Lana Del Rey is an American singer/songwriter and Vogue cover girl.
- 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 told Vogue 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".
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."
