Lana Del Rey is an American singer/songwriter
Born in New York in 1986, her birth name is Elizabeth Woolridge Grant.
· She was raised in Lake Placid, a quiet village outside of New York State. Aged 15, she was sent to boarding school in Connecticut, before moving to New York City when she was 18 to study metaphysics at Fordham University - "that was when my musical experience began. I kind of found people for myself," she told Vogue of the time.
· She began performing in clubs around the city under various names, including her birth name Lizzy Grant, as well as Sparkle Rope Jump Queen and Lizzy Grant and the Phenomena. "I was always singing, but didn't plan on pursuing it seriously," she told us. "When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn - I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point - and that was it."
· Aged 20, she signed a record contract for $10,000 and moved into a trailer park outside of the city. The album she recorded was later shelved, causing her to shift her focus. Instead, she began to work in community service. "Homeless outreach, drug and alcohol rehabilitation - that's been my life for the past five years," she toldVogue in 2012.
· She decided to rebrand herself as Lana Del Rey and in October 2011, she signed a joint record deal with Interscope Records and Polydor.
· Del Rey released the song Video Games online in June 2011, following it up with an accompanying video on YouTube in August. "I just put that song online a few months ago because it was my favourite. To be honest, it wasn't going to be the single but people have really responded to it. I get very sad when I play that song. I still cry sometimes when I sing it," she told the Observer in 2011.
· Video Games accumulated in excess of 20 million YouTube views in its first 5 months of upload.
· On October 24th 2011, it was announced that Del Rey had won the Q award for "Next Big Thing".
· Her debut album Born To Die was released in January 2012. It charted at number one on the Official UK Album Chart.
· She has described her unique look - auburn hair in Veronica Lake waves, full lips and permanently artistic talons - as "Gangster Nancy Sinatra" and "Lolita got lost in the hood".
· Of her stage name, she has told us: "I wanted a name I could shape the music toward. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba - Lana Del Rey reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue."
· She appeared on the cover of the March 2012 issue of British Vogue. Alexandra Shulman said in her editor's letter: "I am one of the many thousands of people enraptured by the throaty, seductive voice of Lana Del Rey... Once I had seen Lana play at a small event in London, I was convinced that she would be a great Vogue cover girl, even though she is probably one of the newest stars in her field that the magazine has ever had on the cover."
· Del Rey said in the accompanying interview that she may not release a second album, stating: "Oh, I don't think I'll write another record. What would I say? I feel like everything I wanted to say, I've already said."
2013–present: Tropico and Ultraviolence
At the 2013 BRIT Awards, she won the award for International Female Solo Artist, making it her second BRIT Award to date. Del Rey's win surprised critics who highly anticipated Taylor Swift to win the award. She is currently working on her third studio album. "It's a little more stripped down but still cinematic and dark. I've been working on it really slowly but I love everything I've done. I've been writing in Santa Monica and I know what the record sounds like. Now I just have to finish it. Musically I've worked with the same three guys," she said. She mentioned that one of the songs off the album would be called "Black Beauty", and she already knows what the music video for it is going to look like. A demo of the song leaked online on July 19, 2013. In March, Del Rey recited Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself" for the French fashion magazine, L'Officiel Paris.
Del Rey's seventh single, "Dark Paradise", was released as a single in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on March 1, 2013. Del Rey won the ECHO Awards for Best International Newcomer and Best International Pop/Rock Artist on March 21, 2013. A music video for Del Rey's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel #2" was released on March 27, 2013. The following month, in April 2013, another self-produced video was released; it showed Del Rey and her boyfriend, Barrie-James O'Neil, covering "Summer Wine", by Lee Hazlewood. "Burning Desire" became available for purchase as a stand-alone download on March 19, 2013 as the second promotional single from Paradise; it's music video was premiered the previous month on Valentines Day of 2013.
Together with the film's director, co-writer, and co-producer Baz Luhrmann, Del Rey penned the original song "Young and Beautiful" for the soundtrack of the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The song was made available for purchase as a digital download in April 2013 before officially impacting contemporary hit radio the following month as the film's kickoff single. This was the first song in Del Rey's career to receive a release to contemporary hit radio. A snippet of the track appeared in the official trailer for the film and played during the scene where the characters portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan express their romantic feelings for one another. Hip hop magazine Rap-Up called the single "haunting", while MTV called it "somber-sounding". The official music video for "Young and Beautiful" was released on May 10, 2013. Following the song's release, it peaked at 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Del Rey's highest peak on the chart since her first mark, "Video Games", peaked at 91 in 2012. However, shortly after its release to contemporary hit radio, the label prematurely pulled it and decided to send a different song to that format; on July 2, 2013, a Cedric Gervais remix of Del Rey's "Summertime Sadness" was sent there; a sleeper hit, the song proved to be a success, surpassing "Young and Beautiful", reaching number 6 and becoming her first American top ten hit.
Alongside Paradise, Del Rey announced plans to launch a short film titled Tropico that features the songs "Body Electric", "Gods & Monsters", and "Bel Air". Tropico was filmed in late June 2013; it was directed by Anthony Mandler, who also directed Del Rey's previous music videos for "National Anthem" and "Ride". Via social media platforms, Del Rey released several promotional images for the film, one depicting Del Rey in a mantilla reminiscent of Mary, Mother of Jesus and another with Del Rey holding a snake and posing as Eve, the biblical wife of Adam from Genesis. In August 2013, Del Rey announced on Twitter that the film would have two premieres: one at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles and one in an unspecified location in New York; she referred to the short film as a "farewell".Critics noted that this contradicted other claims by Del Rey that she would release a third studio album, with a demo of the song "Black Beauty" leaking online. On November 22, 2013, an official trailer for Tropico was released; at the end of the trailer, it was announced that the film would be uploaded to Del Rey's official VEVO account on December 5, 2013. On December 3, 2013, Del Rey's official website announced that the film will premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California, prior to its VEVO release. Prior to playing the movie at the Cinerama Dome, Del Rey announced to the audience the title of her upcoming third studio album and explained what she meant when she said that the film is a "farewell", stating: "I really just wanted us all to be together so I could try and visually close out my [Born to Die/Paradise] chapter[s] before I release the new record, Ultraviolence". On December 6, 2013, an EP, also titled Tropico, was made available for purchase via iTunes; it includes the film itself along with the three aforementioned songs. On December 13, Del Rey performed "Video Games" at the NASA Breakthrough Prize Inaugural Ceremony at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
On January 23, 2014, it was announced that Del Rey would be covering the song "Once Upon a Dream" (from the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty) for the 2014 dark fantasy film Maleficent. The single was released on January 26. On March 10, Del Rey announced a sixteen date North American tour, starting on April 23 in Grand Prairie, Texas and ending on May 27 in Seattle.