Lana Del Rey

Variety honored her at their Hitmakers Awards for being "one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the 21st century".

Rolling Stone placed Del Rey on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time (2023), and Rolling Stone UK named her The Greatest American Songwriter of the 21st century (2023).

Her music is noted for its cinematic quality and exploration of tragic romance, glamour, and melancholia, with frequent references to contemporary pop culture and 1950s–70s Americana.

Her vintage Hollywood glamour aesthetic is presented not only in her music, but also in her music videos.

She is the recipient of various accolades, including an MTV Video Music Award, three MTV Europe Music Awards, two Brit Awards, two Billboard Women in Music, and a Satellite Award, in addition to nominations for eleven Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.

Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (born June 21, 1985), known professionally as Lana Del Rey, is an American singer-songwriter.

Elizabeth Grant was born on June 21, 1985, in Manhattan, New York City, to Robert England Grant Jr., a copywriter at Grey Group, and Patricia Ann "Pat" (née Hill), an account executive at the same organization.

She has a younger sister, Caroline "Chuck" Grant, and a younger brother, Charlie Grant.

She was raised Roman Catholic and is of Scottish descent.

When she was one year old, the family moved to Lake Placid, New York.

In Lake Placid, her father worked for a furniture company before becoming an entrepreneurial domain investor; her mother worked as a schoolteacher.

There, she attended St. Agnes School in her elementary years and began singing in her church choir, where she was the cantor.

She attended the high school where her mother taught for one year, but when she was 14 or 15, her parents sent her to Kent School to get sober from alcoholism.

Grant shared in an interview: "That's really why I got sent to boarding school aged 14—to get sober."

Her uncle, an admissions officer at the school, secured her financial aid to attend.

According to Grant, she had trouble making friends during much of her teenage and early adult years.

She has said she was preoccupied with death from a young age, and its role in her feelings of anxiety and alienation: "When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact 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."

After graduating from Kent School, she spent a year living on Long Island with her aunt and uncle and working as a waitress.

During this time, Grant's uncle taught her to play guitar and she "realized [that she] could probably write a million songs with those six chords".

Shortly after, she 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".

"I was always singing, but didn't plan on pursuing it seriously", she said.

"When I got to New York City when I was eighteen, 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."

In fall 2004, at age 19, Grant enrolled at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York City, where she majored in philosophy, with an emphasis on metaphysics.

She has said she chose to study the subject because it "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."

Raised in upstate New York, Del Rey moved to New York City in 2005 to pursue a music career.

In spring 2005, while still in college, Del Rey registered a seven-track extended play with the United States Copyright Office; the application title was Rock Me Stable with another title, Young Like Me, also listed.

A second extended play, From the End, was also recorded under Del Rey's stage name at the time, May Jailer.

After numerous projects, including her self-titled debut studio album, Del Rey's breakthrough came in 2011 with the viral success of her single "Video Games"; she subsequently signed a recording contract with Polydor and Interscope.

She achieved critical and commercial success with her major label debut album, Born to Die (2012), which contained the sleeper hit "Summertime Sadness".

Born To Die became her first of six number-one albums in the UK, and also topped various national charts around the world.

Del Rey has collaborated on soundtracks for visual media; in 2013, she wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed musical short Tropico and released "Young and Beautiful" for the romantic drama The Great Gatsby, which was highly praised by critics and received Grammy Award and Critics' Choice Award nominations.

Del Rey's third album, Ultraviolence (2014), featured greater use of guitar-driven instrumentation and debuted atop the U.S. Billboard 200.

In 2014, she recorded "Once Upon a Dream" for the dark fantasy adventure film Maleficent and the titular theme song for the biopic Big Eyes, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

Her fourth and fifth albums, Honeymoon (2015) and Lust for Life (2017), saw a return to the stylistic traditions of her earlier releases, while her critically acclaimed sixth album, Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019) explored soft rock, was nominated for Album of the Year at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, and was also named one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone.

Her next studio albums, Chemtrails over the Country Club and Blue Banisters, followed in 2021 and explored Americana.

Del Rey collaborated with Taylor Swift on "Snow on the Beach", from Swift's tenth studio album Midnights (2022); it debuted at number four on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, marking Del Rey's highest peak on the chart.

Del Rey's ninth studio album, Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, was later released in 2023, supported by its title track and the critically acclaimed single "A&W", with the latter being named one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone.

Later that year, she released the Billboard Global 200 top-20 hit "Say Yes To Heaven".

Del Rey also recorded the collaboration "Don't Call Me Angel" for the action comedy Charlie's Angels (2019).

Del Rey published the poetry and photography collection Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass (2020).