growing up in the 2010s in the era of Tumblr infinity scarves and flower crowns it's hard to not remember the influence Lana Del Rey had on the world and the internet when she first popped onto the scene with her viral self-edited song video games with her following album Born to Die then becoming an immediate International success Lana Del Rey's melancholic vintage dreamy aesthetic was and is engaging and immersive and helped to Garner her cold status relatively quickly to many Delray has come to mean so much more than just a celebrity or artist but someone who has an irresistible air of Mystique within her Persona in her music her music has been noted by critics for stylized cinematic quality it's preoccupation with themes of tragic romance glamor and Melancholia and its references to pop culture particularly 1950s and 1960s Americana all these factors helped Lana to truly make a name for herself in the music world in American pop culture it can be really hard and sometimes honestly impossible to find a really well in-depth documentary made about Lana Del Rey that goes through all of her life so today I wanted to basically create my own documentary and detail her early life early career and what led her to the success that she is at today before in the second half explain why I feel as though she does resonate with her fans including myself to why I do feel it is so powerful of so many different people [Music] foreign Del Rey was born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant on June 21st 1985 in Lake Placid New York to parents Rob and Patricia Grant Lana had a pretty quiet early life because of her Town's seclusion and very small population around the ages of 14 to 15 she began to develop an alcohol dependency and she was then sent to Kent boarding school to help become sober Lana has said quote that's why I really got sent to boarding school to get sober Lana has said that she has had an early preoccupation with mortality in the idea of death saying in a 2012 UK Telegraph interview when I was very young I was sort of floored by the idea that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day and myself too I had a sort of a philosophical crisis I couldn't believe that we were mortal for some reason that knowledge sort of overshadowed my experience I was unhappy for some time I got into a lot of trouble I used to drink a lot that was a hard time in my life end quote anyone who is also hip to Lana's unreleased Canon can see her early boarding school experiences and her rebellious nature detailed pretty accurately in the song by the same name to drop make love with our teachers [Music] when Lana left boarding school she eventually moved to Long Island to live with her aunt and uncle while becoming a waitress Lana eventually enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx where she majored in philosophy with a big interest in metaphysics she's quoted as saying in a rolling stone interview I chose to study the subject because it quote bridged the gap between God and science I was interested in God and how technology could bring us closer to finding out where we came from and why end quote meanwhile she lived with boyfriends and crashed on couches she's quoted as saying I was writing writing for years trying to figure out what I really wanted to say and why I was so consumed with his passion for writing and where it came from it kept me up all night so I was waiting to see why that was really a whole separate world [Music] yes for my I do Delray slowly began writing songs and performing in nightclubs around the city under various names such as Sparkle jump rope Queen and Lizzy Grant and the phenomena in a 2012 interview for British Vogue she said I was singing but didn't plan on pursuing it seriously 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 Just for each other at that point and that was it Lana eventually got a recording contract with five points after submitting acoustic demos and used a ten thousand dollars she received to move into a mobile home in North Bergen New Jersey and began working with producer David King Delray graduated from Fordham with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 2008 after which she then released a three-track EP kill kill as Lizzie Graham man David asked to work with me only a day after he got my demo he is known as a producer with a lot of integrity and who had an interest in making music that wasn't just pop Lana explains when asked about what inspired her stage name she is quoted as saying I wanted a name I could shape the music towards 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 glamor of the seaside it sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue with some marketing help from her father she released her first album titled Lana Del Rey noticeably spelled with an a in 2010 which was also available on iTunes the record did pretty bad and was eventually pulled from all platforms because in Lana's words the label was unable to fund it Lana was eventually able to get out of the record deal with five points where she felt as if quote nothing was happening and shortly after a moved to London where she met more friends and even acted in a short film called poolside although Lana had bigger aspirations for her work in her career the success and opportunity she desired lagged behind her this was all about to change for her in October of 2011 however [Music] Lana uploaded the self-made music video for her song video games to YouTube on October 16 2011 which features Vintage Stock footage of playful scenes of America interspersed with shots of her singing on her webcam video games became a viral hit sensation and for a minute it seemed like it