It felt like an expansion on, and dirty love letter to, the pop music I secretly loved so much. Born To Die had everything I was looking for in a cool record.
She was the reigning queen of Tumblr, despite never actually having an account on the platform (perhaps her only rival for this position at the time was Marina And The Diamonds, who also made cool music, and who I also loved). Lana Del Rey was considered ‘OK’ for me to listen to because she was the queen of indie, that murky ‘10s genre, an overloaded corner for any kind of catchy pop that wasn’t quite shiny enough for commercial radio. Listening to commercial pop music was hopelessly uncool but something I loved to do in secret - I denied loving Taylor Swift until I was around 21, an embarrassing attitude fueled largely by internalised misogyny. In this instance, ‘cool’ is a bit of a catch-all term for music that isn’t, for whatever reason, labelled or perceived as commercial pop, despite perhaps embracing many of the musical conventions of the genre, such as a clear verse-prechorus-chorus song structure, and instead marketed as alternative, different, even rebellious - in other words, cool.Īs a young woman at the time of Born To Die’s release, one who made and loved music, I prided myself on maintaining effortlessly cool musical taste (which actually required a great deal of effort). The difference is that, at the time, it was considered a ‘cool’ album. With hindsight, Born To Die is a straight-up pop album, as hook-laden, considered, and intricately produced as any Gaga or Taylor Swift record. Lana Del Rey, sullen and perfect, was everywhere. I was not alone in my obsession with Born To Die. The record put colour to the experience of the sudden adult relationship I was in, Lana becoming a cool older sister to me the kind who gives you not-so-sound advice while puffing on a cigarette and staring into your soul through heart-shaped sunglasses.
Those train journeys were soundtracked exclusively by Born To Die I plugged my earphones into my iPod Classic and spent the hour with Lana and her melancholy, abstract pop, filling myself up with a combination of sounds that I had never heard before.
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That listless summer was jarringly punctuated by an unfit relationship I had landed myself in, and didn’t know how to leave - young and naive, I caught the hot, stuffy train back and forth to this guy’s house a few times a week, endlessly contemplating how best to break it off. It was a sizzling couple of months I spent my time mostly in my band’s drummer’s dad's humid garage, playing badly written songs with my friends and stomping through the hilly streets to the supermarket for sustenance because none of us could drive. Lana Del Rey's Born To Die came out over the summer after I finished high school, just before my first year of uni, 10 years ago this month.
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