Born To Die

Born to Die (2012) is Lana Del Rey’s commercial breakthrough — cinematic, deliberately camp, hyper-produced in ways that seemed designed to provoke the debate about authenticity that immediately surrounded it. The production is glossy and self-conscious; the songwriting underneath the gloss is stranger and more precise than the initial reception suggested.

What makes the trilogy coherent is the arc: Born to Die is the record before she found the sound she was looking for. It’s the version that the mainstream could process, and Ultraviolence is what happened two years later when she stopped making that version.