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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: A Conversation With Lana Del Rey

By Alex Frank

Famous artists are notoriously late, but when I arrive about 20 minutes early for an interview at Lana Del Rey ’s Santa Monica studio, she is ready for me, offering a handshake and a smile. It is the week before her new album, Lust for Life , will be released, but she seems unhurried and relaxed; when I ask if she’s been busy in the leadup to such a big day, she says “no” with a laugh, as if she knows she probably should be. She is not dressed like the glammed-up mystic you see in music videos and photographs: her hair, long and brown, is tied functionally behind her neck, and she is in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, with cream canvas sneakers and white ankle socks on her feet. Right away, she invites me through a side door into the inner sanctum where her brooding songs are created.

For Lana acolytes, this is a mythic place. She has recorded here since 2012’s Born to Die , her major label debut. It is a beautiful room filled with sun coming in from a skylight and two windows, the opposite of the average dank music studio. It looks a bit like how you’d expect Lana Del Rey’s workplace to look: vaguely and warmly retro, with dark wood cabinets and a mid-century-looking painting with interlacing geometric shapes hanging on the back wall. In the center of the room is a scratched-up leather club chair with a Tammy Wynette album cover facing it. (“I always have Tammy there,” she says of the country singer best known for her ode to everlasting devotion, “Stand by Your Man.”) This chair, and not the actual booth in the front of the room, is where Lana sits to record her vocals. “I get red light fever in the booth,” she says. She likes that the studio is by the beach, where she’ll sometimes go to listen to mixes of songs on her iPhone.

The studio is owned and operated by Rick Nowels , her longtime producer. He has come down today to listen to the album with us, a pair of sunglasses firmly on his face. Nowels has more than 20 years on Lana, who is 32, and he inhabits something of an uncle role, making the songwriter a bit bashful when he sweetly refers to a ballad called “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing” as a “masterpiece” for its lyrical message about the importance of finding ways to have fun, even in the Trump era. Gearing up to record what would become Born to Die , Lana had met with a number of producers who all tried to tell her what she should or should not sound like, with some encouraging her to ditch the breathy vocal style that would become her signature. When she finally met Nowels, he didn’t want to change a thing. “I went through a hundred and eleven producers just to find someone who says ‘yes’ all the time,” she says. “Everyone is so obsessed with saying ‘no’—they break you down to build you up.”

Lana is a studio junkie— Lust for Life is her fourth album in about five years. She says a day that she works is better than a day that she doesn’t. Nowels tells me that even though the new album isn’t out yet, she’s already making new music. “If I get a great melody in my head, I know it’s a gift,” she says. As we sit down to listen to Lust for Life , she is clearly at home: Like a good host, she offers me her comfy leather singing chair and instead curls up on a blue velvet couch nearby. She has a familial rapport with not just Nowels, but engineers Dean Reid and Kieron Menzies, who she credits again and again for making her work better, and the four of them ruminate on mastering, making jokes about Lana’s perfectionism when it comes to the final cuts of her songs.

The album, like all of her work, is fastidiously and emphatically Lana in its sound and atmosphere: a haze of lazy pacing and flowery melodies, conjuring a foreboding backdrop for lyrics about summer and antique celebrity icons and dangerous, dissatisfying relationships. Front and center in the mix is her voice, which has a crooner’s tone and an especially wide range, from deep and low to high and sharp. Most pop stars rely on reinvention to retain relevance, but her output is remarkably consistent. She says her main criteria is whether or not a song sounds like it will transport listeners to somewhere else in their minds. On each album, the skeleton remains more or less the same while she infuses her work with stylistic elements from different genres, from rap to rock to jazz. Lust for Life draws from folk and hip-hop, two genres that she says she loves because they both privilege real storytelling.

The new record is a departure in key ways, though. In the past, Lana has become famous for themes that are, at times, hopeless: toxic romance, violence, drug use, despair, aging, death. This isn’t to say every song she has ever recorded is a downer, or that she hasn’t displayed a knowing sense of humor about her reputation. But her relentless obsession with the dark arts is a reason why her fans love her with an almost religious fervor; she’s had issues with people breaking into her house. “They want to talk,” she says chillingly. Her menacing themes have also led to resistance at certain moments from larger audiences who, perhaps trained to think of pop music as a tool of empowerment and empathy, just can’t face her nihilism.

While Lust for Life certainly has its share of grim moments, it is not as much of an avalanche of gloom, and perhaps offers signposts to a happier future. At times, Lana even approaches uncomplicated joy, like on first single “ Love .” The album also contains some of her first songs that deal with a universe larger than the tangled intensity of one-on-one relationships—there are tracks intended to be balms and battle cries for trying times, which, like many Americans, she found herself fretting over constantly during the 2016 election campaign. And for the first time on any Lana album, she’s also opening the door to a number of guest vocalists: A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, the Weeknd, Stevie Nicks, and Sean Ono Lennon on a Beatles-referencing song called “Tomorrow Never Came.” “I FaceTimed with Yoko, and she said it was her most favorite thing Sean’s ever done,” Lana says.

After listening to the album, Lana and I peel off to a small office on the other side of the studio for our interview. Before we begin, she pulls out her iPhone to record the conversation along with me, a defensive move she’s taken up after years of feeling manipulated and harangued by the media. When answering questions, she is at turns thoughtful and strident, seriously considering topics like her attempts at a brighter life and how Trump has affected her love of Americana, and also entirely unafraid to bat away questions she finds boring or irrelevant. At one point, she laughs so hard at a silly sidebar in our conversation that she has a coughing fit and has to take a break. She says she binge watches “The Bachelor,” and that while all of her friends now call her Lana—not Elizabeth Grant, her birth name—her parents are the two people who do not. She is wry about the new song “ Groupie Love ,” in which she writes herself not as the star but in the role of a worshipful devotee: “Old habits die hard—I still love a rock star.” When I ask her if she is bothered by TMZ dating rumors, which have recently speculated about her relationship with rapper G-Eazy, she gives an unexpectedly goading answer: “They’re usually true. Maybe where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

Which is to say: She’s kinda regular, not the hardened artist we’ve heard in her songs, but someone, it would seem, who likes to hang out and chat about life and music. Talking about good times brings up memories of rough ones, and when the conversation veers towards rocky terrain, she reveals an artist—and a person—at a pivotal moment.

Lana Del Rey: I made personal commitments. 

Well, they’re personal. [ laughs ] I had some people in my life that made me a worse person. I was not sure if I could step out of that box of familiarity, which was having a lot of people around me who had a lot of problems and feeling like that was home base. Because it’s all I know. I spent my whole life reasoning with crazy people. I felt like everyone deserved a chance, but they don’t. Sometimes you just have to step away without saying anything.

Developmentally, I was in the same place for a very long time, and then it just took me longer than most people to be able to be more out there. Being more naturally shy, it’s taken stretching on my part to just continue to integrate into the local community, global community, to grow as a person. Also, getting really famous doesn’t help you grow with the community. It’s important to have your own life. It’s hard with how accessible things are. Hacking? Email is just a no for me. I do a lot to make sure I don’t feel trapped. 

They fucking have. Someone stole both my cars. All the scary shit. I’ve had people in my house for sure, and I didn’t know they were there while I was there. I fucking called the police. I locked the door. Obviously, that’s the one in one-hundred-thousand people who’s crazy. But I [had a hard time sleeping] for a minute.

It’s going to be isolating. Period. Unless you stretch past it. But it takes so much footwork. Getting over the uncomfortability of being the one person in the room who everyone recognizes. The last few years, I’m out all the time: clubs, bars, shows. For years I was more quietly in the mix, always through the back door, do not tell anyone I’m coming. And now I’ve relaxed into it where I’ll just show up. I don’t need a special ticket. I’ll just go sit wherever. It feels a little more like I’m myself again.

I don’t like it. I don’t. I don’t sing it. I sing “Ultraviolence” but I don’t sing that line anymore. Having someone be aggressive in a relationship was the only relationship I knew. I’m not going to say that that [lyric] was 100 percent true, but I do feel comfortable saying what I was used to was a difficult, tumultuous relationship, and it wasn’t because of me. It didn’t come from my end. 

No. I don’t care. I would just say I am different. And even being a little bit different makes me not want to sing that line. To me, it just was what it was. I deal with what’s in my lyric— you’re not dealing with it. I was annoyed when people would ask me about that lyric. Like, who are you?

No. I don’t like it. It’s just the only thing [I’ve known]. So I’m trying to do a new thing. I never wrote better when I had a lot of turmoil going on. Born to Die was already done before any of the shit hit the fan. When things are good, the music is better. I’m trying to change from the way I thought things were gonna be to what I feel like they could be, which is maybe just brighter.  

Yeah. I think for most people, regardless of what they say, it’s probably a direct reflection of their inner world. With my first record, I didn’t feel upset. I felt very excited, and then I felt a little more confused.

Of course. I’m always being myself. They don’t know what authentic is. If you think of all the music that came out until 2013, it was super straight and shiny. If that’s authentic to you, this is going to look like the opposite. I think that shit is stylized. Just because I do my hair big does not mean I’m a product. If anything, I’m doing my own hair, stuffing my own fucking stuffing in there if I have a beehive. Music was in a super weird place when I became known, and I didn’t really like any of it.

No. Women hated me. I know why. It’s because there were things I was saying that either they just couldn’t connect to or were maybe worried that, if they were in the same situation, it would put them in a vulnerable place.

No, I wasn’t. That wasn’t my angle. I didn’t really have an angle—that’s the thing.

There’s been a major sonic shift culturally. I think I had a lot to do with that. I do. I hear a lot of music that sounds like those early records. It would be weird to say that it didn’t. I remember seven years ago I was trying to get a record deal, and people were like, “Are you kidding? These tunes? There’s zero market for this.” There was just such a long time where people had to fit into that pop box. 

I so double downed. [The early criticism] made me question myself—I didn’t know if it was always going to be that way. You can’t put out records if 90 percent of the reviews in places like the Times are going to be negative. That would be crazy. It would have made sense to step all the way back, but I was like, Let me put out three more records and see if I can just stand in the eye of the storm. Not shift too much. Let me just take some of the [production] off so you can hear things a little bit better; I thought people were maybe getting distracted. I did the same thing with Honeymoon . Everyone around here heard it and was like, “It’s a cool record, but you know it’s not going to be on the radio, right?” And I was like, “Yeah. I told [record executive] Jimmy [Iovine] when I signed, ‘If you want to sign me, this is all it’s ever going to be.’” I was just so committed to making music because I believe in what I do. All I had to do was not quit.

We’ll see. That’s been my experience up until now, but, like, I’m trying.

That’s a sad song. In that song—[ sings ] I keep my lips red like cherries in the spring/Darling, you can’t let everything seem so dark blue —that’s a girl who is still seeing the blue sky and a putting on a pop of color just for herself. But this [other] person—it was all black for them. And my world became inky with those overtones. [ At this, Lana begins to cry, and we pause for a moment .] 

In that moment, when I said “pop of color,” I was connected to that feeling of only being able to see a portion of the world in color. And when you feel that way, you can feel trapped.

[ sighs ] I don’t really know how to describe my perspective at the moment. 

It’s not. I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t know what it is. 

No. It’s just that something is happening.

I’m really simple. I love nature. I like hikes. Being by the water—I don’t always get in. I love the elements. Playing an outdoor festival. Love that feeling.

Feeling like going backwards.

You have to figure it out.

Because things have shifted culturally. It’s more appropriate now than under the Obama administration, where at least everyone I knew felt safe. It was a good time. We were on the up-and-up. 

Women started to feel less safe under this administration instantly. What if they take away Planned Parenthood? What if we can’t get birth control? Now, when people ask me those questions, I feel a little differently. The reason why I asked Stevie Nicks to be on the record is because she changes when her environment changes, and I’m like that as well. 

In “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” I wrote, “Boys, don’t make too much noise/Don’t try to be funny/Other people may not be understanding.” Like, Can you tone down your over-boisterous rhetoric that isn’t working? “God Bless America - And All the Beautiful Women in It” is a little shoutout to the women and anyone else who doesn’t always feel safe walking down the street late at night. That’s what I was thinking of when I wrote, “Even when I’m alone I’m not lonely/I feel your arms around me.” It’s not always how I feel when I’m walking down the street, but sometimes in my music I try to write about a place that I’m going to get to.

I feel less safe than I did when Obama was president. When you have a leader at the top of the pyramid who is casually being loud and funny about things like that, it’s brought up character defects in people who already have the propensity to be violent towards women. I saw it right away in L.A. Walking down the street, people would just say things to you that I had never heard.

When people asked me the feminist question before, I was like, “I’m not really experiencing personal discrimination as a woman. I feel like I’m doing well. I headline shows just like the Weeknd does. I got tons of women in my life, love women, support women.” I just felt like, Why don’t we talk about the music first? I can tell you that what I have done for women is tell my own story, and that’s all anyone can do. 

