What Is The Deal With Lana Del Rey? A Timeline

By Less Lee Moore

I never even heard of Lana Del Rey until I saw this posted on a friend’s Facebook wall on January 14: “What is this Lana Del Rey shit?”

It was, of course, a reference to that infamous, scandalous, controversial, polarizing (pick one or come up with your own) Saturday Night Live performance. I don’t watch SNL so I didn’t see it.

The next day, January 15, another Facebook friend posted a link to Lana Del Rey’s video for “Born To Die.” I listened to it. I loved her voice and I thought the song was rather intriguing and different. Del Rey was certainly beautiful, with a distinctive look and sound. I watched a few more videos of hers “Blue Jeans,” “Video Games,” and “Mermaid Motel.” They were all good.

Then I started reading online about the backlash before the SNL backlash. How Del Rey was an indie poseur, blah blah blah. I felt bad for the poor girl. I felt like if everyone was going to hate on her, I was going to like her just to spite people. (I can’t help it; it’s what I do.)

Other than posting a link to the “Born To Die” video on my own Facebook wall and a link to the January 16 Brian Williams email article on Gawker, I have not posted much about her online. Yet I couldn’t escape the haterade that everyone on the Internet seemed to be drinking. It was everywhere I looked and I wasn’t looking for it. Within about a week, she came up in a real-life conversation and that’s when I started Googling her.

New York Magazine‘s Entertainment section has a nice timeline of events that you can check out here. I admit it looks like I’m copying them with my own timeline below, but mine is a bit different.

Rather than try to dissect and comment on each and every blog post I’ve read about Lana Del Rey (which would surely require at least a week and I do have other things to do) or even the ones I’m linking below, I’m just going to include some salient quotes and let you be the judge.

At this point, you’re going to think what you want to think about Lana Del Rey so maybe you’re thinking “why bother?” I will point out that these links are available to everyone with a computer and an Internet connection. It seems like people (including music blogs and others) are content to follow the meme of the moment without questioning it (or the biases of the blogosphere, much less their own biases) or even doing their own research. I wanted to do my own research and decide for myself. So here you go.

Lizzy Grant, 2008

Index Magazine, Interview with Lizzy Grant with Brea Tremblay
Brea: So the EP has three songs—any plans to release a full CD?
Lizzy: Yes, when I recorded with Davey [David Kahne], we recorded 13 songs. So I was never expecting to release an EP, but when iTunes came to us, and became fervent supporters and said, “put out anything and we’ll give you the artist’s spotlight.” We decided, okay, we’ll just put out an EP, which was released on October 21.

Brea: What type of things would you move on to?

Photo from Index Magazine

Lizzy: I always expect that once I do something, I’m going be able to transition into this better life, like maybe move somewhere else or get to know more people. Ideally, I would like to move back to a little part of New Jersey or Coney Island and have people to work with on little projects like music videos, because I do much better in a box. Performing is really, really hard for me, so I would just like to have more people and more money to do more sexy projects.

Brea: Where do you see a record like this being played?
Lizzy: That’s a good question. I was sure that I knew, but I’ve been wrong. For instance, I’ve been singing recently at private parties for young Wall Street, and not so young Wall Street, and I’m surprised that they like the music. I guess that’s not really a demographic though is it?

October 27, 2008

Spotlight On: Lizzy Grant
Radio Exile, post by Elie Z. Perler
Relatively new to the indie scene, striking chanteuse Lizzy Grant [Official Site, Myspace] possesses an unrelenting charm that will no doubt melt the masses. Her brand of music is at once delectable, blending the best elements of jazz, folk, and rock. And her vocal delivery effectively channels the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Billy [sic] Holiday, with a slight twist of Flunk. It only takes one listen to become hooked to the cool, calculated confidence and quirky lyrical quips. Indeed, Grant enchantingly whisper-sings of encounters at Coney Island and Diamond David Lee Roth.

Lizzy Grant and her father Rob
Photo dated May 2008 from
DN Journal

October 29, 2008

The Lowdown
DN Journal, The Domain Industry News Magazine, post by Ron Jackson
Lizzy performed at the CMJ Music Festival in New York last Friday night and quite a buzz is starting to develop about her in the music blogosphere. You can get Lizzy’s EP at iTunes and also check out the video on the home page at her website.

December 2, 2008

Lizzy Grant (12/2/08, National Underground, NYC)
Radio Exile, post by Elie Z. Perler
Armed with a distinct voice to melt and enough reverb to drown, the sultry chanteuse charmingly ambled through an abbreviated set of infectious original compositions.

