How Reading & Leeds headliner Lana Del Rey beat teen addiction & backlash over reinvention as ‘gangster Nancy Sinatra’
SHE’S the former “wild child” who overcame teenage alcoholism to become one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.
Long before her global superstardom, Lana Del Rey battled addiction and bounced back after she was accused of being a “fake” created by music industry titans.
The Video Games hitmaker, 39, is due to headline Reading Festival’s main stage tonight, alongside Fred Again, and Leeds Festival on Sunday, amid a recent resurgence in her popularity.
Since performing at Coachella in April, which led to a £21,000 fine due to her set over-running, Lana’s album sales have risen by a whopping 800 per cent, according to Forbes.
The 11-time Grammy nominee – who has sold 41 million albums worldwide and has 58 billion streams – is due to release a new country-inspired album Lasso, next month.
It’s no surprise Lana is among the most important female artists of the last decade – and has even been credited by Billboard with changing the direction of pop music.
But it’s been no easy ride to the top for the Summertime Sadness singer – from fan furore over ‘inauthenticity’ and plastic surgery claims to vicious online feuds, we look back at Lana’s journey.
Long before the world knew her by the name she goes by today, the future popstar was born Elizabeth Grant on June 21, 1985, in Manhattan.
The child of parents Robert Grant and Pat Ann Grant, who had met in the advertising industry, the family moved when Elizabeth was just one year old to Lake Placid, a small village in the north of New York State.
Her Catholic upbringing led her to become a self-proclaimed “wild child”.
But this wildness soon took a dark turn for the teenager, who developed a serious drinking habit.
She said: “I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was so fucking cool.
“At first it’s fine and you think you have a dark side – it’s exciting – and then you realise the dark side wins every time if you decide to indulge in it.”
Eventually, things came to a head. At 14 she was sent to boarding school in Connecticut by her parents to get sober, finally kicking the habit by age 18.
“My parents were worried, I was worried. I knew it was a problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else.”, she added.
The singer has said that much of what is written in her hit album Born To Die is about that part of her life, and has also spent time working with recovering alcohol and drug users.
Changing names
After school, Grant moved to New York to live with her uncle and study philosophy at university.
She learned guitar, and started touring the city on the open-mic circuit, performing under a number of stage names, including the catchy ‘Sparkle Jump Rope Queen’ and ‘May Jailer’.
But it was at a songwriting competition in Brooklyn that she got noticed by indie label 5 Points Records. She soon released an EP and began working on her album under the name Lizzy Grant, all while living in a trailer park on the outskirts of the city.
But things quickly got complicated. According to record label owner David Nichtern, she “morphed”.
“When she first came to us, she was playing plunky little acoustic guitar, [had] sort of straight blonde hair, very cute young woman. But she very quickly kept evolving,” he added.
It was this personal evolution and constant meddling with her personal image that in only a few years would lead to backlash from fans, and accusations of being an industry creation – a fake.
I didn’t even get famous ’til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a f***
Lana Del Rey
Halfway through making the record, she began flirting with the idea of ditching Lizzy Grant for a more exotic name.
Talking about her stage name, she said: “I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba. Lana Del Rey reminded us of the glamour of the seaside.”
The first half of her name was inspired by the Golden Age Hollywood actress Lana Turner, and the second half – Del Rey – is taken from the Ford Del Rey sedan, a car that was popular in 1980s Brazil, although she originally spelt it Del Ray.
The album, titled Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant, was released digitally but was pulled from sale after only three months. Lana had all traces of the album scrubbed from the internet.
Then in June 2011, everything changed. Lana uploaded two songs onto YouTube – Video Games and Blue Jeans – accompanied by homemade videos of her singing into a webcam.
Fan fury
Within five months, Video Games had gained more than 20 million views. She was soon signed to a new label and even won the Next Best Thing gong at the Q Awards.
Oozing in retro glamour, she turned heads with a look she described as “gangster Nancy Sinatra” and “Lolita got lost in the hood”.
And then came the backlash.
‘Industry creation’
Critics and fans began to doubt her authenticity, questioning how she had so quickly managed to transform from her old persona to this new one.
As speedily as they came to love her, people turned on her. Side-by-side comparisons of Lizzy Grant and Lana Del Rey led to speculation of plastic surgery – or at least collage injections in her lips.
The singer vehemently denied the claims, insisting: “I haven’t had anything done at all… I’m quite pouty. That’s just how I look when I sing.”
The was just the beginning. Fans began to suspect that everything – her name, her look, her interests – had been chosen by music executives in a boardroom.
How to watch Reading and Leeds Festival?
