this she now also supports them. This unlikely relationship between an international pop star and a working-class British football club humanises Del Rey away from her persona as an icon of american pop culture. Her public appearance at the ground wearing an LFC scarf accentuates an authentic down-to-earth aspect of herself and juxtaposes the expectation her audience has of her to be 'glamorous' and 'unknowable'. It also adds an unexpected sense of 'quirkiness' around her character, enhancing the multifaceted and enigmatic nature of her star image- something that contributes to her appeal with her audience.

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Anfield today played host to a rather famous celebrity visitor from the United States – pop star Lana Del Rey.

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Later, in 2020, she performs a cover of 'You'll Never Walk Alone’ Liverpool FC's anthem.

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Later, in 2020, she performs a cover of 'You'll Never Walk Alone’ Liverpool FC's anthem.

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Del Rey recorded the cover to feature on a documentary about the club, The End of the Storm released in 2020

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In 2014, her sophomore album 'Ultraviolence' was released.

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In 2014, her sophomore album 'Ultraviolence' was released.

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On June 13th, 2014, Del Rey released her second album, Ultraviolence https://open.spotify.com/album/2e3doCyb0qn2JeKLsh2Xbo

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In this first known interview with Lizzy Grant in 2008, she chats to the interviewer whilst walking around the trailer park that she was living in at the time, as she discusses the making of her album Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant.

She explains that in the trailer park, "you can have your own place...it's a chance at your own life" and also makes many references to things she mentions in her later song lyrics, such as growing blue hydrangeas in her garden (Old Money, 2014).

The representation of Lizzy that this interview portrays, as a nervous and shy twenty-two year old woman, who has not yet fully constructed the ‘Lana Del Rey’ character she would later embody, offers a genuine insight into Grant's early days as an artist.

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Lizzy Grant Index Magazine Interview 2008

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The music video for her single of the same name was released on July 30th, with some controversy and disenchantment with Del Rey following, with one reviewer from The National stating ‘While her breathy anti‑paeans from another era are aesthetically gorgeous, the actual words beneath the effortless sheen often leave you exasperated. … The title track is one such example, declaring that “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” in a depressing parroting of an oft‑repeated lyrical line.’

(Quote from: https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/album-review-lana-del-rey-ultraviolence-1.259201)

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Del Rey's star image as a mournful lover caught up in doomed love.

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Del Rey's star image as a mournful lover caught up in doomed love.

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Del Rey's star image is built on multiple mythic archetypes, blended and layered together to create her distinct persona. In Ultraviolence, she is the tragic bride caught in toxic, seemingly inescapable love, this image she portrayed of herself in the music video played a central role in shaping her star image at the time in 2014, and stuck with her for a long time afterwards.

The song recieved backlash, as she was percieved as romanticising abuse and eroticising submissive femininity. Despite the fact that there isn't an overt depiction of the ‘ultraviolence’ she sings about in the music video, it is emotionally implied, as she passively and aimlessly wanders through a lush garden in a bridal gown and veil, the sadness and submissiveness conveyed on her face infer she is a passive victim at the hands of the man she sings about.

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A music video, shot entirely on an iPhone on the 8mm Vintage Camera app. It was directed by Francesco Carrozzini, and shows Del Rey wearing a white wedding dress with a veil and a bouquet of flowers in her hands, wandering around an outside setting and later entering a church.

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Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence [MV] (2014) | MUBI

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A music video, shot entirely on an iPhone on the 8mm Vintage Camera app. It was directed by Francesco Carrozzini, and shows Del Rey wearing a white wedding dress with a veil and a bouquet of flowers in her hands, wandering around an outside setting and later entering a church.

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However...Del Rey is often contradictary.

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However...Del Rey is often contradictary.

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Despite past statements about not wanting to politicise herself or her art, in 2016 Del Rey publicly criticised Kanye West on Instagram regarding his political views and support of Donald Trump.

(Fun fact, Del Rey performed at Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's wedding in 2014).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45704579

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Lana Del Rey confronts Kanye West over support for Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live

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The singer says West’s support for Donald Trump “is a loss for the culture”.

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Lana Del Rey resists the expectation upon contemporary female artists to create art which aligns with feminist values. Despite being criticised for this, Del Rey claimed at the time that she did not want to be read through a feminist lens, or to position herself politically, in an interview with NME in 2015 she stated 'Being an artist is not being a politician and is not making political statements… For me as a public figure … showing up was more in line … with my humanity and my human self.' (Available at https://www.nme.com/features/a-letter-from-lana-del-rey-the-full-nme-cover-interview-757009)

This attitude is reflected in the music video for Ultraviolence, although how she represents herself through the song lyrics and the videos imagery may not necessarily be deemed as politically correct or empowering for women, for Del Rey it is her truth and her art, which takes precedence over activism.

Despite inauthenticity claims around her star image, it is arguable that the emphasis Del Rey places on her art reflecting her more difficult experiences as a woman, though it may be less 'acceptable', is actually much more authentic than singing a female empowerment anthem which doesn't reflect her experience.

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The confrontation between Del Rey and West.

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The confrontation between Del Rey and West.

