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Born to Die is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. The album was released on January 27, 2012 on iTunes and on January 31, 2012 by Interscope Records, Polydor Records, and Stranger Records. After signing a record contract with Stranger in June 2011, Del Rey enlisted a variety of producers to work on the album, including Evan Reilly, Patrik Berger, Jeff Bhasker, Chris Braide, Emile Haynie, Justin Parker, Rick Nowels, Robopop, and Al Shux. Musically, Born to Die contains a string of trip hop ballads, with the album deriving characteristics from such musical genres as hip hop and indie pop.
Critical reaction was polarized, with some praising its distinctive sound, while others criticized the songs' repetitiveness and melodramatic production. Despite attracting polarization from music commentators, the album was a commercial success. It topped the charts in eleven countries, including Australia, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Born to Die was also named as the third biggest selling album of 2012 on the UK iTunes Cha As of September 2013, the album has sold 5 million copies worldwide according to International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
In August 2011 Lana released her debut single, "Video Games", which propelled her to online popularity. "Video Games" was included on Born to Die, which spawned a number of noteworthy singles including: "Blue Jeans", "Born to Die", "National Anthem" and "Summertime Sadness". Del Rey embarked on a worldwide tour in 2011 to promote the album. In November 2012, Del Rey reissued the Paradise edition of Born to Die which features an additional nine tracks. "Blue Velvet", a popular 1960s song, was covered by Del Rey and released as a single for the re-release alongside the original song "Ride". In addition to the eight songs serving as a bonus-disc to Born to Die, Paradise was also released separately as its own album.
User Album Review
If you want an explanation for the unlikely rise of Lana Del Rey, it isn’t that hard to find. Ignore accusations of cynical marketing and inauthenticity, or speculation about surgery and Daddy’s money – that’s not important. And don’t get distracted by the YouTube statistics or the online hyperbole, this isn’t about new media. It’s about something older and more mysterious than that; the extraordinary, resilient power of the pop song. For all of her trashy Americana and startling beauty, if Del Rey hadn’t arrived last summer with a song as luminously beautiful as Video Games, none of this would be happening.
So the only truly important question about Born to Die is whether there’s more where that came from. Cynics look away: the answer is an emphatic yes. Nothing else quite matches Video Games’ eerie perfection of form and melody – after all, 99% of singers go an entire career without finding one song that good – but several run it perilously close, while revealing there’s more to her than the love-stunned torch singer of Video Games.
What makes Born to Die so richly fascinating – and what marks Del Rey out from the standard issue "I’m hot, you’re hot" pop starlet – is her preoccupation with Hollywood archetypes of American femininity, and her ability to shape-shift between them. So, on the stately, bloodstained title-track, Del Rey plays femme fatale, deliciously stoned and doomed, with an imperious vocal to match. On the addictive, sugar-rushing Off to the Races she’s trailer trash living the high life, her vocal veering deftly between husky cynicism and hiccupping glee; while on the tender This Is What Makes Us Girls she’s the poor little rich girl looking melancholically back on youthful hedonism.
It all reaches its apotheosis on National Anthem where Del Rey, dissatisfied with merely being an all-American girl, becomes America itself, offering up deadpan slogans like "money is the reason we exist" before demanding utter patriotic devotion on the swaggering chorus. If that sounds knowing that’s because it is, not to mention intelligent, ambitious, and more interesting than anything Adele is likely to write even by the time her inevitable 72 collection hits the shelves of the future. It’s also brilliantly realised, thanks to Del Rey’s extraordinary delivery, her ability to slip from deep-toned haughtiness to breathless ecstasy to velvety vamping – often in the same gorgeous melody.
Born to Die isn’t perfect: it slumps slightly towards the end, and the glossy trip-hop production grows wearying on lesser gothic melodramas like Dark Paradise. But it’s the most distinctive and assured debut since Glasvegas’ eponymous disc in 2008, and makes you desperate to see where she goes from here. Del Rey’s defenders can take a break: Born to Die does their job better than they could hope to.
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