Show Notes from Shawn M. Smith: Despite being crippled by a “terrible stage fright” as she would describe it, there is a certain “something” about Lizzy that I really connect with. Maybe its growing up poor-ish in Upstate NY and how the whole “trailer park darling” aspect makes so very much sense to me. Perhaps it is that I relate to her lyrics in second hand way; most of her lyrical content sounds like the secret fears and the protected diary entries from a little girl’s stolen journal.

Show Notes From Tom W: Lizzy’s entire set made me feel as if I were in some smoky early ’60s lounge; her voice is from a different era and her presence, naturally coy and shy, gives off this slightly plastic, slightly Warholian feel.

Check out Lizzy now, when you can still see her in an intimate and cozy venue because she is unlikely to be playing them for long.

December 13, 2008

Lizzy Grant @ Living Room 12/16 8PM FREE
Wiredset.com, post by Mark Ghuneim

January 20, 2009

Interview: Singer/Songwriter Lizzy Grant on Cheap Thrills, Elvis, The Flamingos, Trailer Parks, and Coney Island
Huff Post Entertainment, Interview by Felicia C. Sullivan
FCS: Many artists today are deliberate in the way their image is packaged and how their music is positioned. Their sound is neatly manufactured; one sometimes wonders if lyrics were written by committee. And then there are other artists—renegades and risk-takers. Their sound is a hybrid of genres; their videos are odd, magical, unexpected—a visual representation of the songs and stories in the artist’s head. I dare say that I’d include you in the latter. Your music is organic and daring in the way that artists who try to find their story, work out their obsessions, and find themselves, often is. Have you considered yourself an artist who refuses to color in the lines? How important is it for one to be as unpackaged as possible?

LG: I guess I haven’t colored in the lines of a corporate picture, but making up the rules for myself comes with just as many problems as following someone else’s. It’s not important to me to be unpackaged. If it looks like I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s because I don’t. But, if someone came along with a better idea of how to do things, I would take it.

I think obsession is a good word to talk about. I live in my obsessions and then the music comes from there. Living that way and writing from that place doesn’t make for a “color in the lines” mold. And yet, the songs and the videos and the image go together well because they all come from the same place. So, maybe I’m not deliberate about the packaging, but I am deliberate at trying to do things that I adore.

January 5, 2010

The Lowdown: Hypnotic New Album from Domainer’s Daughter Lana Del Ray (AKA Lizzy Grant) Now Available on iTunes
DN Journal, The Domain Industry News Magazine, post by Ron Jackson
In October I told you about the debut release (a 3-track EP called Kill Kill) from recording artist Lizzy Grant, the daughter of veteran domain investor Rob Grant who was the subject of our April 2008 Cover Story. Today, Lizzy’s first full-length album Lana Del Ray (a moniker that also serves as her stage name) went up for sale on iTunes (just $9.99 for the 13-track album or 99 cents for any of the individual songs).

Knowing Lizzy’s immense talent I downloaded the album as soon as it was released and am listening to it (for the second time) as I write this. I can tell you with 100% honesty that I love it.

She is a wonderful young woman who has the complete package needed to break through in the music business—a unique sound, songs with inescapable hooks, an engaging personality and a great look.

(Google results for “what is a domain investor”—Ed.)

Photo from
Adirondack Daily Enterprise

January 28, 2010

Lizzy Grant aka. Lana Del Ray releases album
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, article by Jessica Collier
Now 24 years old, Lizzy Grant is on her way. Earlier this month, she released her first professionally produced album, “Kill Kill,” under the stage name Lana Del Ray on the label Five Points Records, and it is now available for purchase on iTunes and other Web sites.

Lizzy said she liked that Kahne quickly understood her vision.

She told him she wanted the album to be cinematic. She was also hoping it would reflect her affection for nostalgic things like Coney Island and black and white movies.

“He kind of got my whole vibe right away,” she said.

She writes all her own music, and she said her lyrics tend to be a reflection on actual incidents in her life.

“There will be two true verses, then I’ll make up the third; just rhyme it out,” Grant said.

Her father, who has a history in advertising and has been helping his daughter market her album, said it’s very exciting to live vicariously through her.

“It’s a girl from an upstate New York town who may be on the verge of something great,” he said.

August 3, 2011

Best New Track
Pitchfork, post by Ian Cohen
So even if I really wish she hadn’t taken it there with this whole “gangsta Nancy Sinatra” thing, at the very least she’s prevented it from being used by someone unworthy of our attention.