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This moment between her and West is significant in terms of its impact on her star image. Despite not being outspoken in such a way very often, Del Rey strongly took against West's statement that Trump's presidency 'represents good and America becoming whole again.' She suggested in her response that both men are narcissitic and dangerous to women, by doing so she assures to her audience that she is anti-Trump, in the process presumably aligning herself with liberal and progressive American cultural values. This moment also showed her as politically opinionated, something that she has actively in the past stated that she wants to avoid. In speaking out, it enhances her credibility as a star who is also culturally engaged, and also perhaps shows a growth in maturity when it comes to addressing wider social issues.

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Controversy—In 2018, Radiohead tried to sue her for plagiarism, but she remained defiant.

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Controversy—In 2018, Radiohead tried to sue her for plagiarism, but she remained defiant.

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In 2018, Radiohead took Del Rey to court over percieved similarities between their 1992 release Creep and her 2017 song Get Free, from her fifth studio album Lust For Life. She denied taking inspiration from Radiohead, and during this period was not allowed to perform the song in public, she was also told it could be pulled from the album. However, she won the court case and celebrated being able to perform it again at Lollapalooza festival in Brazil, 2018.

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Lana Del Rey says Radiohead suing over song's similarity to Creep

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The singer-songwriter tweeted 'it's true about the lawsuit', saying Radiohead are asking for 100% of the publishing royalties to her track Get Free

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In 2017, she cast a spell on Donald Trump.

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In 2017, she cast a spell on Donald Trump.

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In 2017, Del Rey shared a tweet with the vague words 'At the stroke of midnight Feb 24, March 26, April 24, May 23...Ingredients can b found online', which fans quickly believed was a reference to a recipe for a spell. She later confirmed that her and other witches across the world had hexed Trump together. In a later interview with NME when asked about her use of witchcraft against the US President, she responded 'Yeah, I did it. Why not? Look, I do a lot of shit'.

(interview available at: https://www.nme.com/features/lana-del-rey-interview-lust-for-life-2017-2113496)

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Earlier this year, reports surfaced that witches from around the world were preparing to cast a spell on Donald Trump, binding him from doing harm during his time in office.

Multiple news outlets and online forums circulated a document that detailed the witches' plan, which encouraged practitioners of the Craft and muggles alike to participate in the massive occult ritual.

The spell is to be cast at the stroke of midnight on each waning crescent ritual day until Trump leaves office.

One participant, in particular, is no stranger to the occult.

After releasing "Love" - the first single off her latest album Lust For Life - Lana Del Rey took to Twitter in February in an effort to instruct fans on the ritual. "At the stroke of midnight, Feb 24, March 26, April 24, May 23, Ingredients can b found online," she wrote.

These "ingredients" refer to the list of items required for the binding spell to work: an unflattering picture of Trump, the Tower tarot card, and an orange candle, among others.

Del Rey's mysterious tweet was devoid of context at the time, but diehard Lana fans instantly made the connection to magic given her fondness for the dark arts.

"Yeah, I did it. Why not? Look, I do a lot of shit," the singer recently told NME in an in-depth interview. "I'm in line with Yoko and John and the belief that there's a power to the vibration of a thought. Your thoughts are very powerful things and they become words, and words become actions, and actions lead to physical changes. I really do believe that words are one of the last forms of magic and I'm a bit of a mystic at heart."

If there's anyone that can save us through the power of magic and music, it's Lana.

In case you missed your chance to partake in the binding spell on July 21, the next waning crescent moon is August 16.

Credits

Text Abraham Martinez
Still via YouTube
Screenshot via Twitter

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lana del rey helped cast a spell on trump

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The 'Lust for Life' songstress confirms she joined forces with witches around the world to hex the president.

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In 2019, Lana Del Rey releases a song in response to mass shootings in the USA. 

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In 2019, Lana Del Rey releases a song in response to mass shootings in the USA. 

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Following two mass shootings that occurred within 24 hours of one another in early August 2019, one in El Paso, Texas, and the other in Dayton, Ohio, she released her song Looking for America. She wrote and recorded it very quickly, and released it informally online just a few days after the tragic shootings took place. She co-wrote it with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, who also produced the track.

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Song You Need to Know: Lana Del Rey, ‘Looking for America’

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Lana Del Rey tackles the mass-shooting epidemic in her powerful new single “Looking for America.”

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In the years since her comments in the earlier days of her career on not wanting to be particularly involved in feminism, Del Rey has since seized feminine power more. The act of her taking part in this ritualised protest with other women, against a man who is incredibly anti-woman, repositioned her image from a ‘submissive starlet’ (the arguably false image many had of her following Born to Die and Ultraviolence) to someone who is much more mischievous, and rebellious against problematic and powerful men.

Her public contribution to the hexing both strengthened her reputation as a slight outsider who enjoys being transgressive, whilst transforming a political statement into another layer of her self-made legend.

https://i-d.co/article/witches-and-lana-del-rey-plot-mass-hexing-of-donald-trump-tonight/

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witches (and lana del rey) plot mass hexing of donald trump tonight

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Christian groups and the enigmatic singer-songwriter have signed on for the inaugural spell session to bind the commander-in-chief.

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‘I mean now that my lawsuit’s over, I guess I can sing that song any time I want, right?’

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‘I mean now that my lawsuit’s over, I guess I can sing that song any time I want, right?’