was impossible to get away from especially on sites like Tumblr and Facebook she says on the song I just put that song online a few months ago because it was my favorite to be honest it wasn't going to be a single but people have really responded to it in October of 2011 she signed a joint deal with Interscope Records and polydor to release her second studio album Born to Die and this brings us to the infamous SNL performance of blue jeans [Music] please stay here many critics claim she sound absolutely terrible vocally shaky in a manufactured fraud while watching this singer on SNL is like watching a 12 year old in their bedroom when they are pretending to sing and perform hashtag sign of our times tweeted actress and musician Juliet Lewis Lana did eventually state in a response that she is more of a musician and not a performer and that her true fans already know this nonetheless born to die was released worldwide on January 31st 2012 to Commercial Success charting at number one in 11 countries and debuting at number two on the U.S billboard 200 album chart although critics at the time were divided born to die was a blend of cinematic strings overlay trip hop beats to the backdrop of poetic old money in Western Americana music videos which made it especially successful on the internet and social media sites Born to Die ended up selling 3.4 million copies in 2012 making it the fifth best-selling album of that year and the United States born to die charted on the billboard 200 well into that same year lingering at number 76 after 36 weeks on the chart Lana did go on to release multiple other albums including but not limited to the paradise EP Ultra violence honeymoon Lust For Life NFR and many others leading all the way up to this year she gained even more Acclaim with her radio hit Summertime Sadness and her work with soundtracks such as baslerman's the Great Gatsby writing Young and Beautiful in Disney's Maleficent with Once Upon A Dream Lana even went on to film Tropico a musical short film directed by Anthony mandler [Music] I was first introduced to Lana Del Rey in 2013 a couple months after moving from my hometown in Key West Florida to Lewiston New York which is a very small town in the greater outskirts of Buffalo as someone who is Cuban and from South Florida moving right up to the border of Canada was a very hard culture shock and caused me to become very melancholic about Florida and for the next couple years I began to obsess over where I used to be compared to where I was now hearing Lana Echo experiences of traveling around the country especially the south south Florida and the keys felt comforting and relatable moving from a place where Haitian Dominican and Cubans were the dominant ethnicities to a farm-like village with a population of mostly 98 percent older white people was definitely alienating so hearing her romanticize and sing about her Cuban daddies or time spent in the keys made me feel understood and seen [Music] Delray's music and especially her unreleased music have these undertones of a longing to recapture old times and experiences traveling around the country which reminded me of how I felt about being uprooted from my hometown and wanting to move back and also about my travels around the U.S from La New York and Chicago to Georgia the Midwest and Texas this moves me to a bigger point about why I believe Lana has so much underground as well as mainstream appeal Lana Del Rey has this ability to recapture and accurately Express the emotions of being trapped in a melancholic-like state of mind longing for a time or a place that has long ago slipped away but that you can never truly move on from making you feel almost Frozen in time this intoxicating romanticizing of the past can feel like a drug and sometimes it can get debilitating I feel as though many teens can relate to this sort of feeling as they themselves are basically going through one large transition feeling torn between their happy and cheery childhood and the mature mundane structure of adulthood out on top of that the hormones and mental ups and downs from the Teenage experience and it can be easy to find yourself romanticizing and missing the happier colorful times of childhood like Lana is longing for a past time or relate with her dramatic cinematic and cleaning romantic lyrics that describe someone you'll never truly stop loving or chasing I mean let's be real all of us had that cringy ass moment when we were teenagers where we had this Crush that we were obsessed with the middle school or high school can really relate to how the drama that we find in Lana's lyrics when she's singing about this clingy sort of Love or pursuit of a person that you really can never let go of another big shock for me after moving was the difference in culture South Florida culture is so far removed from what is seen as American culture in so many ways the culture is heavily influenced by the tropical Caribbean and doesn't feel like what we would see in shows and movies that show what American life is like so I felt very out of place and again what depressingly reminisce about where I felt I was supposed to be Lana in a way helped me to see the beauty in the Americana in a way to reclaim my happiness and outlook on my life I felt American society quiet suburbs yellow school buses American flags and small forgotten towns like the one that I now lived in were boring and unrelatable she helped change my perspective and to see these sometimes mundane aspects of American life from a more romanticized angle one of Lana's most interesting aspects is her ability to romanticize seemingly monotonous and common experiences especially when listening to her unreleased music you