It’s certainly uncomfortable. I definitely changed my visuals on my tour videos. I’m not going to have the American flag waving while I’m singing “Born to Die.” It’s not going to happen. I’d rather have static. It’s a transitional period, and I’m super aware of that. I think it would be inappropriate to be in France with an American flag. It would feel weird to me now—it didn’t feel weird in 2013. 

All the guys in the studio—we didn’t know we were going to start walking in every day and talking about what was going on. We hadn’t ever done that before, but everyday during the election, you’d wake up and some new horrible thing was happening. Korea, with missiles suddenly being pointed at the western coast. With “When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing,” I was posing a real question to myself: Could this be the end of an era? The fall of Rome?

I know I walk the line sometimes. [ laughs ] I saw comments that people said about my little “Coachella - Woodstock in my Mind” song. I write that title and I’m like, OK, I know I went there. But I think it’s amazing. It’s on the nose. It’s so on the nose. But sometimes things just are what they are. I’m at Coachella for three days, and North Korea is pointing a missile at us, and I’m watching Father John Misty with my best friend, who’s his wife—that’s all I’m literally saying. It’s just like, Yeah, I’m a hipster. I know it. Got it.

She came in straight off a plane from her last show of like 60 cities, which I was actually supposed to open for. She had asked me, and I was like, “Oh my god.” But I couldn’t because I don’t want to do a 60-show tour.

She flew through the door. Blond highlights, rose gold glasses, gold-tipped nails, rose gold lipstick, gold chains, gold rings, black on black on black. Very stylish. And meanwhile, I looked like a housewife of 15—flannel on flannel, because it was a cold night. And I was like, Why did I not dress up for Stevie Nicks?

At the end of the track, she sings, then I sing, then she sings. I was kinda embarrassed. I was like, “I sound so little compared to you.” And she was like, “That’s good, you’re my little echo.” And I was like, Stevie called me her little echo . It’s a stupid little thing, but she was very nurturing in that way, and not belittling of the fact that I had a more breathy voice. Which I wasn’t even aware of until I was shoulder-to-shoulder on a track with someone with less air in their voice. I felt a little more exposed in that moment. But she was like, “That’s you. You just be you.” 

It was a surprise for Kim. I hadn’t met her. I sang “Young and Beautiful,” “Summertime Sadness,” “Blue Jeans.” Kanye requested “Young and Beautiful.” The girls—the Kardashians—were so nice. There was only one front row, just them, right there. They were living for it. They started playing Kanye and Jay-Z records for the rest of the thing and it rained and everyone was just up dancing in the rain. I stayed for like 40 minutes and then I left.

Yeah. It’s funny. I have a flask and a lighter as well. I don’t do coke.

No comment.  

Not on this record. I well used to do a lot of drugs, but I actively don’t now.

No comment. [ laughs ] But I think the coke spoon is kinda funny. I’m just like, Whatever. I don’t think it’s going to make anyone do coke.

Not really. That’s the one thing I don’t have my finger on. I am there, but there are times I don’t really know it. There’s certain stuff that I think is kinda dope that I know other people might be like, Okayyyyy .

That’s real life though. Super real life.

Fuck that guy, though. I didn’t think he would print it and make it the headline. I was having a really tough time. I had been on the road for a year. I was really struggling. I was just stupid, I was like, “I fucking want to die.” Maybe I meant it. I don’t really know. 

All of them. The last record—I listen to a song like “ Terrence Loves You ,” and I just really feel for myself at the time. The person I’m singing about—[ sings ] You are what you are/I don’t matter to anyone —did I really just say I don’t matter to anyone? That’s fucking crazy. 

I guess so. I sang it.

My records. I love my records. I love them. I’m proud of the way I’ve put parts of my story into songs in ways that only I understand. In terms of my gauge of what’s good, it’s really just what I think. I have an internal framework that is the only thing I measure it by. My own opinion is really important to me. It starts and stops there.

By Nina Corcoran

By Matthew Strauss

By Jazz Monroe

By Eric Torres

Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey is a Grammy-nominated musician known for the songs “Summertime Sadness,” “West Coast,” and “A&W.”

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1985-present

Lana Del Rey Now: Singer Headlines 2024 Coachella

Lana Del Rey is no stranger to the Coachella Valley. But her return in April 2024 is as a headliner at the famed Coachella music festival that spans two weekends. The 38-year-old “A&W” singer first performed at the fest a decade ago then later wrote the song “Coachella - Woodstock in My Mind” after attending as a fan. She is set to perform April 12 and April 19.

Quick Facts

Where is lana del rey from, becoming lana del rey, notable songs, grammy nominations, tours and other career highlights, ex-boyfriends, controversies and waffle house appearance, who is lana del rey.

Musician Lana Del Rey is known for her melancholic and often nostalgic sound featured on songs like “Summertime Sadness,” “Young and Beautiful,” and “West Coast.” Del Rey first performed under her real name, Lizzy Grant, but found fame as Lana Del Rey in 2011 with a self-produced music video for her song “Video Games.” She has since sold millions of albums, beginning with 2012’s Born to Die , and earned 11 Grammy nominations. Del Rey released her ninth studio album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd , in March 2023. Her new album, Lasso , is expected this September.

FULL NAME: Elizabeth Woolridge Grant BORN: June 21, 1985 BIRTHPLACE: New York, New York ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Lana Del Rey was born as Elizabeth Woolridge Grant on June 21, 1985, in New York City. Her parents were working in advertising when she was born but left their city life behind to move to Lake Placid, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains when Del Rey was a baby.

She grew up with a younger brother and sister. Her sister, photographer Caroline “Chuck” Grant, shot Del Rey’s Lust for Life album cover and has taken promotional photos of the musician.

As a teenager in the small community of Lake Placid, Del Rey started drinking heavily. She’d attended Catholic school, but her parents sent her to Kent School, a boarding school in Connecticut, because of her drinking. Boarding school wasn’t a complete cure, but by the age of 18, Del Rey was sober.

Instead of attending college right away, she went to live with her aunt and uncle on Long Island; her uncle taught her to play guitar. Although Del Rey soon enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx, where she studied philosophy, music became her true focus.

Del Rey, then still known as Lizzy Grant, started her career with open mic nights and club gigs. In 2006, she entered a songwriting competition; she didn’t win, but a judge on the panel helped her create a demo, which led to her signing with the indie label 5 Points. With the $10,000 she earned for this deal, Del Rey moved into a New Jersey trailer park.

“The way things started off for me in the way I was portrayed was that I was feigning emotional sensitivity. I really didn’t like that,” she told MOJO in 2021. “Because I didn’t even get famous ’til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a f––.”

Her musical inspirations include Joan Baez , Cat Power, Kurt Cobain , Stevie Nicks , Britney Spears , Frank Sinatra , Bob Dylan , and Eminem , as well as poets Allen Ginsberg , Vladimir Nabokov, and Walt Whitman .

By the time her first album, Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant , came out in 2010, Del Rey had decided she wanted to work under a new name. She flirted with names like Sparkle Rope Jump Queen and May Jailer before settling on Lana Del Rey, which was selected on a trip to Miami in part for its evocation of coastal glamor. “Lana Del Rey just sounded good coming out of my mouth—it was exotic sounding, and I like exotic places and I like really gorgeous things,” she later told Dazed . “I could build a sonic world towards the way the name fell off my lips. It’s helped me a lot.”

Del Rey created a signature sound of vulnerable, emotional alternative music that often incorporates nostalgia for America’s past. Her aesthetic typically pairs American iconography with darker perspectives, something she dubbed “Hollywood Sadcore” early on. To match her new name, she dyed her blonde hair and adopted a more retro, glamorized image. One of her managers described her as “gangster Nancy Sinatra .”

Around this time, she left her record label behind and briefly lived in London, where she focused on songwriting with the likes of Justin Parker, among others. They collaborated on her song “Video Games,” which Del Rey released on YouTube with a music video she produced once she was back in the United States. It became a viral hit and finally paved the way for her mainstream success.

The news that Del Rey had signed with Interscope Records in October 2011 made some people wonder if “Video Games,” released earlier that summer, was a marketing ploy and not a video she’d created herself. There was also speculation that her father was a millionaire who’d bankrolled her (Del Rey has said her family was never wealthy).

In 2012, Del Rey appeared on Saturday Night Live and was criticized for looking nervous and singing hesitantly. That same year, reviewers panned her first studio album, Born to Die , and her sound. “I think in one week, The New Yorker , The New York Times , The New York Post , and New York magazine agreed that it was the most ridiculous act that had ever come out,” the singer told Harper’s Bazaar in 2023. Instead of stopping her, the critiques inspired Del Rey to continue to create. Besides, fans loved Born To Die and propelled it into the Top 5 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Del Rey’s successful career was off and running.

To date, Dey Rey has released nine albums, including one under her real name Lizzy Grant, and one EP. Born To Die from 2012 is often credited as her debut, as this was the first to carry her professional name. The musician’s first album overall actually dates back to 2010’s Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant .

In February 2024, Dey Rey announced an upcoming new album. Lasso is scheduled for release this September.

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Before Del Rey adopted the professional moniker of Lana Del Rey, she made an album titled Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant (spelling Ray with an “a,” not an “e”). It came out in 2010 while she was signed with 5 Points Records, but the digital release was only available for a couple of months. She later got back the rights to her first album so as to avoid confusion with her assumed moniker.

Born To Die

Del Rey’s first major-label album was Born To Die , which came out in 2012. Although critics didn’t embrace the album, it reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200, has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, and has been certified platinum five times. It remains her best-selling album to date and includes one of her most popular songs “Summertime Sadness.”

The year 2012 also saw the arrival of Dey Rey’s EP Paradise , which contained the songs “Ride” and “Cola.” The 8-track collection earned the singer a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album.

Ultraviolence

Ultraviolence , from 2014, featured atmospheric ballads like “Pretty When You Cry,” “Sad Girl,” and “West Coast.” It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and became platinum-certified in November 2021. Before its release, Del Rey redid the completed album with producer Dan Auerbach, using single takes and cheap microphones instead of professional equipment.

Del Rey has described her dark, critically praised 2015 album, Honeymoon , as “a tribute to Los Angeles.” She moved to California in 2012 and says it’s a place where she’s found more musical collaborators than in New York. It reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and landed at No. 1 in countries like Australia and Ireland.

Lust For Life

In 2017, Del Rey released Lust For Life . Although there are still dark tunes on the album, songs like “Love” gave it a more upbeat tone than earlier Del Rey projects, while tracks like “Coachella - Woodstock in My Mind” took the day’s politics into account. It’s also the first Del Rey album with guest artists, including The Weeknd  on “Lust for Life,” Stevie Nicks on “Beautiful People Beautiful Problems,” and Sean Ono Lennon on “Tomorrow Never Came.” The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Norman F––g Rockwell

In September 2018, Del Rey released two singles from her forthcoming sixth studio album, the pensive “Mariners Apartment Complex” and more expansive “Venice Bitch.” She followed in January 2019 with “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have – but I Have It,” originally named after troubled American poet Sylvia Plath , before dropping a dreamy cover of Sublime’s “Doing Time” in May.

The album, Norman F––g Rockwell arrived at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 following its August 2019 debut, with “The Greatest” and the title track also earning releases as singles before the end of the year. Del Rey described the album to Billboard as, “A folk record with a little surf twist.” Both the album and its title track earned Grammy nominations for Album and Song of the Year.

Chemtrails Over the Country Club

Del Rey released the single “Let Me Love You Like A Woman” from her seventh studio album, Chemtrails Over the Country Club , in October 2020. “I’ve been really stressed about this album,” the musician shared with Interview before its March 2021 release. “From the top, we knew what Norman was. But with Chemtrails , it was like, ‘Is this new folk? Oh, god, are we going country?’ Now that it’s done I feel really good about it, and I think a defining moment for this album will be ‘White Dress/Waitress.’” Later renamed simply “White Dress,” that song opened the album, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Chemtrails also included a cover of Joni Mitchell ’s song “For Free.”

Blue Banisters

Just seven months after Chemtrails Over the Country Club , Del Rey was back with her eighth studio album, Blue Banisters . The October 2021 release didn’t fare quite as well as her previous albums, peaking at No. 8 on the Billboard 200. However, it became her sixth album to top Billboard ’s Alternative Albums chart, setting a new record. (The musician had previously been tied with the Foo Fighters and Coldplay.)

“ Blue Banisters was more of an explanatory album, more of a defensive album, which is why I didn’t promote it, period, at all,” Del Rey  shared with Rolling Stone UK in a 2023 article. “I didn’t want anyone to listen to it. I just wanted it to be there in case anyone was ever curious for any information.”

Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd

Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd released in March 2023. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and extended her No. 1 alternative albums to seven. “Family of origin is the overall theme,” Del Rey told Billboard . “I think with Blue Banisters I wanted to capture this idea, too, but I flew it under the radar. I was trying to address some criticisms that I had heard said after Chemtrails … mostly that people don’t know much about me. I didn’t promote that theme of Blue Banisters at all intentionally.”

She went on to add, “In this album, I got to really finish my thoughts and get super specific, which I was not comfortable with completely before… I do list my grandpa, my brother, my dad, my Uncle Dave.”

Did You Know subsequently collected six 2024 Grammy nominations , including for Album of the Year.

Del Rey is set to release her tenth studio album, titled Lasso , in September 2024. She made the announcement at the Billboard x NMPA Songwriter Awards in February 2024. “If you can’t already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country,” she said at the event. “We’re going country. It’s happening.”

Del Rey’s work largely isn’t made up of numerous radio hits, but she’s created songs that have received billions of listens. That includes the multi-platinum songs “Summertime Sadness,” “Young And Beautiful,” “Born To Die,” and “West Coast.”

Her earliest hits stood out for their viral music videos that established her “Hollywood Sadcore” aesthetic. “Video Games” from 2011 struck a chord with its mixed vintage footage, old cartoons, Hollywood imagery, an unsteady Paz de la Huerta outside the Chateau Marmont, and shots of Del Rey herself. “Blue Jeans,” which came out in March 2012, was another popular DIY video.

The video for “Born to Die” was a much more elaborate affair. It included two tigers and evoked Rebel Without a Cause with its car wreck ending. For the “National Anthem” video, Del Rey portrayed both Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Marilyn Monroe , alongside rapper A$AP Rocky ’s John F. Kennedy .

“Summertime Sadness” exploded in popularity after Cedric Gervais made an EDM remix of the song in 2013. That version rose to No. 6 on Billboard Hot 100, and the platinum-certified original from 2012 has now sold the equivalent of 6 million copies. Del Rey’s highest-charting solo song on the Hot 100 is “West Coast,” which landed at No. 17 in 2014.

Del Rey’s vocals have graced a handful of movie soundtracks. She wrote “Young and Beautiful” for the 2013 remake of The Great Gatsby , starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. Part of the movie’s Jay-Z –curated soundtrack, the song was then nominated for a Grammy Award. The next year, Del Rey contributed the Golden Globe–nominated track “Big Eyes” to the Tim Burton film of the same name and sang an updated “Once Upon a Dream” for Maleficent , starring Angelina Jolie . For 2019’s Charlie’s Angels movie, she appeared alongside pop stars Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande on the song “Don’t Call Me Angel (Charlie’s Angels).” It debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

More recently, Del Rey has earned critical praise for “Norman F––g Rockwell” and “A&W.” The tracks were nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 2020 and 2024, respectively.

Her collaborations with other artists are also well-known. Del Rey has worked with The Weeknd multiple times. Beyond her own songs, the pair teamed up on his songs “Prisoner” from 2015 and 2016’s “Stargirl Interlude.” In 2022, Del Rey co-wrote and appeared on Taylor Swift ’s song “Snow on the Beach” from her album Midnights . “That was actually the song Taylor wanted me to sing on. If I think someone’s song is perfect, I will act as a producer in it,” Del Rey told Harper’s Bazaar . “She wanted me to sing the whole thing, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Since her first two nods in 2013, Del Rey has received a total of 11 Grammy Award nominations. The musician has yet to secure a trophy, however.

Among her Grammy nominations are three for Album of the Year recognizing Norman F––g Rockwell , Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd , and The Weeknd ’s Beauty Behind The Madness , which features Del Rey on a song. She has two nominations in another major category, Song of the Year, for “Norman F––g Rockwell” and “A&W.”

Elsewhere, her song “Young And Beautiful,” for the 2013 movie The Great Gatsby , competed for Best Song Written for Visual Media. Lust for Life and her EP Paradise both competed for Best Pop Vocal Album.

For the 2024 Grammys, Del Rey earned five Grammy nominations. Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd was up for Best Alternative Music Album in addition to Album of the Year. Song of the Year nominee “A&W” also competed for Best Alternative Music Performance. Finally, Del Rey’s song with Jon Batiste, “Candy Necklace,” was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Del Rey’s first tours were largely international. Then in 2015, the singer embarked on her Endless Summer Tour that visited 17 cities, mostly in the United States. Courtney Love was the musical guest at some of the concerts. Next came 2018’s LA to the Moon Tour, spanning a jam-packed slate of shows that January and February. Del Rey has also performed during The Norman F––g Rockwell Tour in 2019 and in another slate of shows in fall 2023 to support Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd .

Mainstream success brought Del Rey opportunities outside the music world. She modeled for H&M, and the British luxury brand Mulberry created a signature handbag, The Del Rey, for her. In 2013, she made a short film called Tropico , as well as a Tropico EP. Elsewhere, she inspired James Franco and a co-author to write Flip-Side: Real and Imaginary Conversations With Lana Del Rey (2016). Del Rey attended the 2018 Met Gala, alongside Jared Leto , while sporting a halo with wings and a dress with knives sticking out of a gold heart.

Del Rey is also a poet. She released her first spoken word poetry, a collection titled Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, in July 2020. She subsequently released a hardcover book of the poems in September 2020. It featured more than 30 poems she wrote.

Del Rey has had a series of romantic relationships with fellow artists and musicians.

She previously dated Scottish singer Barrie-James O’Neill from 2011 to 2014, photographer Francesco Carrozzini from 2014 to 2015, rapper G-Eazy for a short time in 2017, then cop and Live PD analyst Sean Larkin from 2019 to early 2020.

Later in 2020, she connected with musician Clayton Johnson. The couple became engaged before breaking up in the fall of 2021.

Del Rey then had a relationship with Jack Donoghue from 2022 to sometime in 2023. Most recently, she was rumored to be engaged to music manager Evan Winiker in March 2023, but the pair have since called it quits.

The singer discussed her romantic life most recently in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar published in November 2023. “I’m definitely not in love right now,” Del Rey said. “It hasn’t crossed my mind in the last five months on the road or here yet. But give it a week. My history, sure, it’s coming for me.”

Over the years in the public eye, the musician has been a target for crime. Her house has been broken into, and in 2012, her computer was hacked, exposing personal information and unreleased songs, many of which spread online. In February 2018, a man was arrested at a concert in Orlando, Florida, for plotting to kidnap the singer.

Del Rey has also courted her own controversies, starting with a 2014 interview with The Guardian in 2014. “I wish I was dead already,” she said after talking about the late musicians Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse . Cobain’s daughter, Frances , criticized her for the remark.

Sometimes her songs have touched on sensitive topics and hot-button political issues. Del Rey’s 2014 song “Ultraviolence” featured the controversial line “He hit me and it felt like a kiss.” Three years later, Del Rey said she’s no longer comfortable with the lyric. In 2019, she earned attention for the August release of “Looking for America,” with lyrics like “I’m still looking for my own version of America/One without the gun, where the flag can freely fly” inspired by recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Del Rey’s track “Judah Smith Interlude” on her 2023 album caught flack from some fans over her inclusion of megachurch pastor Judah Smith’s sermon.

In early 2018, news broke that Radiohead asked for some of the publishing rights to Del Rey’s “Get Free” due to similarities to their hit song “Creep.” During a performance that March, the singer said her and the band’s dispute had been resolved.

Del Rey has come under fire more than once over matters of race and representation. In a May 2020 Instagram post, after she cited Ariana Grande , Cardi B , Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé as singers who “have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, f––g, cheating, etc,” Del Rey asked why was being condemned for “glamorizing abuse.” Critics wondered why she was mainly singling out women of color and pointed out that the other artists named in her post had also endured plenty of negative comments.

The next year, Del Rey released the cover of her album Chemtrails Over the Country Club , which featured a photo of the musician surrounded by a group of women. Fans criticized her for its lack of diversity. “No this was not intended — these are my best friends, since you are asking today,” she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post. “As it happens when it comes to my amazing friends and this cover, yes, there are people of color on this record’s picture and that’s all I’ll say about that.” However, she added another statement, in part saying, “We are all a beautiful mix of everything - some more than others, which is visible and celebrated in everything I do.”

In a bizarre turn, in September 2023, Del Rey was spotted at a Waffle House in Florence, Alabama, apparently working a shift. Fans speculated she was working on a new project or possibly promoting one. However, the “A&W” singer told The Hollywood Reporter it wasn’t a stunt, nor a new job, but something that happened organically after she spent several days visiting the restaurant. “We were on our third hour, and the servers asked, ‘Do you guys want shirts?’ ” Del Rey explained. “Hell yeah! We were thrilled.”

• I’m not afraid of a fight. I’ll go from zero to 100 real fast, but that’s what you can do when you’re at home with yourself. You can fight fast, love fast, all that stuff.
• Here’s the thing. It’s good to know that the coolest of the cool can still be so messy because it’s like—there’s no competition. Your life is your art. I just feel lucky that you said yes, because I couldn’t see it any other way.

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Emily Shiffer has worked as a writer for over 10 years, covering everything from health and wellness to entertainment and celebrities. She previously was on staff at SUCCESS , Men's Health , and Prevention magazines. Her freelance writing has been featured in Women's Health , Runner's World , PEOPLE , and more. Emily is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in magazine journalism at the Medill School of Journalism and minored in musicology. Currently residing in Charleston, South Carolina, Emily enjoys instructing barre, surfing, and long walks on the beach with her miniature Dachshund, Gertrude.

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Lana Del Rey Leads With Her Heart

She's one of the most influential songwriters of the 21st century—and also one of the most misunderstood. But there’s a fine (and radical) art to learning to let go.

Lana Del Rey points a red vape at a set of lounge chairs in her backyard. “When I bought those,” she tells me, “I was stoked.” I’m skeptical. The chairs look untouched, unused. A telltale line bisects their fabric, marking where the fence has cast a shadow over half of the material. There, in perpetual shade, the vibrant green pattern is preserved, but above it the fabric is exposed, bleached by the sun, nearly to white.

“We had a firepit,” Del Rey says, gesturing first to a place in the yard that doesn’t seem to have ever had a firepit and then to a dilapidated daybed. “Despite its state, this daybed, I’m proud of this,” Del Rey tells me. “I got it from Living Spaces. They brought it in the morning and assembled it by four. That’s amazing.”

Is it? I wonder. Is this quick assembly of a now waterlogged and forgotten daybed amazing to Lana Del Rey, one of the most successful and influential singers, songwriters, and forces in popular music overthe past decade? Some of my doubt manifests in relation to her house, which seems more set design than home, conceived to persuade me that I’m in the presence of the world’s most down-to-earth multimillionaire.

To be clear, this house is charming. I can only describe it as unassuming, with a small yard of yellowing grass. But it is also exceedingly modest for a woman of Del Rey’s fame and resources. The home is comfortable, clean, and simply adorned. There’s little in the way of decoration other than a magazine cutout of Marilyn Monroe tacked to a window in the bathroom and a few pictures of family. Her brother, Charlie, uses a sunny room in the back as his office, and their sister, Caroline, is over often. “We process things as a family,” Del Rey says, speaking to her bond with her siblings. “It’s never alone. Some nights it’s alone, but not really. We’re on the same page. We’re always on the same page.”

Del Rey too is simply adorned in slim jeans, a plain sweater, and ballet flats. Her long brown hair is neatly brushed, and her face is free of makeup aside from a slight and delicate winged eyeliner—the only visual connection to the femme fatale look of her professional life. Her speaking voice is soft and lilting. She offers me a Diet Coke, a Red Bull, and a coffee, the last of which has just finished percolating in the same kind of $30 coffee maker I had in my college dorm room. Del Rey gathers up all three beverage options for herself, along with her red vape pen, and leads me outside. The steps to the patio are broken.

At this stage, Del Rey is generally considered to be one of the most accomplished songwriters of her generation—or as some people, like Taylor Swift , have offered, the best. Her 2012 major-label debut album, Born to Die, has spent more than 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart, a feat matched among women solo artists by only Adele . Del Rey followed up Born to Die with a succession of artistically varied and emotionally resonant music that stirred ever-increasing devotion in her fans. Her most recent effort, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd., released this past March, may be some of her best work to date. It’s a sprawling, textured meditation on timeworn themes like love, family, loss, and longing.

But as I sit beside Del Rey in her backyard, taking in the house, the broken stairs, and the fading fabrics on chairs, the feeling of doubt that had been creeping up on me suddenly doubles. I know this feeling is not coming from the house alone; it’s likely more from the cultural residue of suspicion built up by critics who, in the early days, were quick to dismiss Del Rey as somehow inauthentic, a flashy faker whose career would flicker brightly and burn out. The doubt around Del Rey has long been proved to be unfounded. I know this. And yet I still find myself searching for artifice and affect, for a peek beyond her persona to locate the space where some “realer” Del Rey is hidden. Isn’t this—for me, as a profiler—my assignment?