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𝓂𝒾𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒹𝒶𝓎𝓉𝑜𝓃𝒶

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the way she’s so iconic 😍 #lanadelrey #song #getfree #lawsuit #radiohead #performance #lustforlife #lollapalooza 

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@thekingdaytona
the way she’s so iconic 😍 #lanadelrey #song #getfree #lawsuit #radiohead #performance #lustforlife #lollapalooza
♬ Get Free - Lana Del Rey

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‘I'm still looking for my own version of America, one without the gun, where the flag can freely fly, no bombs in the sky, only fireworks when you and I collide, it's just a dream I had in mind’.

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‘I'm still looking for my own version of America, one without the gun, where the flag can freely fly, no bombs in the sky, only fireworks when you and I collide, it's just a dream I had in mind’.

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The song was Del Rey's raw emotional response to the American epidemic of gun violence. In her lyrics she longs for an America that can be innocent, idealistic and safe. The sentimentality which usually colours her music feels different here, as a pained sadness and desparation permeates the song. She indirectly references Marin Luther King's ‘I have a dream’ speech, as she wistfully sings that an America without guns is: 'just a dream I had in mind'.

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The song marked a shift from a nostalgia ridden Lana to a version of her that is socially aware and disillusioned with America's contemporary social problems of today. Here Lana is not only mournfully reminiscing on the old, lost American Dream, but reimagining it as something that is worth saving. Her star image is portrayed as very human, she mourns the tragedies and violence experienced by her country, whilst still expressing hope for a dream of something better.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6HTt2MmerBVW0TjGUwfzBD

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More controversy in 2020 with: 'Question for the culture'.

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More controversy in 2020 with: 'Question for the culture'.

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Misunderstood, or blatantly out of touch?

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Misunderstood, or blatantly out of touch?

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In the post, she refers to a lot of her female contemporaries by name, many of whom are women of colour, including Doja Cat, Beyonce, Khelani, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj. She claims that these women ‘have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, fucking, cheating etc’, she proceeds to ask the question ‘can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love even if the relationship is not perfect...without being crucified or saying that I'm glamorizing abuse??????’

In positioning herself in such a way against these other non-white female artists, many felt that Del Rey (implicitly) set up a racial contrast and divide, simultaneously victimising herself, a white woman, as somebody dealing with unfair double standards. The wording of the statement seemed to disregard any of the struggles the named artists may have faced as women of colour, and was widely received as self-centred and out of touch. As a result, she was accused of racism, and a tension was created between her cultivated star image, and the reality of her privilege, which she didn't seem able to recognise.

An article in The Guardian claimed the post was a 'swipe' at her peers, but also brought up the fact it was "an odd time to make these complaints" given the context that it was during a huge surge in the Black Lives Matter Movement, and there was also a pandemic taking place.

(Article available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/21/lana-del-rey-criticising-peers-undermines-feminist-argument

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She wears a dress from the mall to the 2020 Grammys.

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She wears a dress from the mall to the 2020 Grammys.

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Del Rey rejects the media and the Grammy Award show's expectation to wear a highly thought out expensive designer outfit, and in doing so partly pokes fun at the music industry's associations with excess and glamour. People recieved the choice with affection and fondness, whilst it contributed to her reputation for being slightly rebellious and unbothered by the standards that come with fame.

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Lana Del Rey’s 2020 Grammys Dress Was a Last-Minute Mall Purchase

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The story behind Lana’s dress is surprisingly relatable.

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Del Rey's response to racism accusations.

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Del Rey's response to racism accusations.

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In a response to the allegations of racism, Del Rey argued that the post had been misinterpreted, taking to Instagram again to say "Don't ever ever ever call me racist...The singers I mentioned are my favourite singers so if you want to try and make a bone to pick out of that, like you always do be my guest"

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Lana Del Rey responds to accusations of racism

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The singer named several women of colour while making a point about music industry double standards.

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Lana Del Rey asks a paparazzi photographer for his email address, 2012.

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Lana Del Rey asks a paparazzi photographer for his email address, 2012.

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Perpetuating an image as down-to-earth and shy, giving a paparazzi her email address after he asks her out for a drink.

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@repost on Instagram: "Still thinking about the time in 2012 when this paparazzi  asked Lana Del Rey out… 😭 and they exchanged EMAIL 😭"

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1,146 likes, 75 comments - repost on March 21, 2025: "Still thinking about the time in 2012 when this paparazzi  asked Lana Del Rey out… 😭 and they exchanged EMAIL 😭". 

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She released her first poetry book, 'Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass,' in July 2020.

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She released her first poetry book, 'Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass,' in July 2020.

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Lana Del Rey released her poetry book containing thirty poems, as well as an audiobook in which she reads a smaller choice selection of fourteen poems.

Half of the proceeds from the book went towards Native American organisations which included the Navajo Water Project. The initial advance she recieved for the book was used to donate $350,000 to the Dig Deep project to provide clean water to the Navajo Nation.

Del Rey said that she chose to make this donation as a way of connecting with the American Nation's lineage and to offer a reparative act.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/latest-news/lana-del-rey-donates-350k-from-own-book-to-help-navajo-nation-clean-water

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Lana Del Rey donates $350,000 from own book advance to help Navajo Nation get clean water

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Lana Del Rey has revealed that she’s donated $350,000 from her poetry book advance to the Navajo Nation to provide them with clean water.