August 30, 2011

Features: Rising
Pitchfork, interview by Ryan Dombal
Pitchfork: How did you meet the pretty-well-known producer of your first album, David Kahne?
Lana Del Rey: When I was 18 I was signed to an indie label and we sent my demos to five producers. David called us 10 minutes later and asked if we could start working the next day. We spent every day for five months on the record with Coney Island and hope as the touchstones for the sound.

Pitchfork: What did you learn about music and the industry from releasing that album?
LDR: I learned that there’s no reason why people decide they like music when they do. Even if you’re the best singer in the world, there’s a good chance no one will ever hear you. You make a decision to keep singing or to stop. I’ve been singing in Brooklyn since I was 17 and no one in the industry cared at all. I haven’t changed a thing since then and yet things seem to be turning around for me. Perhaps the angels decided to shine on me for a little while.

Pitchfork: Your dad is a successful domain investor, but I read that you were living in a trailer park a few years ago. Do you fetishize that trailer park lifestyle?
LDR: My dad is an entrepreneur and an innovator. Being an entrepreneur doesn’t make you a rich tycoon and being an innovator doesn’t mean that you’re successful. It just means that you’re interesting. No one cares that I lived in a park—Dad loves trailers and is getting one in the Everglades. My first record label gave me a small check and I moved into a park near Manhattan. It’s not something I cared to even share but people keep asking me about it. My songs are cinematic so they seem to reference a glamorous era or fetishize certain lifestyles, but that’s not my aim. I’m not trying to create an image or a persona. I’m just singing because that’s what I know how to do.

September 9, 2011

check out Lana Del Rey (formerly Lizzy Grant)—new video released, ‘debut’ shows announced
Brooklyn Vegan, post by Andrew Sacher
NY Singer/songwriter Lizzy Grant, who now goes by the name of Lana Del Rey, is releasing the new single “Video Games” b/w “Blue Jeans” on October 16 digitally and on 7″ vinyl the next day on Stranger Records. The vinyl is available for pre-order at the Stranger Records webstore. You can also watch videos of both tracks and check out the cover art below.

It’s hard to pay attention to Lana Del Rey without noticing her booming style. She’s got a number of portraits, like the one above, evoking images of vintage film stars and models. Her songs possess a strong sense of classic pop with lyrical references to James Dean, old bars, and guns. But Lana Del Rey’s style doesn’t come without substance. She sings with a bold, sultry delivery, bearing conversational lyrics and moody musical passages that present much more than mere nostalgia.
And people are taking notice. Lana has been featured everywhere from Pitchfork to Stereogum to KCRW to The Guardian. The video for “Blue Jeans” (that you can watch below) was posted to YouTube today and already has almost 20,000 views as of this post.

Fans of Lizzy Grant have probably seen her play at places like the National Underground, the Living Room, and even at Fordham University in 2008 with Mirah and The Blow. She however has never played a show as Lana Del Ray. Therefore the two US shows that were just announced are Lana’s live debut.

September 12, 2011

Hipster Runoff, first post of many
Is Lana Del Rey the next overrated, marginally talented but TOTALLY HOT female in indie?

September 22, 2011

Hipster Music Blogs Need to Get Over Their ‘Authenticity’ Problem
Gawker, post by Bryan Moylan

Comment by Nigerian Business Executive: Brian, thanks for introducing me to her. Not only do I love her love her voice and find her music intriguing. I could not care less about pumped up lips and management teams. It’s the tunes I’m after and, unless she’s a mass-murderer or pedophile, if there are considerations other than music for judging a musician I am very happy to be excluded from any kind of cool music loving clique. Moreover, the fact that I’m not “supposed” to like her makes me like her more. The blogs are doing her management team’s work excellently! Thanks!

Comment by The Late Innings: On one hand, it could be the case that the (re-)packaging of Lizzy Grant as “Lana Del Rey” by her management/PR firm has been sloppy: it doesn’t take too much internet sleuthing to find the breadcrumb trail between Lizzy Grant’s previous life and her new persona.

But I can’t believe her PR firm is that inept—another possible conclusion is that the packaging and marketing of LDR has been made intentionally obvious so that the marketing campaign itself would generate a discussion (and by extension, interest in LDR). There’s no way that her PR firm could hide every trace of her previous existence (nor did they try to—it’s not too hard to find her LG’s old ReverbNation page, for example); instead, they counted on the scoop-hungry blogosphere to do work to figure out who is the voice behind “Video Games”.