Luckily, my friend Kelly, a thoughtful and serious Del Rey fan, sets me straight. Del Rey, Kelly reminds me, shops at Kohl’s, gets awards-show dresses off the rack at the mall , and makes friends with workers at a Waffle House and starts serving people alongside them. Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. is also up this year for five Grammys , including Album of the Year, to add to Del Rey's previous six nominations, and she has spent a third of 2023 on tour, headlining venues around the world. No single one of these truths negates or invalidates the authenticity of any of the others. “If you’re trying to understand her through some stiff binary of persona versus authenticity,” Kelly says, correctly scolding me, “you’ve already failed the assignment.”

So who is Del Rey beyond this binary?

“She’s unearthly suburban and unreasonably talented, and she can pretend to be a normal person,” the filmmaker and writer John Waters tells me. “I think of the ad campaign for Russ Meyer’s Lorna, ” he says admiringly, referring to the 1964 sexploitation film. “[The tagline] could go for her: ‘Longing, love, lust, life, Lana. Too much for one man.’ ”

Director David Lynch is also a fan. “She tells a story in her music,” Lynch says. “She gives a mood and a story and a way to think, and she paints a picture in your brain.”

Legendary singer-songwriter and activist Joan Baez says that the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on her friendship with Del Rey is Del Rey’s generosity. Del Rey, Baez recalls, once gave Baez’s granddaughter, who was cold, the jacket off her back, gifting it to her permanently after signing the sleeve. Baez also admires Del Rey’s sense of humor. Once at a lunch together, Del Rey was struck with “a laughing fit,” says Baez. “And she flattened herself out on her back on two chairs, just with her head kind of locked over the back of the chair, just laughing, just giggling and putting us all in the giggles. … She’s delightful. That’s a good word for her, among other things.”

“I’m definitely not in love right now. … But give it a week. My history, sure, it’s coming for me.”

But my favorite story about Del Rey comes from her trusted clairvoyant Tessa DiPietro, whom Del Rey sees weekly. The two had attended a guided meditation together and were sitting in a circle with others when the leader asked them all to imagine the shape of their thoughts. “It was very kind of heady,” DiPietro says. “I think people felt there was this tension in the room to have the right answer to ‘What are the shape of my thoughts?’ And people are saying stuff like, ‘Well, my thoughts look like clouds.’ And somebody else will go, ‘Well, my thoughts look like little bubbles.’ And we come around to Lana, and she’s looking into space and thinking, and then she says, ‘Men. My thoughts are all shaped like men.’ It was so perfect because you couldn’t tell if she was being ironic or not. And yet it was the most truthful answer anybody had given.”

Del Rey was born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant and grew up in Lake Placid, New York. She released music first under her own name, as Lizzy Grant. But when that failed to chart, she chose a stage name and a new look—one that pulled from the iconography of doomed beauty, a pastiche of pinup bombshell and gangster’s girlfriend. She was Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Priscilla Presley, Karen Black in Easy Rider. Her videos were a collage of images signaling the American dream gone wrong: blinking neon, leaves in the swimming pools, death and love and sex displayed before the flag. Was it one reference too many? Stage names, symbolism, and reinvention are nothing new to music. Yet in Del Rey’s case, some people felt inexplicably tricked.

Upon its release, Born to Die was widely critically panned. The New Yorker said that the “Del Rey character is a combination of disaffected and cynical and romantic and brutal and naïve, which makes her sound more forgetful than profound.” The New York Times reduced Del Rey to a mere “pose, cut from existing, densely patterned cloth” and diagnosed her career as “founded on bad faith all around.” Pitchfork rejected Born to Die as “out of touch,” not just with the world but also with “the simple business of human emotion,” slamming it in the closing line of the review as “the album equivalent of a faked orgasm.”

Audiences disagreed. Catapulted by the success of singles like “Video Games,” “Blue Jeans,” and “National Anthem,” Born to Die became the fifth-highest-selling album in the world in 2012.

Del Rey, though, was hurt. “I think in one week, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Post, and New York magazine agreed that it was the most ridiculous act that had ever come out,” she says. But she rode the disorienting waves of critical rejection and commercial success in the best possible fashion: by simply continuing to write songs. “That may have been just pure ‘Let’s try and make this work!’ energy,” she says. “I’m sure my intuition in my everyday life was still pretty strong. But with the career, I think it was like ‘Let’s just try and see if we can make this work’ instead of having it come to a brutal end.”

“I’m sure my intuition in my everyday life was still pretty strong. But with the career, I think it was like, ‘Let’s just try and see if we can make this work.’”

Interestingly, Del Rey credits this period with gifting her a unique opportunity for self-reflection. When critics called her inauthentic, she sought to understand what it was they were seeing and why it differed from how she felt. “It was 100 percent authentic,” she says of her Born to Die reinvention. “It’s just that where I was at the time was malleable in my own life—easy to, like, acquiesce,” she explains. “I kept rereading the idea of somebody who was feigning vulnerability,” she says. “[But] perhaps what they saw was what was vulnerable.”

Critics have retrospectively hailed Del Rey as a singular and pioneering talent whose influence is evident in the work of artists like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo —including Pitchfork, which ran a new review of Born to Die nearly a decade after the first one, writing, “Lana is reaching for something: the fulcrum point where the fear and pain of sexualization start to work as leverage.” It reaffirms, even though she has nothing left to prove, that those who foresaw her career as a mere cultural blip were—well, Del Rey puts it best: “It’s almost like they were wrong,” she says. “That’s all. They just got it all wrong. That’s all.”

When I ask Del Rey how she processes just how far her career has come, her face lights up. “We’re famous down in Arkansas,” she says, beaming. Something magical happened there recently. She had been booked to play the Walmart amphitheater in Rogers, and the show had sold out in hours, leaving many fans who’d been waiting in the online queue to buy tickets out of luck. Del Rey hadn’t expected to have such a fan base in Arkansas, and so she was shocked when a waitress at a tavern she visited after performing showed her a screenshot of the queue. The waitress had been number 80,000.

“When I saw that, that’s when I knew—it’s the moment,” Del Rey tells me. The defining moment for you? I ask her. “Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.” Really? Out of everything? “Anything that’s ever happened in my whole life,” she says definitively. “That’s it.”

Why was this moment in Arkansas so meaningful to Del Rey? Well, in a way, it seems to all come back to this little house, which has become, for Del Rey, a kind of “accidental” litmus test. “We had some fights over this house, a couple people,” Del Rey says. “They didn’t get it.”

One person who didn’t get it was a boyfriend. “I feel like even the most chill guy doesn’t really want to chill here,” Del Rey says. “Sadly, part of you knows … that ain’t it. … That one shocked me. I won’t name names and whatever, but that one really shocked me, that person. That was actually the end of a relationship.”

He had wanted more from her, from her house maybe? But what had he wanted? And what had I, too, expected? An idea of her, but not actually her. “That’s a tough nut to swallow,” she says, her words dissolving into the warm evening air. “In that person’s case,” she says, referring again to her ex, “there was something going on with them, like a little bubble ego. See, I don’t get to have one anymore. It’s been smashed to … what do you call it? Smithereens. I’m sure it’s somewhere in my toe. That’s it. I’d love to grow one. I’m learning how. I’m learning,” she says. “I know what I want.”

I, too, am failing her litmus test as I continue to wonder if the modesty of this house constitutes yet another brick in the wall of her persona. Why do I keep digging then for some sort of ulterior motive or proof of deception? Why do I struggle to take her at her word? Do I feel an entitlement that stems from the journalists who’ve come before me to demand she perform some version of authenticity they deem recognizable?

“I won’t name names and whatever. But that one really shocked me, that person. That was actually the end of a relationship.”

I am not the first or last to perceive her with quizzical suspicion. But the people in the queue in Arkansas? The waitress at the tavern? Del Rey received from them only acceptance and appreciation. Would they take her at her word? Would they love this house and everything in it? Would they want to chill with her here? Yes, she feels they would. “That’s it,” she affirms when I suggest this connection. “And that sums it all up with a period.”

The simplicity of the house is perhaps in line with the simplicity of Del Rey’s current desires, which are few. She isn’t sure she wants anything at all, and this, she told a friend recently, has come with its own set of challenges. “I don’t think it’s because I’ve done everything. I just don’t want, really. I thought about it all day, two days ago. Bugged me. I just couldn’t think of anything. And it wasn’t in the way, like, ‘Thou shalt not want for anything!’ It wasn’t like that. It was more just like I couldn’t think of anything. And [my friend] said, ‘Well, what if you whipped up your wildest desire?’ And I was like, I just couldn’t even whip something up journaling. So, I don’t know. But I have wanted things in the past really strongly.”

I ask her what she’s wanted most before, and she demurs, “I don’t know if I would say.” What about love? I wonder. I ask her if she’s in love right now. “I’m definitely not in love right now. No,” she says firmly, smiling. “Absolutely not in love. Have been, but no.” But is it something she wants? I ask. She shrugs. “Well, I’ll tell you. It hasn’t crossed my mind in the last five months on the road or here yet. But give it a week. My history, sure, it’s coming for me at some point. Yeah. It would be interesting if it didn’t. It would be interesting if it didn’t.”

Can you imagine that life without commitment to romantic love? I ask her. “I don’t know,” she says, then mulls over the question for a moment. “I think I would have to get my orientation toward where I want to be geographically stronger in my solar plexus, like a knowingness there, before I could tune into a stronger desire romantically. Because if you don’t feel a connection necessarily to the pavement you’re walking on, the love thing stays over there,” she says, waving out toward a world beyond her yard.

Regardless of where she lives and what others make of it, Del Rey’s strongest sense of place and belonging remains within herself. “I have a big old home inside,” she says. “That’s the whole thing. It’s warm in here. There’s a huge hearth in here. If I had to peer right inside my heart, it’s really big. And it’s really hot and warm. But it can be icy though,” she warns me. “I’m not afraid of a fight. I’ll go from zero to 100 real fast, but that’s what you can do when you’re at home with yourself. You can fight fast, love fast, all that stuff.”

“It’s inconvenient to be in touch with yourself,” she says gently. “It really is.”

I look again at the lounge chairs Del Rey adores. There they are, out in the open, half obscured, half exposed. Shadow is not deception. It just is a place we cannot see into as easily.

We sit outside in the waning dusk, talking on and on until night has fully descended around us. There are no patio lights. Occasionally, Del Rey waves awake a motion-detector lamp with a flail of her arms and a hard beam blinks on, shining directly into my eyes, rendering them useless, then blinks off seconds later, leaving us again in total darkness.

This doesn’t bother Del Rey. She does not mind the shadows, nor does she hide herself within them. It’s my struggle, alone, to see.

A version of this story originally appeared in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Harper’s Bazaar .

Hair: anna cofone for authentic beauty concept ; makeup: etienne ortega for milk makeup ; manicure: emi kudo for dior le baume; production: day international; set design: maxim jezek, art, books & music.

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The laureate of l.a. darkness on fame, pain and joan baez..

In 2021, MOJO had an exclusive audience with the Springsteen-approved laureate of L.A. darkness, Lana Del Rey_. Her album, Chemtrails Over The Country Club, had opened a sunnier chapter in her controversial roman-à-clef, and folk legend Joan Baez had advocated her acceptance in the pantheon. But while serenity seemed almost in reach, some wounds still burned and grievances rankled. “Fame can put you on the peripheries,” she told_ Victoria Segal, “ where the vultures can pick at you...”

IT’S MIDNIGHT IN MODESTO and Lana Del Rey has swung into the backyard, pulled up in her fast car. “I told my boyfriend I was going to go out and sit in the car because I hate it when people listen to me talk,” she says. “I’m at his parents’ farm, so we’re in, like, the guest house. It’s pretty idyllic: Northern California, pretty cold, 40 degrees and a little fireplace. We had a sweet little night singing all the old Disney and holiday songs – not what I expected after a long car ride, but everyone was in a good mood.”

Tomorrow, Del Rey will hit the road back home to Los Angeles, preparing to spend Christmas Eve “with my sister and brother and just two girlfriends.” After the holiday, it will transpire she fractured her arm while spinning on her “beautiful skates” through the “twilight of the desert”: that’s why she’s wearing a sling in MOJO’s cover photograph.

Ever since she studied philosophy at New York’s Fordham University in the late 2000s, there’s been a question lurking in Del Rey’s mind: what if something happened to make the world stop? “So when it did,” she says, “I was kind of shocked.” The pandemic has inevitably hampered her movements – festivals cancelled, studio time with producer Jack Antonoff truncated – but it hasn’t slowed down her creative jumps (or her willingness to crash into social media).