find things like going to the gas station and getting Slurpees [Music] dancing around a trailer with Christmas lights on [Music] Christmas lights or even going to the 7-Eleven [Music] sounds so surprisingly beautiful poetic and significant this is very appealing to many of us that are tired of the unattainable materialistic and vapid claims to power and wealth in nearly all other forms of music today this ability to reclaim the narrative from the common you need this expensive car or clothes or shoes to be beautiful and happy to more of a your middle to lower class existence and all the tiny Pleasures within it are just as beautiful mindset is so refreshing and validating this makes her have so much more of a wider appeal and relatability to many people being that the majority of the US is lower to middle class romanticizing of one's life can also dramatically help one view their situation in a different light and can even help someone cope with depression and dissatisfaction by reinforcing a belief that there is beauty in all things in all levels of life not just the rich unobtainable one another fact that's pretty hard to ignore is also Lana's large percentage of gay fans I feel zolana is disproportionately adored by gays and girls because of her love for the classic feminine aesthetic and that sometimes wholesome vivid imagery about love and relationships but I think a lot of women yearn for and a lot of gays feel as though we can never really have or find this is because in my opinion Gay Culture can feel hypersexualized and extremely shallow at times so music that describes true love chivalry and innocence can be very appealing and feel like a breath of fresh air and we got to prove to the Mexicans how Mexican we are and we got to prove the Americans are American we have we got to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than Americans both at the same time it's exhausting in Cuban American I also felt torn between these two separate identities and I felt as if what was again constantly displayed as American culture on movies and in television was something that was really foreign and unrelatable like I said earlier Lana helped to portray a new Americana that isn't limited to the pristine unrealistic idealistic lifestyle of the past she was open about all aspects of her life the good as well as the bad and unapologetically stood by them instead of hiding them to preserve a certain type of image her experimentation with many different genres including hip-hop and shirt pop oh foreign [Music] attempt at including other sometimes left out categories as just as beautiful and romantic as the likes of Marilyn Monroe Elvis JFK and other romanticized American icons when American society tends to culturally exclude immigrant or non-white cultures forcing them into their own separate box I see Lana's blending and appreciation of them to show that they are just as American and beautiful as the other mainstream Anglo-Saxon cultural aspects this synchronization of different sounds and romanticizing of cultures that are typically discriminated against in America specifically in my case Latino seems so refreshing to me this is also not to say that that was her intent or her Mission but just what I personally gained from it [Music] and an obsession for Freedom that terrifiedly to the point that I couldn't even talk about Lana Del Rey's obsession with the idea of freedom is another very consistent aspect in her lyrics she constantly repeats the idea of starting over driving and being on the road or having nothing to lose that it can begin to feel like a mantra at times there is arguably nothing more American than the idea of freedom that being able to drive anywhere at any time offers this concept of dropping all the petty and mundane aspects of your life in exchange for a wide open Freedom where only you and your lover or close friends are all that matter is a very relatable and engaging idea that many of us can agree with and desire who hasn't felt so overwhelmed with their job family or life to the point where they just want to drop everything and move to a new city to enjoy the freedom of not knowing who you are and being able to rewrite your own story and reclaim your own personal narrative whatever you want to call her Lana Del Rey Lizzy Grant or Sparkle jump rope Queen I think we can all agree her unique take on songwriting and her outlook on the world have set her miles apart from her contemporaries she began her musical Journey on a more Indian underground note before transforming into a Polish representation of classic American Hollywood and then moving towards psychedelic Rock and Baroque pop into where we find her today slipping back to her original Indie roots with her albums blue banisters and there's a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard which sonically Echo her first album Lana Del Rey the way in which Del Rey is able to create a unique sound that isn't Holy One genre or another truly sets her apart from her peers in a world dominated by the cookie cutter template of hip-hop and electronic pop she pays homage to a bygone American Image sprinkled with modernity into a type of life where the small things are romanticized simply because they can be and not because it's what society says should be she speaks to an entire generation because of her ability to create music that's cinematically and authentically tells stories which create stark contrast to the shallow and authentic materialistic music and culture that we are drowning in in our world today so yeah that was my attempt at making a small little documentary explanation video about Lana in her life but yeah thank you guys so much for watching bye come on