Lana Del Rey

Lizzy Grant to Lana Del Rey

Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was born on June 21, 1985 in Manhattan, grew up in Lake Placid, New York, and moved back to Manhattan in 2005. She recorded as May Jailer around 2005 and 2006, an acoustic project whose album Sirens leaked online in 2012, and signed to 5 Points Records in 2007. As Lizzy Grant she released the EP Kill Kill (October 21, 2008, produced by David Kahne) and the album Lana Del Ray (January 4, 2010); it was withdrawn from iTunes in April 2010 and re-released after she bought back the rights. She clashed with 5 Points and Kahne over her debut. After "Video Games" went viral she signed with Stranger Records in June 2011, then Interscope and Polydor.

Born to Die (January 27, 2012) debuted at 1 in the UK and 2 in the US, behind Adele's 21, and was the fifth best-selling album of 2012 with 3.4 million, IFPI says, and 7 million by June 2014. Later albums are Ultraviolence (June 13, 2014, produced by Dan Auerbach), Honeymoon (2015), Lust for Life (2017), Norman Fucking Rockwell! (August 30, 2019, produced with Jack Antonoff, in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums), Chemtrails over the Country Club (March 19, 2021), Blue Banisters (October 22, 2021) and Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (March 24, 2023), which was nominated for Album of the Year. The EPs include Paradise (2012) and Tropico (2013), which came with a short film, and her book Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass came out in 2020, when she donated 350,000 dollars from its sales to DigDeep.

Her tours include the Born to Die Tour (2011 to 2012), Endless Summer (2015), LA to the Moon (2018), Norman Fucking Rockwell! (2019) and a UK and Ireland stadium run in 2025 with Wembley dates on July 3 and 4. She played Glastonbury on June 24, 2023, where her set started about 30 minutes late and was cut short, and headlined Coachella on April 12, 2024. Billboard called Born to Die a catalyst for pop's mid-2010s turn from EDM to moodier hip-hop-inflected sound; Wikipedia lists 11 Grammy nominations. Setlist.fm lists 447 setlists. A tenth album, Stove, is listed as forthcoming with no date.