September saw the publication of her poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass. In November, she covered Summertime as a fundraiser for the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras; covering all bases, she also recorded You’ll Never Walk Alone for a documentary about Liverpool FC.

The most significant landmark, however, was the completion of Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the album she has been promising (sometimes as White Hot Forever) since the release of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! Bruce Springsteen, who knows a bit about the flipside of the American dream, loved that album: “She just creates a world of her own and invites you in,” he said. The cover showed Del Rey standing on a boat, one arm around Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke, the other reaching towards the camera as if to save the viewer from the water. Behind her, the Californian coast is on fire. The Greatest, Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s defining song, was the cover’s aural analogue: “Hawaii just missed that fireball/LA is in flames it’s getting hot… Kanye West is blond and gone/Life On Mars ain’t just a song/I hope the livestream’s almost on.” But where do you go after burning America down? Did she know what was next?

“No,” says Del Rey lightly. “I felt totally fucked.”

You’d have got long odds, in 2012, on the internet phenomenon of the previous year’s Video Games becoming the decade’s most remarkable and provocative pop star. Back then, Lana Del Rey was more think-piece cipher than Boss-approved songwriter: “a young fiction,” sniffed the Los Angeles Times, “daughter of a domain-name magnate.”

The record states that Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was born in New York in 1985; as a baby, she moved with her parents upstate to Lake Placid. Music was around, but not unusually so. “From what I was told,” she says, “I sang verses before I spoke words, but I don’t think that necessarily meant I had to, or was going to be a singer.” Much else in her supposed biography, she says, is misinformation.

“People said I came from money,” she recounts. “It was really tough to get over some stigma of this idea of having my dad buying my album and giving me a record deal and us being some rich white family when we fought over money constantly when we were young.” Later, she says “I was not from the right side of the tracks, period.”

Sent to boarding school to address an alcohol problem – a period she captured in This Is What Makes Us Girls from her Born To Die album of 2012 – she “was made fun of mercilessly for being white trash. It was so hard, every minute of it was super-tough, not having come from Greenwich. Being super straight-edge in college was just, like, crazy. It’s been the road less travelled the whole time.” She has no interest, she insists, in properly telling her own story, “beautiful” though she says it is: “I don’t give a fuck about people knowing [mocking little voice] my inner thoughts as a third grader.”

Early detractors, chasing down a narrow idea of “authenticity”, were bothered by her musical prehistory – stalled experiments and false starts that might once have been called “paying your dues”. In 2006, she made Sirens under the name May Jailer, spindly alt-folk with a Linda Perhacs wobble that was never officially released. Her next ‘first’ album, Lana Del Ray AKA Lizzy Grant, was removed by her managers from the internet in 2010, preparing a clean slate for the post-Video Games era.

Yet as the plausibly deniable satire of Brooklyn Baby from 2014’s Ultraviolence indicates (“Well my boyfriend’s in a band/He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed”), she put in the hours on New York’s grottiest stages.

"She’s on the kind of form that can reckon with her past rather than just being doomed to repeat it..." Read MOJO's verdict on the new album by Lana Del Rey, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.

In 2008, Del Rey was living in the Manhattan Mobile Home Park in New Jersey. She would also take the light rail to record with producer David Kahne on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District – sessions that would ultimately become her first EP, Kill Kill, and the since repudiated Lana Del Ray. She had a deal with David Nichtern’s 5 Points Records; Lady Gaga’s manager Bob Leone secured her some classes at the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame; her senior year of metaphysics at Fordham was ending. Odd little paths opened up: she auditioned for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the musical scored by Bono and The Edge, and “maybe thought about Broadway. You’d get like a hundred dollars for singing background on records that would lead to nowhere. There was this company that emerged called The Orchard that was taking submissions for, like, toilet paper commercials and I probably did one, like, under a pseudonym. Definitely the happiest I’ve ever been. Stay in the middle, no dog in the race, people would even hire me for background stuff. I tried to act so cool on every sofa I sat at.”

It was only in 2010, when she met her current manager Ben Mawson at the CMJ Festival in New York’s Chinatown, that gears shifted and she glimpsed a significant future for herself: “Then I moved to London with him that week and he got me out of my deal that day.”

Success was not immediate. “I lived in a shitty flat with no heat, it was so awful – but they told me it was on Camden Road near where Amy Winehouse used to play at the Roundhouse, and I loved Amy.” Her voice softens dreamily. “I loved Amy.”

Fed up with trying to write songs for other people, one day she “just said ‘fuck it’” to her collaborator Justin Parker: “‘I’m going to write what I want to write now.’” In a Dolly Parton-style fit of productivity, within 72 hours she had Video Games, Born To Die, Blue Jeans and Ride.

On July 23, 2011, just under a month after Video Games appeared on the internet, Del Rey was on a train to Glasgow when Mawson told her she had received her first review. “I had 10 seconds of the most elated feeling,” she remembers, “and then the news everywhere, on all of the televisions, was that Amy had died on her front steps and I was like no. NO.” She breathes in sharply. “Everyone was watching, like, mesmerised, but I personally felt like I didn’t even want to sing any more.”

Ten seconds of elation seems to be as much pleasure as Del Rey has ever taken from her press. When she covered Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood on 2015’s Honeymoon album, it was not casually chosen: anger at the way she feels she has been misrepresented surges through her conversation, despite the four billion streams, the four UK Number 1 albums, and the validation of famous fans from Stevie Nicks to Courtney Love.

Even Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s ecstatic reception was no antidote. “I knew they were going to like Norman… because there’s kind of nothing not to like about it,” she shrugs. “Norman…’s just cool, it’s easy to cheer for that.” She doesn’t, however, believe people are cheering for her: in September, she declared she still felt like an “underdog”.

“When I’m in London I’m reminded of what other people think of me in a great way. Being on the cover of MOJO – I fucking love MOJO. It’s crazy to me, crazy to me, crazy to me that I could be on the cover of MOJO but it’s a little different – ha! – over here,” she says, ie, in America. “I mean, I guess I’ll never forget my first four years of interviews. They just fucking burned me.”

There was the one where the journalist “made fun of me mercilessly, for like, five hours about how I adopted a New York City accent and that everyone knew it was fake, so just give it up. It was embarrassing – he humiliated me. So by the time he asked me about feminism, I said I just wanted to talk about aerospace travel.”

A 2014 Guardian interview headlined “I Wish I Was Dead Already” is another thorn in her psyche. “I didn’t say I wanted to die because of the 27 Club – I said I was having, like, a fucking hard time. The way people talk about mental health in 2020” – she makes the noise of an explosion – “mind blown. Talk about a different world compared with five years ago. You said anything remotely like you’re not feeling so good that day and it’s like, ‘Woah, you’ve set women back like 200 years.’ Or ‘Witch!’ It was super-hard to be a real person.”

Instead, Del Rey continued to build her musical world, creating a reality nobody could dismiss. ‘Evolution’ suggests dramatic Bowie-like shape-shifts; instead, her six albums have been a process of refining her core material – the palette of upcycled hip-hop, vintage Hollywood glamour and Laurel Canyon classicism. But Norman Fucking Rockwell!’s widescreen dazzle was a dead end of sorts – “I had to turn back inward,” she says – and Chemtrails Over The Country Club appears to reveal a more vulnerable Del Rey: lighter on the LA menace, more innocently emotional: “We did it for fun/We did it for free,” she sings sweetly on the song Yosemite, “we did it for the right reasons.” It’s an album that looks at the road ahead, but also, back to where she’s come from, making her strongest connection yet with her antecedents.

“I’ve been covering Joni and dancing with Joan,” she sings on Chemtrails…’ Dance Till We Die – and it’s all true. In October 2019, Del Rey duetted with Joan Baez on her 1975 song Diamonds And Rust at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre; a night of non-stop dancing with the 80-year-old folk hero followed. And as promised, Chemtrails… includes a Joni Mitchell cover from Mitchell’s 1970 album Ladies Of The Canyon. Reprising their October 2019 performance at the Hollywood Bowl, Del Rey shares the verses out with Arizonan singer-songwriter Zella Day and Weyes Blood ’s Natalie Mering. A bittersweet commentary on the value of art, Mitchell contrasts her “velvet curtain calls” with a busker’s purity – it’s a song, says Del Rey, that means “everything” to her.

“The way things started off for me in the way I was portrayed was that I was feigning emotional sensitivity. I really didn’t like that,” she says coldly. “Because I didn’t even get famous ’til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a fuck.”

For one, Natalie Mering doesn’t doubt Del Rey’s investment in For Free. “I think the verse that Lana sings – “Me, I play for fortunes” – it’s her story too,” she says. “She understands the ephemeral quality of music and that it can’t be completely commodified, even though she’s done such a great job of doing that. I think Joni is very similar.”

Baez and Mitchell, Del Rey says, are “like unicorns”. “Joan, Bob, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, it’s less the albums and more the songs – the single perfect songs. Like Diamonds And Rust or Woodstock.” She rummages on You Tube to find a “staggering” 1962 coffeehouse performance from Baez. “I see a lot of people now wanting to be like other people – and hey, it’s not like I don’t want to be like other people too – but I think there were so many less options to look at in the ’60s, so you kind of just got what you got. You got a Janis or you got a Joan or you got a Jimi – it wasn’t like there was Jimi One, Jimi Two, Jimi Three. When I’m producing things alone, it’s impossible for me to sound anything other than a singer-songwriter. Actually, that’s not true,” she corrects herself. “I’ve got my own little ways about me.”

Mering, comparing Del Rey to Peggy Lee “if she was, like, I’m just going to write everything myself,” agrees. “She’s very free and she’s loose. What she goes for in terms of when she’s writing and working, it’s very magical and intuitive and it’s not very calculated – even though I think maybe she’s been accused of that in the past.”

That looseness – a willingness to wander – feels more present on Chemtrails… than previous albums, yet she insists it has been “so much harder than any other record I’ve made.” Covid separated her from Antonoff – also a collaborator with St. Vincent and Taylor Swift – in the final stages of recording and she missed him. “Everything that could be terrible is hilarious in Jack’s world. I think that’s why he does so well. It’s a rare quality for a man to have that softer kind of side – all hilarity and no inappropriateness.”

She says she finds listening to the new album “a fight”, conceding that she’s offering a pre-emptive critique. “It wasn’t so much that I thought the songs fantastically fit together with like seamless, sunkissed production – but you know, there’s a life lived in there.”

Del Rey has long used Los Angeles to colour and contour her songs. But Chemtrails roves further – Tulsa, Nebraska, Florida – a fitting backcloth for a record about freedom in a world where everything has a price. Not All Who Wander Are Lost – a song whose sky-high trill reminds Del Rey of “Cinderella in the movie where she’s holding the bluebird” – romanticises wanderlust. Wild At Heart and the title track (“I’m not unhinged or unhappy/I’m just wild”) hint at something untameable. If For Free is the record’s presiding spirit, you can also feel the vibrations of Mitchell’s Cactus Tree, a song that acknowledges the hard work of “being free” – shedding compromise, swerving control.

It’s a struggle Del Rey maps onto her folk and country influences, most explicitly on Breaking Up Slowly. A mournful lament riffing on Tammy Wynette and George Jones’s notoriously turbulent relationship, it was written with Tennessean singer-songwriter Nikki Lane, who supported Del Rey in 2019. In a hotel room, Lane mentioned that somebody told her she was “breaking up slowly”. Del Rey immediately sang “…is a hard thing to do”.

“One of the most incredible things about being around her is like, she is a song,” says Lane of Del Rey. “It’s just coming out of her at all hours of the day.”

It's interesting that the best musicians end up in such terrible places.

They have written four more originals; there is also, says Del Rey, “a cover album of country songs” and one of “other folk songs”. Del Rey expects “scepticism,” but explains her father and uncle Phil Madeira (one of Emmylou Harris’s Red Dirt Boys) exposed her to country music in her youth. Her tastes are “stark and blue, somewhat outlaw”: Hank Williams, Bobbie Gentry, Patsy Cline, Wynette. “With a little Marty Robbins and Johnny Paycheck. I went back and listened to Ride [from 2012 EP Paradise] and Video Games and thought, you know, they’re kind of country. I mean, they’re definitely not pop. Maybe the way Video Games got remastered, they’re pop – but there’s something Americana about it for sure. So let’s see how these things come out – I’m not going to have pedal steel guitar on every single thing, but it is easy for me to write.”

A year or so ago, Del Rey attended a party with Jack Antonoff and St. Vincent at the house of Guy Oseary, manager of Madonna and U2. “Something happened,” she says, “kind of a situation like – never meet your idols. And I just thought, ‘I think it’s interesting that the best musicians end up in such terrible places.’ I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to try my best not to change because I love who I am.’ I said, ‘Jack, it’s dark.’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s dark – but I mean, it’s just a game.’”