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‘Paradise is very fragile,

and it seems like it's only getting worse
Down here in Florida we're fighting red toxic tides

Mass of fish kills

Not to mention hurricans and rising sea levels

Back in Los Angeles, things aren't looking much better

My treehouse that'd been standing for 80 years succumbed to the woolsy fire’

‘Our leader is a meglomaniac,
And we've seen that before
But never 'cause it was what the country deserved’

‘And I had big dreams for the country

Not for what it could do, but how it could feel

How it could think, how it could dream’

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Lana Del Rey - Paradise Is Very Fragile (Vinyl Video)

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However, she rejoined the app in September 2022, a year later. She often uses her Instagram to convey her eclecticism and quirky spirit to her audience.

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However, she rejoined the app in September 2022, a year later. She often uses her Instagram to convey her eclecticism and quirky spirit to her audience.

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She uses her Instagram fairly casually to share photos with friends and family, no makeup selfies, her team, her fans, and things that inspire her, including other musicians.

Her social media feels unpolished and fun for those who consume it- creating an impression of a star who is unbothered about maintaining a carefully curated image.

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Critical acclaim- in March 2023, Rolling Stone called her 'the greatest American songwriter of the 21st century'.

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Critical acclaim- in March 2023, Rolling Stone called her 'the greatest American songwriter of the 21st century'.

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Her ninth and most recent album, Did You know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, was one of 2023's most critically acclaimed releases.

This widespread praise signifies a consolidation of Del Rey’s long-sought artistic credibility, reinforcing her star image as one rooted in both glamorous and curated aesthetics, as well as substantial creative depth and talent.

The album’s reception marks her evolution from a pop star often characterised by her visual style, 'starlet' image, and divisiveness, to a fully realised artist recognised for her intelligence, sensitivity, and complexity.

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After a decade of feeling unexcited after the critical response to her debut album Born to Die, the greatest American songwriter of the 21st century is finally inspired about her career and life again. Rolling Stone UK meets her in LA to discuss the “overculture”, romance and her new album, Did You know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd

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Hopeful in tone ‘I have faith in man, as strange as that sounds in times like these’.

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The poetry is largely self reflective and personal, she speaks about love and her relationships, her mother, L.A-her then home, and her fourteen year sobriety, amongst other things, but she also talks about the state of her country.

Though five years old now, what she reflects upon including the existentialism of climate change and the political disarray in America, is still highly relevant. Her sharing her concerns and fears about these issues shows she is not unaffected just because of her star status, with the project overall feeling very personal, giving fans and critics an insight into Lana's inner world, what's important to her, and how she experiences the world, in a different way than her music is able to.

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Lana Del Rey donates the money earned on her 2023 album tour for 'Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd' back to the cities she performed in.

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Lana Del Rey donates the money earned on her 2023 album tour for 'Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd' back to the cities she performed in.

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Del Rey's decision to donate the proceeds from her tour back into the cities she played in, distances her from the commercialism (and perhaps greed) that is usually associated with mainstream musicians today.

She announced whilst performing- ‘for what it’s worth, every ticket, every dollar, it is poured right back into the city...I know that sounds cheesy, but I tour because I love it… I don’t need to. I just love it, and we’re all about the places we’ve been to’.

Her star image as a proud American, as well as a compassionate human being, is authenticated through this decision, and the move positions her as somebody who is driven by her values and empathy, but also as someone who genuinely loves her country and wants to find ways of improving it, if she can.

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At Glastonbury 2023, Del Rey was over half an hour late for her set at the festival, which she said was because she was still getting her hair done. This has been a pattern for her over the years and she has gained a reputation for coming on the stage later than scheduled.

At this particular performance she continued singing acapella style, even after the sound had been shut off due to Glastobury's noise regulations.

Her tendency to arrive on stage late has stirred up annoyance for fans and contributed to a 'diva' perception of Del Rey, as she behaves outside of conventional expecations of professionalism or punctuality, however this is in line with her long time attitude of 'the rules don't apply to me'.

The uncertainty over whether she'll be on time for her audience may contribute to the 'mystique' and 'exceptionality' of her star image, however it has also resulted in allegations of laziness and lack of professionalism.

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203K likes, 1,604 comments - honeymoon on January 26, 2022

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In December 2023, The Sunday Times named 'Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd' as their album of the year.

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In December 2023, The Sunday Times named 'Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd' as their album of the year.

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Lana Del Rey: 'I've been on my guard for so long'

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Pop's greatest enigma opens up about God, Glastonbury, her private life - and answers her 'jerk-off ' critics

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LANA DEL REY on Instagram: "Pittsburgh stop"

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1M likes, 2,438 comments - honeymoon on October 2, 2023: "Pittsburgh stop". 

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Sitting in her messy bedroom and watching reality TV.

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Sitting in her messy bedroom and watching reality TV.

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LANA DEL REY on Instagram: "CoreCore
labels & the Lord 
Thank u for my beautiful presentsss"

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3M likes, 16K comments - honeymoon on January 1, 2024: "CoreCore
labels & the Lord 
Thank u for my beautiful presentsss". 

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LANA DEL REY on Instagram: "Thank you Londonnn and beyond"

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2M likes, 5,121 comments - honeymoon on July 4, 2025: "Thank you Londonnn and beyond". 

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Her collaborations with filmmakers over the years and the resulting development of her star image.

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Her collaborations with filmmakers over the years and the resulting development of her star image.

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Del Rey has written original songs or performed cover versions for multiple films and television shows during her career. Most notable is Young and Beautiful, one of her most famous songs, which she wrote for Baz Luhrmann's 2013 remake of The Great Gatsby. The song was nominated for five awards, including a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

In 2013, she discussed her inclusion on the soundtrack, saying it was ‘an honour to work with Baz Luhrmann on his amazing adaptation of one of the most extraordinary books ever written...the movie is highly glamorous and exciting’.