Plenty of blog posts (some admiring, some scathing) have included information about her past, presented as though they were uncovering the real truth about LDR. Hipster Runoff has devoted several posts about her that claim to expose her for what she is (or are these parodies of other blogger’s “discoveries”? I can’t tell.) Regardless, that’s what was intended all along, I think. The PR campaign that we see on the surface is intended to be transparent—the one that’s going on behind the scenes is the parceling out of information about her to keep stringing the blogosphere along.

(Or now have I fallen into the trap myself? I’ve claimed to discover the real truth about LDR!)

September 30, 2011

Why We Fight: The Imagination of Lana Del Rey
Pitchfork, Nitsuh Abebe discusses the sharp rise of divisive Internet star Lana Del Rey
It’s a tricky thing. Back when Del Rey was Lizzy Grant, she struggled for years in a field where, to put it uncharitably, artists are not much encouraged to be openly imaginative. Your run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter has lots of room to exercise vocal skill and musical sophistication, but they exist in an awfully untheatrical world—an earnest, “gimmick”-free space that doesn’t accommodate much in the way of creative personas. The whole genre is damn near allergic to pretense. Judging by her interviews, Del Rey found that space pretty frustrating, for career reasons as much as creative ones. So what audience could she communicate with better?

If that sounds like a cynical question—if it sounds wrong to “choose” an audience, rather than let one naturally accrete around you—consider just how fragmented the music world is at this point: Recording artists need to find a home just as much as touring bands need to pick which venues to play. (I feel silly even typing “music world,” singular, as opposed to “worlds.”) Del Rey has the ear and the ambition for a pop audience, and an aesthetic that makes an effective splash around the “indie” press.

Three months ago

Some Kinda Gypsy Tumblr
‘Who IS indie?’—Lana Del Rey
Wish my Rolling Stone ‘Hot Issue’ piece on Lana Del Rey could have fit more words, but alas. Here’s a portion of my conversation with her that didn’t make it into the mag . . .

Before this, did you ever concern yourself with indie rock?
No. Hey, honey, I would have loved to be part of the indie community. But I wasn’t. I was looking for a community. I don’t even know any people who are musicians. I never met that indie popular indie, whoever the fuck that is. Who IS indie? First of all, I can’t really get my head around what indie music is. Because if you’ve heard of it, it’s sort of pop music, right? Because it’s, like, popular? Or is it just that it’s not on the radio? It’s not like I was in an indie community and then I blew up. It’s like, I was living on the street and I’m not—like, for real, you know what I’m saying?

You didn’t read Pitchfork to find out, like, ‘what’s new in indie’?
No. I knew they were very popular. Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. They were very popular. [laughs and shrugs]. Yeah, it was sort of much farther away than where I was, which was nowhere.

October 15, 2011

Review: Lana Del Rey—Video Games EP (2011)
Mezzic, By John
She’s not authentic. No contest on that, nor debate. The hipsters going to arms over this are, as Gawker remarked, fighting a losing battle.

November 11, 2011

Why the Indie Music World Hates Lana Del Rey
Good, post by Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Of course, the indie world’s dirty little secret—and its greatest fear—is that even while claiming innocence, indie reproduces many of the evils of pop. What happens to Lana Del Rey and all those scapegoated, formerly-known-as-indie artists? Cut off like gangrenous appendages, they turn into phantom limbs and haunt the body of indie forever.

January 4, 2012

‘Indie’ Singer Lana Del Rey Lands A Modeling Contract
The Gloss, post by Jamie PeckJanuary 13, 2012

Some Things You Should Know About Lana Del Rey Before She Plays SNL
Crushable, post by Jamie Peck
1.) There have been a lot of Internet fights about her.
This is no accident, as her image seems to have been constructed with “making people angry” as at least a secondary concern. This tactic has become such an easy route to fame that it’s common enough to have a name now: trollgaze. The fact that she is trying to brand (or rather, re-brand, as she used to look quite different and go by her real name, Lizzy Grant) herself as some sort of “Lolita in the hood” (her words, not mine), thereby perpetuating the idea that a book about a child rapist is sexy, the borderline offensive references to the ghetto when she’s the daughter of a wealthy Internet domain guy and went to prep school in Connecticut, the way she’s being branded as an “indie” artist when she was never a part of any D.I.Y. scene, her obvious and distracting surgical augmentation, the fact that she insists on lying about said surgical augmentation, etc.