The incident inspires a song on Chemtrails… Dark But Just A Game mixes Portishead, Ricky Nelson’s song Garden Party and Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl (“The best ones lost their minds”) into a potent statement of defiance.

“Dark But Just A Game is so her to me,” Antonoff will tell MOJO: “fly down the rabbit hole and smile in the same breath.”

The game, however, takes its toll. As Del Rey talks, it frequently feels as if she’s dusting herself down from past humiliations, brushing off old slights.

“People are constantly inferring that I’ve done so much to myself, when I’ve never even been under anaesthesia or whatever,” she says unprompted, apparently still stung by 2012 speculations over the size of her lips. Occasionally, she makes grand statements: “I wanted music to change in the early 2000s and I wanted it to be better than it was. I think it is and I genuinely think I had a hand in it for female singer-songwriters.” They don’t land like shots from a weaponised ego – more the affirmations of someone who still feels as if she doesn’t say it, nobody will.

On a Chemtrails… song called White Dress she sings in a breathlessly rapt whisper of being “only 19”, working as a waitress, listening to The White Stripes and Kings Of Leon. “Look how I do this,” she sings with trembling innocence, “look how I’ve got this.” Then comes the fall: “It kind of makes me feel that I was better off.”

“I’m sure the grass is always greener,” Del Rey says, looking back on her waitressing days, “but I had a lot of fun dreaming about what was going to come next. Also, I really liked being of service and I still do – I do lots of little things in my spare time that put me back sort of in that service space. How I kind of grew up was to be a man amongst men and a grain of sand on the beach and I preferred to stay in the middle of the boat in that way. Sometimes I feel, with fame, it can put you on the peripheries, where the vultures can pick at you. It’s dangerous on the edges.”

“It’s not that I aspire to be the girl next door,” she says later, “but it’s just that I actually was and I think what some people don’t understand is that the girl next door has things going on, too. A lot of these other people who I see portraying that image are not that way at all – they’re like the biggest bitches who live in, like, insane mansions and who rip people off. This is not bitterness speaking at all. It’s literally just kind of just the facts, ma’am.”

In May 2020, Del Rey posted a “question for the culture” on Instagram. In it, she expressed her belief that artists including Beyoncé, Cardi B and Kehlani were applauded for portraying their sexuality in all its messy complexity, while she was accused of “glamorising abuse” in songs like Ultraviolence, where she quoted the title of The Crystals’ Goffin & King classic He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss). The culture’s answer was not sympathetic: Del Rey was held to account for appearing to single out artists of colour, and criticised for asking feminism to save a place for “women who look and act like me… the kind of women who are slated for being their authentic, delicate selves.”

“I wasn’t saying white like me,” she insists, emphasising that the women she mentioned are artists she loves. “I was saying people who are made a joke of like me.”

Shortly after speaking to MOJO, Del Rey issues another pre-emptive social media strike, pointing out the new album’s artwork – a photograph of the singer surrounded by her friends – does feature women of colour. Three days after that, she posts a video railing against magazines suggesting she told Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac that she didn’t believe Donald Trump meant to incite the Capitol riot. In fact, she says, she was accusing him of sociopathy – a subject, she tells MOJO, she studied for six years, along with “psychopathy and narcissism and delusions of grandeur”.

“When Trump became President, I was not surprised,” she says, “because the macrocosm is the mirror of what goes on in our bedrooms. In our inner lives.

“A lot of the things I was writing [songs] about, people shamed me for,” she continues, “but I like to think now I was actually writing about what thousands of housewives were experiencing and no one ever said a thing from Brentwood to Boca Raton. I just dyed my hair black and talked about it and I got a lot of shit for it.”

She declares that “It takes a more dignified-looking person with a better reputation to call out the world, or the President or some guy who runs a restaurant. I’m going to be the person who corroborates that story, the blonde at the end of the bar… The reason why I can’t be a person who starts certain movements is because of what people have written that isn’t true. And that’s too bad – because I know a lot.”

Does she feel she’s been discredited?

“I was discredited for seven years,” she says, her voice rising so fiercely it’s briefly unclear whether she’s laughing or crying. “There’s no other way of looking it.”

In the poem SportCruiser from Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, Del Rey wonders if learning to fly could help her navigate life, if learning to sail would show her which way the wind was blowing. Then she realises writing is all the adventure she needs.

“I certainly have to circumnavigate the globe quite a few times to come back to the fact that what I do is that I write, that I live here in LA, that I know who I am,” she says. “I think I’m very hopeful that I’ll feel more and more serene, because that is an objective for me. I just like the idea of waking up peacefully, rather than waking up in a sweat, throwing my feet down on the ground and being like, ‘Oh, what’s going wrong today!’”

Talking earlier about her whispery vocal on White Dress, Del Rey said it was not only close to unedited “journaling” but “also, not too afraid about being kind of stupid. The way I sound in the chorus – because I know it’s… not great, you know,” she laughs.

It sounds perfect for the song, though – trembling, awestruck. The voice of somebody on the brink of something. She agrees – not because it catches her teenage perspective, but because it speaks to her now.

“I actually said to a friend the other day I feel something brewing,” she says. “And that’s the first time in a long time. I have no idea what it is. But I know that it’s good.”

This article originally appeared in MOJO 329.

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How Lana Del Rey’s career explains a huge shift in the way we think about pop stars

In 2012, people called Lana Del Rey a fake. Now they call her one of the best pop stars of her generation.

by Constance Grady and Alex Abad-Santos

At the end of August, Lana Del Rey released her latest record, Norman Fucking Rockwell!. Not two months later, in October, it was named the 19th best album of the 2010s by Pitchfork .

“Her indelible pop melodies are strung together with the grace of a tragic ballet,” writes Pitchfork, in what’s more or less a reflection of the critical consensus that includes her being the only musician on the Washington Post’s “ Decade of Influence ” list: Lana Del Rey is a mature pop artist, one of the greats of her generation, and someone worthy of being taken seriously.

But that wasn’t always the case. At the beginning of this decade, Del Rey — the nom de plume of 34-year-old Elizabeth “Lizzy” Grant — was frequently dismissed as a fraud or a faker or “a groupie incognito posing as a real singer,” as Del Rey herself would put it in her 2012 song “Gods & Monsters.”

Or, as the Observer wrote in 2012 : “She’s a failed pop singer who got lip injections, changed her name, and now has a great backstory about living in a trailer that makes her New Jersey Chanteuse schtick as Urban Outfitters-ready as a pair of tight Levi’s.”

Compare that to how critics talk of Del Rey seven years later, in reviews of Norman Fucking Rockwell! , in which they laud both the album and Del Rey herself: “ a fully-realized artist who has remained true to her obsessions — aesthetic, cultural, and personal — outlasting the misogynist criticisms that could have derailed her early career”; “ a 21st-century pop poet documenting, much like [Walt] Whitman did, her own perspective of America”; and “one of the most consistent album artists and world-builders of this decade.”

So what’s changed? Is it Del Rey herself? She’s certainly grown as an artist since the days of her breakthrough single “ Video Games ,” but she hasn’t changed so much as to explain such an enormous turnaround in the public consensus on her. The Lana Del Rey that the Washington Post anointed as one of the decade’s most influential musicians is still in many ways the same figure that the Observer sneered over as a failure and a fake.

What seems to be behind the shift is less anything in particular that Del Rey herself did and more a massive change in how we as a culture think about pop, celebrity, and artifice. Lana Del Rey had the misfortune to come up within a musical moment that heavily prized the idea of authenticity and that loathed poseurs — and now, nearly a decade later, she’s reaping the benefits of living with a new musical moment, one that takes it as a given that everyone’s a little bit fake, that we are all performing at all times, and that to own your act is beautiful.

We’ve known for a long time that the character of Lana Del Rey, pop star, was a work of fiction. Here’s how that fact went from liability to asset.

How a panned Saturday Night Live performance changed Lana Del Rey’s career

The defining event in Lana Del Rey’s early designation as one of music’s biggest contrivances was her Saturday Night Live performance on January 14, 2012. The performance — and, to this day, her only SNL performance — turned her into a national conversation and made her, for the worst reasons, into a household name.

In the months leading up to her SNL appearance, Del Rey was on a meteoric rise — the epitome of the untouchable and unknowable “ cool girl ” trope that would later be outright rejected by savvy women.

But before the “cool girl” would be deemed an anti-feminist cliché , Del Rey was celebrated as its poster child. Her subversive, 1950s-Americana musical and aesthetic style , her pout, her talons, those impeccable waves — those who had been introduced to Del Rey wanted to consume every part of her. And knowing who Del Rey was in 2011, when she’d released only a few songs, made you cooler than the people who hadn’t heard of her yet.

“Lana Del Rey isn’t exactly garrulous, but always says just enough; though our interview is long and uninterrupted, she raises far more questions than she actually answers,” the Guardian’s Rosie Swash wrote of her alluring mystique in September 2011 , in an interview in which Del Rey described herself as “Lolita got lost in the hood.”

“She leaves the impression of someone both shrewd and vulnerable, which combined with the quality of her songs, is not only an intriguing concoction, but feels like the embodiment of genuine star quality,” Swash wrote.

Del Rey’s real breakthrough came from her woozy, dreamy June 2011 hit “Video Games,” and its popularity exploded when she released its music video in October; today, it has over 200 million views. You can almost smell the hairspray in the slapdash, blurry, and non-linear video. It pushed her star even further into the sky, but it also made her the target of suspicious critics.

New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica saw her perform at the Bowery Ballroom in December prior to her SNL performance, when she had still only released three songs, and attempted to define what he called her “carefully plotted” act.

“Lana Del Rey is a singer of songs that are very popular on the Internet,” he wrote. “Stop. Rewind. That’s not quite it. Let’s try again. ... Lana Del Rey is a tabula rasa, a punching bag, a reflection of our collective nightmares about American cynicism and disingenuousness. Sure, that’ll do.”

That was the general read on Del Rey in the weeks going into the SNL spot. Prior to the performance, a backlash was building that the ghostly chanteuse didn’t “deserve” a hallowed, national stage like SNL. “[Del Rey’s rise is] the kind of leap few have made, one that’s led many to question whether she deserves so much so quickly,” MTV News wrote the Friday before Del Rey’s SNL performance. “This weekend, she’ll perform on Saturday Night Live , the kind of gig usually reserved for the biggest of the big — and, yes, those same critics have already expressed their displeasure over that fact.”

But Del Rey defended the show’s decision to have her on so early into her career — before she even had released an album.

“I definitely think it’s an honor. ... I don’t think they’ve ever had anyone [perform] who didn’t even have a record out, so I do appreciate it,” she told MTV at the time. “[But I got it] because I’m a good musician. And I may not have a record out now, but I have been singing for a very long time, and I think that [ SNL creator] Lorne [Michaels] knows that, and everyone over there knows that. It’s not a fluke decision.”

Then, on the night when the world would finally discover the myth and magic of Lana Del Rey themselves, she did the worst thing possible: She flopped.

No one sounds great on SNL ’s stage , with its notoriously poor acoustics. But Del Rey’s two performances during the live show objectively were not good. Her performance of “Video Games,” her hit single, was particularly striking in that she was warbling through the song, her voice vacillating from a croaking lower register into a bleating chorus. It got worse on “Blue Jeans;” Del Rey sounded like she was a ventriloquist singing with a 72-pound dummy sitting on her chest (the “no, please” at 1:26 is a particular lowlight):

Del Rey’s bad showing was, to her biggest critics , a sign that her meteoric rise was undeserved, her sudden popularity a product of smoke and mirrors orchestrated by her label Interscope. Therough live show was taken as proof that her supposed talent was all talk, no substance; Lana Del Rey was a fluke.

Prior to her SNL performance, people were trying to find out everything about the mystery woman who was Lana Del Rey. What they were decided afterward was that Lana Del Rey was nothing but a stage name for seeming spoiled rich girl Lizzy Grant, who had released an album titled Lana Del Rey in 2010 that was quickly pulled from digital retailers and streaming.

“Rather than being an outsider struggling for recognition, Del Rey is in fact the daughter of a millionaire father who has backed her career,” the Guardian wrote in January2012 . “People were suspicious of the way Grant’s failed album, and all her social media websites, appeared to have been scrubbed from the internet just before Del Rey appeared.”

Del Rey’s poor SNL performance gave critics reason to dig into her history in search of more ways to justify their disdain, and that brought more attention to Lizzy Grant. These two performances were proof that her prior failed music career wasn’t a fluke and that her true talent was all image.