(Found at: https://www.digitalspy.com/music/a471300/lana-del-rey-on-great-gatsby-its-highly-glamorous-and-exciting)

She also worked with Disney in 2014, performing a cover of Once Upon a Dream, originally from Sleeping Beauty (1959), for the film Maleficent. In the same year, she also wrote two original songs for Tim Burton's biopic about painter Margaret Keane, Big Eyes, with both songs earning Golden Globe nominations.

In terms of television, Del Rey wrote an original song - Watercolour Eyes for HBO's Euphoria in 2022, and also performed a cover of Ella Fitzgerald's Blue Skies for Apple TV's The New Look, a drama about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel.

Del Rey's work on the aforementioned soundtracks plays a significant role in both shaping her star image and advancing her identity as an artist. In her contributions to cinematic projects, she develops the perception of herself as an artist whose music falls within the scope of visual storytelling. Specifically, with her contributions to the soundtracks of The Great Gatsby and Big Eyes, she is placed within classic American mythology and storytelling.

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She works a Waffle House shift in Alabama.

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She works a Waffle House shift in Alabama.

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In 2023, Del Rey was bizarrely spotted working a shift at the restaraunt chain Waffle House, with her appearance there quickly becoming iconic and going viral on social media. A reason was never established for why she was there, which only acted to embellish the enigma that is Lana Del Rey. Simultaneously, it also made a lot of sense in the context of her 'persona' as an artist who embraces anti-glamour, the mundane, or as one who subverts expectations and engages in myth-making.

The appearance followed the release of Did you know that theres a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, an album in which she sings about many of the ordinary aspects of American life, including her family, attending church and conversations with her pastor, and listening to music in bed with the man she loves. Her appearance at Waffle House fits into the album's narrative in this way, as she blurs the line between being an international star and an everyday American, whilst situating herself within the working-class settings she often romanticises within her music.

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"Moonlighting as a Waitress at a Waffle House in Florence, Alabama" sounds like it could be the title of pop star Lana Del Rey's next Americana-infused album. Now, after summer sightings of the singer doing just that, Del Rey has revealed in a recent interview what was actually going on.

On Sept. 20, Del Rey gave an interview to the Hollywood Reporter, reflecting on her career so far, musicians who count themselves among her admirers, including Bruce Springsteen and Billie Eilish.

The interview, though, opens on what so many of her fans theorized about two months prior: her being spotted in uniform at a Waffle House in Florence, Alabama.

Back in July, reports and social media posts began popping up showing the six-time Grammy-nominated recording artist at several spots around Florence. Not only did she pose for photos and selfies with fans at a local nail salon and a Texas Roadhouse restaurant, she was also spotted at a Waffle House in the area.

Why was Lana Del Rey working at Waffle House?

According to the star, a casual morning visit to the diner chain turned into an hours-long hangout and snowballed into a viral moment.

"We were on our third hour, and the servers asked, 'Do you guys want shirts?'" Del Rey recounted to the Hollywood Reporter. "Hell yeah! We were thrilled."

Del Rey explained that while wearing her uniform, a Waffle House manager asked the star to fulfill a simple request.

"This guy, a regular, comes in every day and orders two things, so they were like, 'Just go get it for him!' I brought him a Coke. No ice. And an empty cup," Del Rey said, adding that the empty cup was for chewing tobacco.

After, the restaurant's manager, who goes unnamed in the interview, posted a short clip to Facebook, which set off the rumor mill.

The Hollywood Reporter story also notes that Del Rey has "family ties" to the small town and the ability to make fast friends.

Making friends and meeting fans at Waffle House

In fact, she befriended a Waffle House worker named LaShawn D. Tuttle, according to a pair of posts on Facebook from July.

"Had so much fun with Lana Del Rey, she is so humble , funny and such a good sport!!" Tuttle wrote on Facebook, posting pictures and video on July 20. In the post, Del Rey can be seen pouring coffee in uniform, complete with a name tag that says "Lana," chatting with customers and speaking with her brother, Charlie Grant, who is also seated at the restaurant, though not in uniform.

Tuttle additionally also appears to have met Del Rey prior to the singer's adventure at the diner chain, posing for photos out of uniform in a July 19 post.

"There is no Summertime Sadness here!!" Tuttle wrote, posing for selfies in front of the Great American Thrift Store in Florence, Alabama, according to a later comment. "Just Lana Del Rey, Dylan,& I !!"

Tuttle wasn't the only person to score some time with the singer: A few lucky fans caught her while she was in the restaurant and even in the parking lot, getting selfies and more.

"To say I am ecstatic is an understatement!!! LANITA ❤️ I have been a huuuge fan of Lana Del Rey for over a decade, so meeting her today was truly insane," wrote Karina Cisneros Juarez on Facebook.

In addition to a selfie, Juarez included a photo of an autographed copy of Del Rey's 2019 book of poetry " Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass."

Another fan even caught Del Rey in the parking lot.

"I may have gotten this poster from San Francisco," TikToker Haley (@halnicolee) tells Del Rey in a TikTok video, unfurling a giant poster advertisement for the singer's latest album.