MORE than 240,000 music lovers have flocked to Reading and Leeds Festival to catch some of the world's biggest acts.
For the remaining three days, the headliners are Lana Del Rey, Liam Gallagher, Blink 182, Fred Again…, Catfish And The Bottlemen and Gerry Cinnamon.
They are joined by other big names including Raye, Two Door Cinema Club, Jodja Smith, The Wombats, Pendulum and The Prodigy.
For music lovers stuck who were unable to bag a ticket, you can still catch the action.
Tune into BBC iPlayer to watch performances from the Main Stage and The Chevron, the new stage where The Prodigy, Skillrex and others, will perform.
BBC Radio 1 will also be covering the festival live on the ground through the festival.
For those outside the UK, you can stream Reading and Leeds Festival on the BBC Music YouTube Channel.
The singer’s performance on US TV show SNL was met with brutal criticism.
“Watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12-year-old in their bedroom when they’re pretending to sing and perform”, tweeted actress and musician Juliette Lewis.
People found out about her father, Robert, who since leaving advertising had amassed a fortune via a web enterprise, and concluded that everything she presented herself as was a lie.
But these attacks on her artistic integrity were soon drowned out after the release of her first album, Born To Die, which, although not a critics’ favourite, shot to number 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and has been certified platinum five times.
Defending her authenticity, she said: “I didn’t even get famous ’til I was, like, 27 and until then, I sang for less than free. And I loved it. I really was that girl who was pure of soul. I didn’t give a f***.”
In the years since releasing Born to Die in 2012, the singer has released seven more albums, earned eleven Grammy nominations, and headlined festivals all over the world.
But while she managed to overcome doubts about her authenticity, Lana’s long career has seen her involved in plenty of controversy.
Early on, the star was accused of “internalised sexism” for posing naked on the cover of GQ magazine. In 2014, she claimed the “issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept.”
But while her lyrics often cover topics such as submissiveness and violence in relationships, the singer defended herself, saying that she was just being “honest” about the challenging relationships she’d had, adding: “That’s just how it is for many women.”
Celebrity feud
In the years since, she’s come out as a vocal supporter of the #MeToo movement and publicly identified as a feminist.
Lana also had a noticeable spat with Azealia Banks on social media in 2018. It followed the Video Games singer criticising rapper Kanye West’s support of then-president Trump.
Accusing her of dishonesty, Banks tweeted: “To me, this just looks like the typical White woman… using a weakened target to ‘pretend’ to be an ally.”
In a later post, she fumed: “Don’t use Kanye for your own vapid attempt to seem politically aware when there is SO MUCH MORE bootleg witchcraft you could be doing to TRY and take down 45.”
Clearly unimpressed, Lana made it personal. She told Azealia she could have been “the greatest female rapper alive but… blew it” before warning her to back off.
There’s no vindication, no nothing – I’m just kind of happy to be here
Lana Del Rey
“I won’t not f*** you the f*** up. Period… U know the addy (address). Pull up anytime. Say it to my face. But if I were you- I wouldn’t.”
In 2020, the singer faced backlash for posting footage of people looting during the George Floyd protests – but hastily deleted the footage.
Away from the controversy, Lana has got involved in several unusual ventures including releasing a cover of You’ll Never Walk Alone to pledge her support to Liverpool FC.
And in 2023, she helped her dad, Rob, release an album of piano tracks. Turning the nepotism allegations on their head, her father proudly calls himself a “nepodaddy”.
Love struggle
Unlike other stars of her generation, Lana has kept a relatively low profile when it comes to dating.
From 2011 to 2014, she dated Scottish musician Barrie-James O’Neill, who is said to have inspired the lyric “My p**sy tastes like Pepsi Cola” from 2012 hit Cola.
Since then, she’s been linked with various other artists including rapper G-Eazy in 2017 and was reported to be engaged to industry insider Evan Winiker in March 2023.
However, she’s currently single, telling Harper’s Bazaar that she’s “definitely not in love right now. Absolutely not in love. Have been, but no”.
She added: “It hasn’t crossed my mind in the last five months on the road or here yet. But give it a week. My history, sure, it’s coming for me at some point.”.
As the megastar prepares to release her latest album Lasso in September, said to be country-inspired, she teased in a recent interview with NME that horses may make an appearance on stage at Reading and Leeds Festival.
And reflecting on the criticism she’s received over the years, Lana has remained headstrong and unphased.
She said: “If you hang in long enough, it just feels easy. There’s no vindication, no nothing – I’m just kind of happy to be here. It’s easy-going in that way.”