The SNL performance became a cultural moment. As the Ringer pointed out in its review of Norman Fucking Rockwell! , the event seems overblown, looking back: It got to the point where NBC News’s Brian Williams emailed Gawker owner Nick Denton and told him to have the blog punish Del Rey more. “Brooklyn hippster [sic] Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night — booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show’s history, for starters),” Williams wrote.

ButDel Rey, talking to Rolling Stone three days after SNL , maintained that she felt fine.

“There’s backlash about everything I do,” Del Rey said. “It’s nothing new. When I walk outside, people have something to say about it. It wouldn’t have mattered if I was absolutely excellent. People don’t have anything nice to say about this project. I’m sure that’s why you’re writing about it.”

Even if she failed to see her SNL set as a setback, Del Rey was memed into immortality, and SNL itself even spoofed her — portraying her as a sexy dummy just weeks after she performed:

Del Rey’s debut album Born to Die would come out just a couple weeks later, on January 31. The reviews were mixed , and the specter of her SNL performance loomed over them.

“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,” Pitchfork wrote in its 5.5/10 review. Entertainment Weekly gave Born to Die a C+ and questioned Del Rey’s authenticity: “Is Lana the real deal, or the result of a misguided attempt to build the perfect femme fatale out of Nico’s leather jacket and Nicki Minaj’s wig?”

As Pitchfork and Entertainment Weekly point out, her songs weren’t the real issue. If Lana Del Rey had delivered a stunning, confident, more personal performance on SNL , it’s not difficult to believe these reviews may have been more positive — because it was Del Rey herself that critics couldn’t get behind.

The clash between artifice and authenticity, and how that relationship translates into artistry, has existed before and will continue to exist long after Lana Del Rey. But it has been the defining conversation surrounding her career and her image, and just how much Del Rey is in control and aware of said image.

As Del Rey argued then and continues to uphold now: If her songs are good, does it matter if her persona is all just a show? Does Del Rey truly need to feel every gory bit of bleak doom that she expresses in her songs to create great art? If Del Rey’s greatest crime is cultivating and calculating her own image, then what keeps us from being deemed guilty of the same thing as we edit and present our lives on social media today?

And does it really matter who Del Rey is if her music is good? In 2012, it sure seemed like it. Now, that’s no longer the case.

In 2012, calling a pop star a poseur was a major insult. Today, it seems beside the point.

The idea that Del Rey was inauthentic was nearly fatal in 2012. But in the seven years since then, it’s become less a liability for her and more of a strength. And that’s because over that time, the way we think about pop stars and the personas they wear has changed radically.

For a long time, music critics held that the greatest thing a musician could be was “authentic.” And “authentic” meant something specific: It meant the musician wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and performed live (never lip-synching). All of this together meant that, through the power of their art, they were expressing their truest self to the world.

That ideal emerged from a rockist idea of authenticity, a system of thought that held sway in music criticism from the ’70s into the 2010s. Rockism held that rock and its grittiness were self-evidently superior to the slick artifice of pop, and it continues to hold sway at institutions like the Grammys. But through the 2000s and into the 2010s, it slowly began to lose its dominance in music criticism. By the end of the 2010s, artists like Carly Rae Jepsen and Charli XCX had become critical darlings — women who embraced pop music at its most synthetic.

“To glorify only performers who write their own songs and play their own guitars is to ignore the marketplace that helps create the music we hear in the first place, with its checkbook-chasing superproducers, its audience-obsessed executives and its cred-hungry performers,” wrote Kelefa Sanneh at the New York Times in 2004 . “To obsess over old-fashioned stand-alone geniuses is to forget that lots of the most memorable music is created despite multimillion-dollar deals and spur-of-the-moment collaborations and murky commercial forces. In fact, a lot of great music is created because of those things.”

In place of the rockists rose up the poptimists , who held that pop could be its own art form on equal footing with rock music, who broke down the craft that it takes to write an unspeakably catchy pop hook, and who argued that out of the artifice and theatricality of pop could emerge a new kind of authenticity.

Poptimism’s love of artificiality laid the groundwork for the idea that it is okay for a pop star to have tried on multiple personas on their road to success and that this does not necessarily make them bad or inauthentic artists. And in the era of poptimism, rock’s focus on a very specific idea of authenticity has come to seem a little passé. By 2017, rock had lost its crown as music’s most consumed genre in Nielsen’s yearly analysis .

Pop, meanwhile, flourished, and so did the theatricality and playful persona-building that came with it. But while pop was gaining critical credibility, we didn’t quite have a vocabulary ready to talk about all of it. We didn’t have a way of talking about the image building and performance that is intrinsic to pop as a genre — or at least, we didn’t until star studies went mainstream.

Star studies is an academic discipline that emerged out of film criticism. It says that we don’t know who celebrities “really” are, what they’re really like as human beings. Instead, what we see is a persona that they develop for public consumption, a construct that academics call the “star image,” made up of interviews and public appearances and the movies and music and work that stars make.

From the star studies point of view, whether that star image is fake or real is a meaningless question. We aren’t ever going to have access to the real human being under the persona, so who cares? What matters is the way we perceive the star image and the way it affects how we experience the star’s art.

Star studies emerged in academia in the 1970s and ’80s, but it wasn’t a discipline that most laypeople heard about until the 2010s. Arguably, the person who did the most to mainstream it was the writer Anne Helen Petersen, who has a PhD in media studies from the University of Texas and began writing gossipy, accessible star studies analysis for culture websites like the Hairpin in 2011. In 2014, Petersen did a star studies analysis of Jennifer Lawrence , then at the peak of her fame, for BuzzFeed, and the piece went viral.

For many people who read a lot of viral online discourse, Petersen’s article was their introduction to the idea that every celebrity — even those celebrated for their apparent authenticity, like Lawrence — has a persona that can be analyzed, a star image. And having a star image doesn’t make a celebrity manipulative or fake. It makes them a star.

With this analytical framework in place, Lana Del Rey’s past as failed bubblegum pop star Lizzy Grant is no longer a liability. It’s a curiosity, an early stab at a star image that didn’t quite work for her, just like that failed SNL performance is no more than a blip in what’s now a career of consistently excellent performances.

“She is thriving, and mutating, and improving such that the spotty but occasionally excellent Born to Die is probably, in retrospect, her worst album,” Rob Harvilla wrote for the Ringer this summer, looking back at Del Rey’s career in anticipation for her album Norman Fucking Rockwell! . “[S]urviving a pitched internet shaming back then turned out to be good practice for surviving in the real world now.”

Harvilla points out that Cedric Gervais’s 2013 remix of Del Rey’s “ Summertime Sadness ” is Del Rey’s only Top 10 hit song, but even amid the heavy EDM beats, it still flexes Del Rey’s morose, fatal existentialism — a trait Harvilla says has become Del Rey’s signature musical and visual style.

Del Rey would stick to her glamour death aesthetics on 2014’s Ultraviolence , which topped the charts and gained critical acclaim .

“ Ultraviolence masterfully melds those elements, and completes the redemption narrative of a singer whose breakout-to-backlash arc on 2012’s Born to Die made her a cautionary tale of music-industry hype,” reads Kyle Anderson’s review in Entertainment Weekly , the same publication that docked points for Del Rey’s authenticity two years prior. Her SNL failure seemed to have faded from memory; no longer was it proof that she was an undeserving wannabe. Critics now could hear the effort and quality of her music, but they saw her sad girl Americana style as a boon, not a detriment.

Del Rey’s lack of traditional rockist authenticity is what now makes her exciting. “Del Rey made a sonic and emotional argument for collapsing the boundaries that uphold authenticity as a cultural value,” wrote Ann Powers at NPR earlier this year , arguing that the Lana Del Rey character that Lizzy Grant created emerged directly from “America’s psychic swamp.” To Powers, the persona of Lana Del Rey is part of the same artistic tradition that connects “European Surrealism to American horror and noir , free-associative jazz improvisation to the transgressions of post-punk” — and, now, to Del Rey herself.

Del Rey reacted to Powers’s review with outrage. “Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will,” she tweeted , despite the unassailable fact that Powers’s review was by any measure highly complimentary and “Lana Del Rey” quite literally being a persona.

While Del Rey’s response was in some ways understandable, coming from an artist who’s been repeatedly dragged during her career for being fake, to many onlookers it seemed wildly out of proportion. Couldn’t Del Rey see that when Powers talked about Del Rey’s persona she was complimenting her artistic project?

“[Del Rey’s] entire act and legacy is built around a cinematic and larger-than-life vision, and her rich and dreamlike music reflects that,” wrote Eden Arielle Gordon at Popdust about Del Rey’s reaction to Powers’s review. “That vision is what makes fans follow her every move. It’s what defines most great artists, that element of performance that cuts through and creates something real, if only in its distortion.”

In other words: Lana Del Rey is made up, and it is precisely what makes her great. A real person could never contain all the ideas that a fictional persona can.

So if the existence of Lizzy Grant suggests that the idea of “Lana Del Rey” is maybe a little bit fake — well, as Del Rey’s successor in weird girl pop Billie Eilish would say, “duh.” What pop star isn’t made up? And in the end, isn’t the fakery the thing that actually makes her real?

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Lana Del Rey plays ball despite weather delays at historic Fenway show

Under the circumstances, the set was palpably paced yet never rushed, as del rey reveled in drawing out her cool, signature coos.

Ten years ago, Lana Del Rey sold out Boston’s House of Blues — her first-ever tour date in the city — with hardly any effort. The sardine-packed performance confirmed that her notoriety as singer-songwriter had eclipsed her touring plans for 2014, leaving her already poised for a major stage upgrade. The New-York-born singer greeted fans outside of the venue that night wearing what now seems like a harbinger of her future success: a Red Sox hat. Because as it turns out, one of the larger stages she was destined for awaited her across Lansdowne Street.

On Thursday night Del Rey crossed a major career milestone at Fenway Park, locking in her first headlining stadium performance in the United States with a one-off (and sold-out) show at the historic ballpark. When she gushed onstage that seeing Fenway Park “full” was “an absolute dream,” it never felt like lip service — even if she only was able to perform a portion of her original set. Wind warnings and a nearby thunderstorm delayed Del Rey’s performance by two hours, and when forced to choose between trimming her concert or postponing it until Saturday, Del Rey decided to play ball despite a looming noise curfew.

“I guess we’ll just cruise through as magically as we can with our curfew,” she told the crowd at the beginning of her set. “Cruise” is exactly what Del Rey did, casually clipping many songs short but never breaking her unperturbed demeanor. She optimized her sole hour onstage to satisfy fans from every era of her career, from the early devotees enamored with the trip-hop pulsing through “Born to Die,” to recent converts lured in by the lush offerings of “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.”

Under the circumstances, the set was palpably paced yet never rushed, as Del Rey reveled in drawing out her cool, signature coos on songs like “Pretty When You Cry” and “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.” Her unhurried harmonizing with backup singers on the intimate single “The Grants” in particular felt like a personal commitment to letting her ballads breathe.

She treated prearranged duets with equal sanctity, sharing the spotlight with a trio of guest performers despite her race against the clock. Intentionally or not, each musician highlighted Del Rey’s stylistic range that continues to nudge her closer to music-icon status: heartsick country from Mason Ramsey (of viral Walmart yodeling fame), soulful rockabilly with “Until I Found You” artist Stephen Sanchez, and poppy hip-hop alongside rapper Quavo, who teased an unreleased collaboration with Del Rey.

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She closed the evening with the twinkling ballad “Video Games,” ending the set early with one of her most reliable and well-known tear-jerkers. It wasn’t the raucous finale found at most Fenway Park concerts; instead, Del Rey’s swift conclusion proved that home runs can be an act of pure grace.

LANA DEL REY

At Fenway Park, June 20

Readers say Lana Del Rey should’ve rescheduled her Fenway Park show

Coming on at 10:30 p.m. after a thunderstorm, del rey ran through her hits and brought 3 surprise guests on stage during the one-hour show..

By Molly Farrar

Lana Del Rey went ahead with her show at Fenway Park that was delayed last week due to lightning, leaving some fans feeling disappointed with her condensed set, according to a Boston.com poll.

Del Rey was initially scheduled to begin the June 20 show at 7:30 p.m., most likely with Fenway’s infamous 11 p.m. noise curfew in mind. By 8:30, fans had to seek shelter within the concourse. The rain didn’t let up until after 10 p.m., and Lana took the stage about a half hour later.

Readers told Boston.com that the hour-long show – which missed some of her big hits, shortened songs, and included three surprise guests – was disappointing and unsafe.

Many readers wanted refunds or partial refunds for their tickets, which cost between $300 to $1,000, according to responses. At the end of her show, Del Rey promised fans she’ll find a way to get the two-hour show back to fans “somehow, somewhere.” 