"Did you steal this?" Del Rey asks the TikToker before dutifully laying the poster on the ground to sign it for her. In two other videos, the TikToker details her once-in-a-lifetime experience of getting a key piece of fan memorabilia.

"So, she put on a Waffle House outfit, and had, like the whole Waffle House to themselves," Haley theorized in another TikTok video sharing the experience. "An old man is sitting in the corner and Lana Del Rey just bought a coffee out to him and he don't even know what just happened."

Meanwhile, another video shows Del Rey and an older gentleman singing "Amazing Grace" together.

Fan reaction at the time was a mixture of theories and jokes.

"is this what she meant when she said she wanted to explore other career paths in that one speech," wrote one fan on LanaBoards.

"She serves in more ways than one," another fan jokingly noted.

"This is the most Lana Del Rey thing Lana Del Rey has ever done imo 🤣," tweeted another.

"I have so many questions," wrote one Reddit user, to which another replied, "right like has anyone figured out why she's doing this."

"For Fun I guess. No other real explanation," speculated another Redditor. (Turns out they were right about that!)

"The music she'll write about the line cook will bring a tear to your eye," tweeted yet another fan.

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We finally know why Lana Del Rey was working at a Waffle House in Alabama

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Lana Del Rey explains why she was spotted at a Waffle House in Alabama, wearing a uniform and serving coffee, confirming some fan theories and debunking others.

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Vogue video Tour Diary published on YouTube in October 2024.

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Vogue video Tour Diary published on YouTube in October 2024.

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The release of Lana's day-in-the-life tour diary surprised many, as she isn't known for making this kind of content, and it offered a rare glimpse into her personality behind the 'star persona', something she doesn't necessarily often grant her audience access to. The video features close friends and family, specifically her dad, with whom she is clearly very close, whom she nicknames 'Robster the lobster'. Self-aware that this is unusual for her, she acknowledges to the camera, ‘This is some pretty intimate content’.

She is candidly self-deprecating as she puffs on a vape whilst getting her hair and makeup done, saying ‘I'm late, obviously’. At the end of the video, after performing at Leeds festival, she is visibly flustered and exhausted, saying ‘that was a long one’ (show), reinforcing the belief amongst many that she doesn't enjoy performing to big crowds very much. Here, her star image is more vulnerable than overtly confident or diva-esque.

A fan featured in the video says through tears, ‘I love you and I love that song so much, you've shaped my teenage years, thank you’. The inclusion of this clip demonstrates how Del Rey has cultivated genuine connection and devotion over the years. The blend of ordinary intimacy with Lana that we gain from this tour video, alongside a fan's profound and emotional response to her, portrays her star image as both mythic and very human.

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Marriage to alligator tour guide- Jeremy Dufrene, in September 2024.

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Marriage to alligator tour guide- Jeremy Dufrene, in September 2024.

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The two were married waterside on the Bayou in Lousiana where Dufrene gives his alligator tours. The couple met in March 2019 when Del Rey attended one of his swamp boat tours, however they had only publicly been dating for one month before their wedding.

Although many viewed them as an unlikely pairing, she has since spoken candidly about her love for her husband and the authenticity of their bond, explaining, ‘I really feel like there’s kind of a singer’s curse around meeting an honest partner who has no skin in the game, no dog in the race’.

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Del Rey's marriage to Dufrene resulted in some backlash as a result of intense media and fan scrutiny, as well as false rumours about Dufrene himself.

Assumptions were also made about his political allegiance, due to his background, however, in a message exchange with a fan, Dufrene shared that he is disillusioned with politics, and therefore apolitical. Some fans felt disappointed with Lana's choice, considering her past political outspokenness, especially regarding Donald Trump. She has also chosen to be quiet since Trump's time in office this time around.

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Lana Del Rey fans rail after songstress marries allegedly ‘MAGA’ alligator tour guide

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For a celebrity, singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey has always been fairly private. But recently, she’s found it increasingly difficult to escape the spotlight. Interest in her private life has soared since the 39-year-old artist shocked fans with a quick marriage to Louisiana alligator tour guide Jeremy Dufrene.

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Her 2025 Summer UK Tour drew criticism and disappointment from fans.

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Her 2025 Summer UK Tour drew criticism and disappointment from fans.

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Her 2025 UK tour was Del Rey's first-ever stadium tour. Though received well by critics, some fans felt disappointed. The Guardian, whose reviewer attended the opening Cardiff show, gave it four stars alongside the description- 'mid-century melodrama as mindblowing stadium spectacle'. She famously cried (presumably due to overwhelm) and ran to her husband for support on the opening night of the tour. The Guardian said regarding her tears 'This sort of tension, the push-pull between genuine vulnerability and an exploration of aesthetics, has always been there in her music and her wonderfully ambitious first stadium tour runs on it. Its theatrical staging and big ideas are all the more remarkable thanks to some very human moments of doubt'.

(Quote from: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jun/24/lana-del-rey-review-principality-stadium-cardiff-tour)

Despite the ambitious set design and beautiful costumes, some fans felt that the shows were slightly lazy. Lana was late to a few of them, and the setlist was relatively short for a stadium show (around 90 minutes).

How she presented herself on the tour further developed the complexity of her star image. The contrast between grand, cinematic staging and her moments of visible vulnerability —such as crying on stage, needing her husband for comfort, and arriving late-reflects the central tension in her persona: the interaction between artifice, performativity, and authenticity. Some fans viewed these moments as signs of detachment from the audience or general disinterest; however, they arguably also reinforce her long-standing rejection of traditional pop professionalism and perfection.

