The accelerated pace at which society has altered in the years since one, Lana Del Rey, released her debut album, Born to Die, is almost unfathomable. On January 27, 2012, the world—and especially the United States—was a very different place. Pre-“metaverse,” pre-unignorably extreme weather conditions, pre-Trump, pre-COVID. In essence, a milieu that one could still tell themselves was worthwhile. Mainly because things like all-consuming romance (“Born to Die,” “Video Games,” “Dark Paradise”) and sardonic excess (“National Anthem”) were still sellable. As of January 27, 2022, such concepts feel like a much harder sell. With capitalism being a laughable system that the government and the corporations it’s in bed with still want so desperately to uphold, Del Rey’s arrival onto the scene during an apex of late capitalism seemed like a boon to keep millennials on the hook for buying into the system.
Why not? Things were “good.” The 2008 financial crisis suddenly felt like a distant glimmer of a memory. If Britney could come back from her own crash, why shouldn’t the “economy” (something as illusory as the “metaverse”) be able to? The flame-out of Occupy Wall Street at the end of 2011 (with brief reemerging bursts throughout the beginning of 2012) also seemed to indicate yet another “Surrender Dorothy” example of the poverty-stricken masses capitulating to their fate on this Earth: either resist the powerful and be met with the same shitty socioeconomic circumstances, but with a rap sheet, or just pretend everything’s fine and keep working (or not) at the job that underpays. Enter the opening notes to “Born to Die,” which signaled the onset of the 2010s with a cacophony of strings that led into the auditory manifestation of feeling as though you’d just injected yourself with heroin (or fentanyl, if we’re being more 2010s-relevant). This being thanks to Del Rey perfecting the languid sound of modern baroque pop (before transitioning away from it altogether after Honeymoon in 2015). It was as though this intro track to the album heralded the dawning of a new era: the millennial heyday (pathetic and filled with presently outdated and embarrassing internet articles as it was). A brief blip before yet another casting out of the garden (see also: Tropico) and major economic cataclysm.
The iteration of Del Rey in the cover image (shot by Nicole Nodland) of Born to Die is frozen in time with an essence of ennui and resignation to such a fate. As though a representation of every millennial doomed to accept their destiny in this century—one fraught with decay and meaninglessness, all further spurred and intensified by the increasing prevalence of social media narcissism. And yet, Del Rey, despite being a quintessential millennial spokeswoman, wielded the persona of a “retro queen.” A “gangster Nancy Sinatra,” as she once called herself. Weaponizing said persona of being an anachronism is what made her feel so fresh and unique in the same way that Amy Winehouse was when she achieved international success with 2006’s Back to Black (and indeed, Winehouse was an influence on Del Rey) despite repackaging what the Motown girl groups had already done in the 60s. Winehouse’s rail-thinness as a result of all the drugs and bulimia seemed to be the physique Del Rey was going for in the beginning as well, for it just naturally went hand in hand with lyrics like, “He doesn’t mind I have a Las Vegas past/He doesn’t mind I have an L.A. crass way about me/He loves me, with every beat of his cocaine heart.”
It was all part of the persona of a trash magic kind of girl. A “ride or die” with her Daddy figure boyfriend that she liked to hang around hotel swimming pools with. Because, in spite of Del Rey’s denial, persona is what Born to Die is founded upon. And that’s no coincidence at a time when Instagram was just starting to pop off and make Facebook seem quite tame with regard to “content curation.” Persona, for millennials, had never been more important thanks to yet another social media app, this one far more photo-centric. But not just any photos: photos that would induce “fomo” (fear of missing out). A term that only really rose to prominence as a direct result of Instagram (not so coincidentally created just one year before “Video Games” would enter the pop culture lexicon). Incidentally, Del Rey’s cover image for Born to Die wasn’t really determined to cause “fomo” as she stared poutily at the camera in a Mormon-esque white blouse that was subversively negated by the telltale visibility of her red bra underneath it. Indeed, full-length photos from the same session reveal Del Rey in a vibrant floral-print skirt with giant red-orange flowers that loudly declare themselves against the white fabric. There is something symbolic about it, for Del Rey herself is ostensibly vanilla, but one listen to her lyrics reminds that she’s also sordid as fuck. Or so her persona would have us believe on tracks like “Lolita,” “This Is What Makes Us Girls” and “Off to the Races”—itself accused of ripping off Sheryl Crow’s “down and out drunken loner persona in her 1994 single ‘Leaving Las Vegas.’” So yes, where does persona end and pastiche begin? With Lana, it became a clusterfuck of commingling the two phenomena as never before.
Then, of course, there was her need to embody a Lolita persona (despite being too “over the hill” to do so) thanks to an ill-advised fetish for Nabokov. The “cherry red” lipstick, short skirt and “schoolgirl” socks with shoes aesthetic meant to achieve just that. In addition to titling a song “Lolita” and another “Carmen.” Overkill much on the faux-pretentious literary references? Not for Del Rey.
A glance back at the largely scathing reviews that came out in 2012 all highlight persona (specifically, not fully realizing one) and inauthenticity as key aspects of the problem with Born to Die. A review from The Guardian’s (Lana’s favorite publication) Alexis Petridis the day the record was released offers, “There’s always the chance that she’s playing a character, although that seems doubtful, because when Lana Del Rey is in character, she really lets you know about it.” Whatever that means. Needless to say, there is something in the derisive undermining of what might have actually been an experience Del Rey was writing about that smacks of Damon Albarn’s recent misogynistic dismissal of Taylor Swift’s own songwriting. Accusing her of relying on the crutch of co-songwriters and overall “studio manufacturing,” it reeked of the kind of criticism Del Rey received at the outset for being all prepackaging and no substance.