Others said that the evacuation and delay caused unsafe conditions and that communication from Fenway Park staff was spotty. Concertgoers who had tickets on the turf, in the pit, or for uncovered seats had to seek shelter in the concourse, which two readers described as being “packed like sardines.” 

While fans were stuck in the concourse, Del Rey took to Instagram (in a since-deleted post) to ask fans if she should do a shortened show or come back on Saturday night. Many said that limited service kept fans from weighing in.

Some readers said they left Fenway before Del Rey got back on stage, in some cases, they said, because employees told them the concert was canceled. For its part, a spokesperson for the park said that “at no point” did Fenway Park staff tell patrons the concert was cancelled. “The only instructions delivered from our operations team was a message to seek shelter to remain safe from the electrical storm,” they said.

Other readers asked what Del Rey would do to make it up to fans who spent hundreds of dollars and traveled for the one-time show .

Others thought the experience in the concourse allowed for bonding amongst Lana fans and that the singer did the best she could with the weather.

We asked readers if Del Rey should’ve canceled Thursday’s show to instead perform a full-length concert on Saturday night. About 250 people responded, and nearly 79% thought that Del Rey should’ve postponed the show.

Here is a sampling of some readers’ thoughts on Boston.com’s poll if the show should’ve been postponed.

‘ It’s a small miracle that there was not a fatal disaster ‘

“We got there at 4 and ended up leaving before she came out. It was frightening inside with people pushing and shoving. An altercation broke out near us, and no security came. You couldn’t text them either – not working. I got shoved into a railing and bruised.” – Boston.com reader

“It was hell on earth. We were evacuated to the concourse, and there was no room to move. It was so hot in there I actually ended up at the emergency room and missed her finally going on. My daughter is devastated. They knew days before it there would be a heat advisory and dangerous temps they should have postponed.” – Kat

“I was escorted out of the show due to rain, and we weren’t allowed back in. I paid $500 for these tickets to not even be allowed back in by Fenway employees.” – Veronica, Rhode Island

“It was my first time seeing her, I honestly wish it was postponed. I’m still so grateful that she continued to play as much as she could despite the weather and the curfew. I understand that there were many people who flew in and would not be able to go to the show on Saturday, but also, the show was specifically FOR Boston. It should’ve been a special show for people in Boston and around it, not people who flew in from halfway across the world. I am really bummed that the concert got cut short, but it was such a surreal night and I’m so glad I got to go.” – Ellianna, Somers, Connecticut

“Absolutely abysmal security at Fenway. It’s a small miracle that there was not a fatal disaster in the concourse.” – Boston.com reader

“Flew in from Virginia and a couple more nights in Boston would have been fine.” – Christina, Richmond, Virginia

“I paid an exuberant amount of money to see her, and I feel like I was left empty-handed. Sure, she ran through the songs as fast as she could, but I’ve actually seen Lana several other times. She’s a phenomenal performer. I brought my friend who had never seen her. She didn’t get to experience what I was telling her but yes, it was still an amazing show for an hour, not worth $2000. I didn’t expect to get heat stroke in the tunnels, waiting to go back down on the field. That was the craziest moment I ever had watching people pass all around me from the heat.” – Carol, Grand Haven, Michigan

“I would’ve loved to see Young and Beautiful, National Anthem, Off to the Races, etc. the Quavo song was great, but I paid to see Lana, not a bunch of guest performers for that short amount of time.” – Kate, Boston

‘Lana is Mother, however she is not Mother Nature’

“Despite the delays she did an amazing job, made the show as wonderful as she could. She remained professional but human at the same time, and she promised to come back. I love that she honored her guests’ time and brought them out despite having to cut the show short. It really shows how much she cares for them, and the fact that she performed and said she’ll come back to give us a full show really goes to show how much she cares about her fans and the lengths she’ll go to to make sure we get at least something. They could never make me hate you Lana.” – Erin, South Berwick, Maine 

“The vibe during the rain delay was a sort of we are all in this together. It was so enjoyable. The fans were energized and so so positive! It was enjoyable just hanging and waiting with such an awesome crowd. Once Lana started the show, the atmosphere was electrifying! The best fans I have ever seen at any concert. The roar of appreciation was next level!!” – Jan T., Manalapan, New Jersey

“Everyone who bought tickets for Fenway Park should’ve known the risks when attending an outdoor seating style concert/event. Lana is Mother, however she is not Mother Nature. She gave a stellar performance with the time she had, and even went over a half hour on her own dime against a strict curfew.” – Mic, East Bridgewater

“During the rain delay, I had time to meet some other fans seated in my area. We handed out American flags and made jokes and sang together — that was the highlight of the night for me. The whole thing was out of LDR’s control, and I respect her for coasting through the show so elegantly. I’m grateful I saw her, but am definitely leaving with mixed emotions.” – Maxwell, New York City

“I absolutely adored Lana del Rey’s show, and I know she is a performer and put a lot of time and thought into her performance. I have been in the business of theatrics and singing for over 12 years now, I know the show must ALWAYS go on. You cannot control the rain and weather  of Mother Nature, you can prepare for it but honestly, you never can trust what you see. You had to have gone with the flow. I sang and danced my heart out to top hits like” Summertime Sadness”, “Chemtrails over the country club”, “Pretty when You cry”, etc. I absolutely am glad I waited because I had a blast. If it weren’t for Lana,  I don’t know what I would listen to.” – Owen, Hanover

“We had pit tickets so we were forced to stay inside, where it was hot and crammed. We are grateful Lana played, even if it were a shortened show. The real villain here is the city of Boston, who should make exceptions to the “noise curfew” when unforeseen weather postponed performances. It’s one night, 30 to 60 minutes. Do not fine the artist. She didn’t choose to start late. Do not punish the fans who spent a lot of time and money. Shame on the city.  Praise to Lana for doing the best she could.” – Jayne, Boston

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add a statement from Fenway Park.

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Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, batter known as Lana Del Rey is a famous singer.She was born on the twenty-first of july, and she have 37 years old.

• Lana started her career arround 2005, whit name "Lizzy".
• But it was only in 2011 that it was recognized, with the song "video Games".
• Lana gained even more attention when she released her fourth album "born to die".

Lana's musical style embraces the tragedy of love, old movies and 50's and 60's pop. Lana is an amazing singer with a lot of talent, my dream is to go to her concert,

These are my favorite lana songs.

Lana Del Rey Fenway Park concert delayed 2 hours, fans evacuated

Lana Del Rey fans ran into some bad luck during her concert at Boston's Fenway Park Thursday night.

The singer's sold-out concert was delayed by two hours because of bad weather, Live Nation confirmed to USA TODAY Friday.

The show was delayed due to severe thunderstorms, and fans were evacuated from the field.

Rey, 39, checked in with fans in an Instagram story Thursday night. "They are holding the show off until 9:00 because of wind warnings," she wrote. "See you soon."

USA TODAY has reached out to Rey's reps for comment.

In a subsequent video posted on her story, the "Young and Beautiful" singer explained the reason for the delay.

"They just cleared the stage. So every time the lightning strikes, we have to wait 20 minutes. And it just keeps striking," she said. "So what we were hoping for was to fill the room back up by 10 o'clock and at least do an hour-long show. That's what we're hoping for bare minimum."

She continued: "Worst case scenario we reschedule for Saturday so, I don't know, I'm crossing my fingers. And I'm down here with all the girls, just hoping."

Rey eventually took the stage around 10:30 p.m. She played a nearly hour-long set, bringing out guests including Mason Ramsey, Stephen Sanchez and Quavo, the latter for their new collaboration , "Tough." Rey and Quavo first previewed the track on social media Wednesday.

How will Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey and Post Malone 'going country' impact the industry?

The song is the first to be announced from her upcoming country album , "Lasso," which is due out in September.

Rey is set to make appearances at Reading and Leeds festivals in the United Kingdom and Rock en Seine in France later this summer.

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It Happened Last Night: Lana Del Rey Weathered a Thunderstorm to Headline Fenway Park

Your favorite artist's artist brought out special guests (Quavo!)—and lots of bows.

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After the rain, the one and only Lana Del Rey. / Photo by Cheynie Singleton

Thursday night began the same way it had for the past three days in Boston: swelteringly hot, hardly a cloud in the sky. But despite the ongoing heat wave, Lana Del Rey fans flocked to see the singer perform her first ever stadium show at America’s most beloved ballpark, Fenway Park.

Del Rey’s dreamy downtempo alt-pop reaches people of all ages and backgrounds. But one of the star’s most distinct qualities is a sense of style that, in the last decade-plus, has paid tribute to classic 20th-century American aesthetics. Her Born to Die and Honeymoon albums masterfully referenced old Hollywood and Americana, while 2014’s Ultraviolence evoked a darker, grungier atmosphere of biker gangs and leather jackets. More recently (see 2021’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club and  Blue Banisters , along with 2023’s  Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard ), her style has elegantly alluded to America’s backroads, rolling hills, and beaches. And last night, not even the nearly 100-degree weather could stop concertgoers from showcasing their passion for fashion.

Pink, red, and blue accents could be seen across the crowd, but black and white were the colors of the night—a contrast that felt parallel to the themes of light and darkness present in Del Rey’s lyrics, many of her songs drawing equally on feelings of bliss, gratitude, melancholia, and nostalgia. White sundresses were the most popular choice of garment, with white lace bloomers coming in at a close second. In anticipation of Rey’s upcoming country album Lasso , many fans add southern touches to their outfits: cowgirl boots, black belts with large buckles, straw cowboy hats with braided pigtails.

The ominous sky right before Fenway Park was evacuated. Note the bow, far right. / Cheynie Singleton

Die-hard fans wore outfits inspired by looks that Rey has worn herself. There were so many bows—bows of all sizes and textures, worn as hair accessories, attached to the backs of dresses, or tied around shoes—fitting for a performer who sells branded bows as merch. There were fans dressed as brides, referencing the singer’s “Ultraviolence” video, in which she plays a moody bride-to-be. Two fans showed up in deer antlers and brown veils—a tribute to Del Rey’s 2024 Met Gala look. Another fan wore a blue sailor outfit, inspired by her 2020 Interview magazine photoshoot. As the night progressed, the costume began to feel even more appropriate for the occasion: As fans waited for Rey to take the stage, a storm brewed in the distance.

Storm clouds began to form and the wind started to pick up. At first, concertgoers rejoiced, grateful for a break from the miserable heat. But as rain began to trickle down and lightning touched down, worry fell over the crowd. As the clock ticked closer to 9 o’clock, and the storm built up, fans began to wonder if Rey would cancel or postpone the show. There were audible gasps when the stadium staff announced a show delay due to the weather.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by LANA DEL REY (@honeymoon)

Soon, the stadium was evacuated, fans packed into the tight concourse, and what followed was a two-hour wait as thunder and rain beat down on Boston.  Rey updated the situation on Instagram stories, explaining that the park had to delay the show 20 minutes each time lightning struck—and it “just keeps striking.” The hour inched closer to ten and fans were still waiting to be told they could go back to their seats. Some ticket holders began to leave, but far more waited, hopeful the singer would perform—many of them having traveled from several states away for the one-off show.

Finally, at around 10:30 pm, Rey took the stage in a glittery red cut-out dress, opening with her 2012 single “Without You” as backup dancers popped bottles of champagne around a waterfall. Rey performed an hour-long set (standout tracks included “West Coast,” “Ride,” “Born To Die,” and the apropos “Summertime Sadness”). The singer was also joined onstage by special guests Mason Ramsey, Stephen Sanchez, and Quavo—debuting their new collaboration “Tough,” which features the rapper. 

Around 11:30, Rey closed Fenway with her 2011 viral track “Video Games”—the song most often credited as the singer’s breakthrough hit. Rey then told fans that she had to wrap up and promised to make up the lost time to her Boston fans. But despite the lost time and condensed set-list, Rey delivered on her promise of “one very special show” at Fenway Park.

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Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey. Holly Nunn. About Lana. Real name is Elizabeth Woolridge Grant From New York Sent to boarding school at 14 Alcohol-dependent as a teenager Roman-Catholic. Genre. Jazz-inspired 1950’s & 1960’s styled music M ixed with modern pop influences. Biggest Hits. Born to Die

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Laura Borge del Rey

A nalysis of farm household incomes in OECD countries M aster in A gricultural , F ood and E nvironmental P olicy A nalysis Université catholique de Louvain University of Bonn Supervisor : Prof. Bruno Henry de Frahan. Laura Borge del Rey. Outline. Introduction (1). Introduction (2).

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Marina del Rey Full Moon Dinner Cruises in Marina Del Rey

From the time when Hornblower Founder and CEO Terry MacRae acquired a small charter yacht business in the year 1980, the California-based company has concentrated on one thing: providing best, first-class dining, fun and cruise experiences. Today, the company voyages from 7 California port cities and New York City.

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marina del rey yacht rental

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