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Lana Del Rey: UK tour wows critics but fans annoyed with setlist | LBC

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Cardiff and Glasgow dates down, American singer has sights on Liverpool and London.

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Multiple album delays and renamings in 2025.

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Multiple album delays and renamings in 2025.

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In regards to her tenth studio album, it was initially announced in January 2024, and was given the title Lasso, which was believed to have a country influence, quite different from any of Del Rey's previous work. The album then became The Right Person Will Stay, which she announced on Instagram as having a scheduled release date in May 2025.

Lana claims that she works based on her intuition, and that her record label understands this about her, having said in 2023, ‘If I feel like the timing isn’t right or I don’t feel like some kind of situation or plan is right, they’ve always backed me 100 per cent’.

Her instinct-driven approach to her creative work reinforces Del Rey’s star image as an artist who values authenticity and emotional intuition over commercialism.

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The most mysterious album of the year has been renamed, delayed multiple times and is yet to drop. Our patron saint of romantic love is only on the schedule of her own intuition, argues Hannah Ewens

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Mid 2025 onwards: Uncertainty and perceived retreat from Lana Del Rey.

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Mid 2025 onwards: Uncertainty and perceived retreat from Lana Del Rey.

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Due to the mixed reception of her UK tour, and the current absence of a new album (and the silence surrounding it) or any other current projects, some feel that Lana Del Rey may be preparing for retirement from music in the near future.

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Lana Del Rey Wears Valentino Ballgown With Giant Feathers at the 2025 Met Gala

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Wedding photos shared for the first time.

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Wedding photos shared for the first time.

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https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a68091813/lana-del-rey-jeremy-dufrene-wedding-dress-photos/

Since her wedding in September 2024 Lana has been presumed to be enjoying a happy married life with Jeremy Dufrene, whilst artistic projects seemingly have been put on hold.

She shared photos of her and Dufrene's wedding on her Instagram for the first time to mark their one year anniversary, in September 2025.

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Lana Del Rey Shares Glamorous Wedding Photos With Jeremy Dufrene

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Looking forward: As it stands, Lana Del Rey's much-anticipated new album 'Stove' is now due for release in January 2026.

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Looking forward: As it stands, Lana Del Rey's much-anticipated new album 'Stove' is now due for release in January 2026.

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Lana Del Rey has changed her new album name to ‘Stove’ and shared new release date plans

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Lana Del Rey has seemingly changed the name of her upcoming album to ‘Stove’, and won’t be releasing it until 2026.

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LANA DEL REY on Instagram: "Thelma and Louise"

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2M likes, 14K comments - honeymoon on April 17, 2023: "Thelma and Louise". 

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In September 2021, she announced she was deactivating her main Instagram account.

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In September 2021, she announced she was deactivating her main Instagram account.

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She gave her main reasons as being a need for privacy and a desire to focus on her projects. In a goodbye video she posted announcing her decision, she told her fans ‘I'm still present and I love what I do’.

Her decision as an international artist with millions of followers, to deactivate her social media, and thus withdraw from the public eye in a way, reinforced the defining aspects of her star persona. Del Rey has always thrived off mystique and non-conformity, which she demonstrated in choosing to opt out of a celebrity culture which is obsessed with constant visibility. Her exit exhibited her persona as an artist who exists outside contemporary celebrity expectations.

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Lana Del Rey is embarking on an indefinite social media cleanse.

The six-time Grammy Award nominee, 36, announced in an Instagram video Saturday that she's deactivating her social media accounts as she focuses on "some different endeavors" while bidding farewell to her 20.7 million followers and thanking them for their support.

"On the record," she wrote in the caption before following through with deleting her accounts on Sunday.

"Hi guys, I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow, we are going to be deactivating our social media accounts, my social media accounts," Del Rey started in the black-and-white clip. "And that is simply because I have so many other interests and other jobs I'm doing that require privacy and transparency."

She added that she's still working on her upcoming eighth studio album Blue Banisters, as well as some more spoken word albums and short poetry books. "I'm still present and I love what I do," Del Rey noted. "And I'm absolutely here for the music, and I'm also just going on some different endeavors."

"And I want to say thank you so much for all the support, and I do hope you like the record," she added. "It's a compilation of older songs and a few newer songs, some written by family and friends and mostly old collaborators, and there will probably always be more to come."

Del Rey continued to thank her loyal fans, while discussing her need for privacy. "And I want to say a heartfelt thank you for continuing to see me through the music," she said. "It's always important to be witnessed, and it's also really important just to be witnessed by the people close to you, that you know and who you trust."

"For right now, I think I'm going to just keep my circle a little bit closer and continue to develop some other skills and interests. Again, I'm always here making lots of records, and in the meantime, living life. So, I've really enjoyed sharing all these small tidbits with you, and I'm really blessed. So, thank you and... signing off," she concluded, throwing up a peace sign.

The Chemtrails Over the Country Club artist officially parted ways with her Instagram and Twitter accounts at approximately 3:30 p.m. EST on Sunday. The social media hiatus comes after she found herself shrouded in controversy several times in the past year-and-a-half.