Petridis continued, “The problem is that Del Rey doesn’t have the lyrical equipment to develop a persona throughout the album. After the umpteenth song in which she either puts her red dress on or takes her red dress off, informs you of her imminent death and kisses her partner hard while telling him she’ll love him ’til the end of time, you start longing for a song in which Del Rey settles down with Keith from HR, moves to Great Yarmouth and takes advantage of the DFS half-price winter sale.” This, in effect, is what she has done, California style, as evidenced by songs like “Blue Banisters” and “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.”
Complex’s Dale Eisinger instead cited persona as part of his positive assessment of Del Rey’s album cover, which he put at number eight on “The 50 Best Pop Album Covers of the Past Five Years” in 2017. His “hot take”? “Lana can affect her detached and still-flawless persona to a simple gaze.” As any millennial worth more than their bank account would indicate can.
All these discussions and dissections of Del Rey, however, were transpiring before she even had a proper album out. And it all reached a notable fever pitch when she was tapped to perform as the musical guest for Saturday Night Live on January 14, 2012. Arriving in a white, sequined evening gown and languidly twirling around at times when she sang “Blue Jeans” and “Video Games,” Del Rey seemed as disinterested in her performance as Britney was at the 2007 VMAs.
Among the least forgiving “mainstream” publications was Pitchfork, who also happened to provide one of the few female reviewers, Lindsay Zoladz, making a commentary on the record with, “The album’s point of view—if you could call it that—feels awkward and out of date… [it] never allows tension or complexity into the mix, and its take on female sexuality ends up feeling thoroughly tame. For all of its coos about love and devotion, it’s the album equivalent of a faked orgasm—a collection of torch songs with no fire.” In 2021, Pitchfork would, with its tail between its legs, rescore the album from a 5.5. out of ten to a 7.8. So much for being a “faked orgasm.” Now, all of the sudden, it seemed like an entirely real one in a landscape as sexless as the post-pandemic era. Indeed, Del Rey’s album came out at a time when the one-night stand was still viable, particularly in the Brooklyn bubble where her music tended to be most played and appreciated (as the Urban Outfitters in Williamsburg would later emphasize). In the present, the diminishment of the one-night stand (thanks to both the prevalence of “dating” apps, and then, COVID) seems also to add a certain datedness to Born to Die, an album that speaks of whirlwind romance propelled by the kind of impetuosity that one simply can’t engage in today due to health and safety concerns (not that such a thing has ever stopped a gay man).
Another accusation about Del Rey’s faked identity came from Stereogum’s Tom Breihan, who declared, “It’s common knowledge, at this point, that Lana Del Rey is Lizzy Grant’s invented persona, an entirely new character that she created when her own music didn’t seem to be going anywhere… But when ‘Video Games’ hit as hard and as early as it did, she suddenly had to rush out an album, and she didn’t have the luxury of figuring out the different directions that this character could go.” Maybe that’s why she decided to better perfect said character on Ultraviolence before abandoning her altogether (in favor of a “folksier” one) by the time 2017’s Lust for Life came out.
Kitty Empire of The Observer noted that Del Rey distinguished herself from other pop stars of the moment that promoted excess (e.g. fellow Lower East Side trollop Lady Gaga) because her “partying [was] fueled by a knowing sadness, and sung in that laconic, hypnotic voice, which ultimately saves this thoroughly dissolute, feminist nightmare of a record for the romantics among us.” Ah yes, and there’s that word that no one really associates with Del Rey: feminist. For she of the Marilyn Manson photo ops and sayer of such things as, “For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept” doesn’t really jump out as any such thing. And yet, her very existence created a subsequent generation of decidedly more gender fluid musicians. Or as “gender fluid” as mainstream “alternative” music allows.
Although Del Rey paved the way (“raised us,” as Billie Eilish noted) for the likes of Lorde, Eilish and even Taylor Swift—always quick to call her out as a brilliant songwriter—it seems that, based on a hyper-vigilant sense of wokeness in media, Born to Die might actually fare even worse in the current marketplace in terms of lashing reviews decrying her antiquated “he’s my everything” sense of “femininity.” A concept that is itself a put-on and a persona conceived by a patriarchal society. Songs like “Without You” that lamented, literally, “I’m nothing without you” (a.k.a. a man) didn’t seem like much of a progression from the outmoded messaging of late 90s/early 00s pop songs such as Britney’s “Born to Make You Happy” and Destiny’s Child’s “Cater 2 U.”
Thus, for as retroactively laudatory as critics have become toward Born to Die and its influence on the subsequent decade in music’s tonal shift, it must be admitted that if the record were unveiled on January 27, 2022, it would likely be shunned entirely—far more than it was in 2012. It was as though Del Rey barely eked by within the framework of a cultural moment to disseminate the already archaic lyrics of Born to Die, rife with old-fashioned views on gender and relationships that were dressed up and slightly disguised with evocative, drug-addled descriptions and color mentions (blue, red, the gamut). Like we were supposed to buy that Del Rey was a true synesthesiac. But no, only her Gen Z counterparts, Lorde and Eilish, can make that claim.
In the end, it’s ironic that persona—the very thing that catalyzed Del Rey’s rise—is presently the very thing that has prompted her to “log off” social media (not really though, she still has a so-called “OnlyFans” Instagram account called @honeymoon). Particularly after she got a little too “creative” in applauding that persona of her past with her 2020 “question for the culture.” But one question for said culture that no one has thought to truly examine beyond a meme level is: did we all, per the Mayan calendar “end of the world” theory, actually die in 2012 and, if so, was Del Rey’s Born to Die album (with its eerily apropos title) the ultimate swan song? Perhaps. And maybe the present purgatorial dimension of time and space we’re in now is just on the border of the 2012 parallel where Del Rey is only starting to become a millennial icon.