RELATED VIDEO: Lana Del Rey Receives Backlash for Wearing a Mesh Face Mask During Book Signing Event with Fans

The Born to Die singer faced backlash in May 2020 for comparing her struggle to artists of color like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B, before she clarified, "I'm talking about my favorite singers." Del Rey was called out again in June by Kehlani and Tinashe for posting photos of people looting during the Black Lives Matter protests, potentially revealing their identities. She faced further scrutiny in January for pointing out the diversity in the women featured on her Chemtrails album cover.

Additionally, she came under fire that month for saying that Donald Trump's presidency "needed to happen," before claiming that her words were taken " out of context," adding: "Trump is so significantly impaired that he may not know what he was doing due to his significant lack of empathy and the wider ranging problem is the issue of sociopathy and narcissism in America."

Del Rey wrote earlier this month on Instagram that the backlash she's faced has forced her to "dig deep" on Blue Banisters. "As much as the ongoing criticism has been trying, it at least has pushed me to explore my own family tree, to dig deep, and to continue to exhibit the fact that God only cares about how I move through the world," she wrote.

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Lana Del Rey Deactivates Her Social Media Accounts to 'Keep My Circle a Little Bit Closer'

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"I'm still present and I love what I do," Lana Del Rey said in a video she posted Saturday to Instagram before deactivating her social media accounts on Sunday

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Lana Del Rey seen picking up shift at Waffle House as fans gush: ‘So real’

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Coachella 2024- Del Rey performs with Billie Eilish.

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Coachella 2024- Del Rey performs with Billie Eilish.

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‘This is the reason for half you bitches existence, including mine’- Billie Eilish talking about Lana Del Rey.

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Lana Del Rey x Billie Eilish - Ocean Eyes/Video Games - Live at Coachella 2024

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Billie Eilish has spoken about how influential Lana Del Rey has been on her own music.

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Billie Eilish has spoken about how influential Lana Del Rey has been on her own music.

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Eilish when asked to name ‘five formative albums’ that shaped her as a musician, responded, ‘Born to Die by my girl Lana...I feel that that album changed music. And especially changed music for girls and the potential of what is possible’.

(found at: https://consequence.net/2023/08/billie-eilish-lana-del-rey-born-to-die/)

Eilish has also claimed that her song Ocean Eyes, would not exist without the influence of Del Rey.

(found at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/billie-eilish-ocean-eyes-lana-del-rey-1235007087/)

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Artists Del Rey has worked with over the years and their significance in shaping her star image as an auteur who crosses boundaries.

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Artists Del Rey has worked with over the years and their significance in shaping her star image as an auteur who crosses boundaries.

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Lana Del Rey pictured with rapper Quavo, one third of retired hip-hop group Migos.

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Lana Del Rey and Quavo Are Countryside-Living Lovers on ‘Tough’

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Lana Del Rey and Quavo released their collaboration ‘Tough’ Wednesday, after debuting the track during her show at Boston’s Fenway Park last month.

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Tough- Quavo and Lana Del Rey, 2024

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Dayglo Reflection, Bobby Womack (featuring Lana Del Rey), The Bravest Man In The Universe, 2012.

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Snow On The Beach, Taylor Swift (featuring Lana Del Rey), Midnights, 2022.

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Sean Ono Lennon, the son of Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

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Sean Ono Lennon, the son of Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

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Tomorrow Never Came, Lana Del Rey (featuring Sean Ono Lennon), Lust for Life, 2017.

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Tomorrow Never Came (feat. Sean Ono Lennon)

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Tomorrow Never Came (feat. Sean Ono Lennon)

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Don’t Call Me Angel, Ariana Grande (with Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey), From the original motion picture soundtrack, 2019.

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Don’t Call Me Angel (Charlie’s Angels) (with Miley Cyrus & Lana Del Rey)

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Don’t Call Me Angel (Charlie’s Angels) (with Miley Cyrus & Lana Del Rey)

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Lust For Life, Lana Del Rey (with The Weeknd), Lust For Life, 2017

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Summer Bummer Lana Del Rey (featuring rappers A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti), Lust for Life, 2017.

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Summer Bummer (feat. A$AP Rocky & Playboi Carti)

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Summer Bummer (feat. A$AP Rocky & Playboi Carti)

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Stevie Nicks- ‘the high priestess of Rock and Roll’.

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Stevie Nicks- ‘the high priestess of Rock and Roll’.

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Beautiful people, beautiful problems (featuring Stevie Nicks), Lust for Life, 2017.

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Beautiful People Beautiful Problems (feat. Stevie Nicks)

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Beautiful People Beautiful Problems (feat. Stevie Nicks)

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Work with her long-term collaborator, Father John Misty.

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Work with her long-term collaborator, Father John Misty.

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Buddy’s Rendezvous, Father John Misty (featuring Lana Del Rey) Chloe And The Next 20th Century, 2022.

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Let The Light In, Lana Del Rey featuring Father John Misty, Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd, 2023.

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Let The Light In (feat. Father John Misty)

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Let The Light In (feat. Father John Misty)

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Father John Misty as Del Rey's cult-leader lover in her 2015 music video 'Freak'.

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Father John Misty as Del Rey's cult-leader lover in her 2015 music video 'Freak'.

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Music video from her 2015 album Honeymoon.

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Lana Del Rey’s collaborations with indie artists reinforce her credibility within the alternative and independent music scene.

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Lana Del Rey and Miles Kane nearly formed a new band

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The pair had previously been reported to be working in the studio together