Born To Die (studio album)
by Lana Del Rey

I like her sultry voice with the cinematic scopes & accompanying string sections. Starts strong and promising but then mostly verges on background music due to the lack of musical variation and sounding all to much the same.

The chokehold this album had on a whole generation just wow

Easily her best album imo

From arturguerra 03/20/2024 18:31

Not bad. Some good songs here and there.

I felt from when I first this album that there was something exciting, new and very contemporary in sound of Lana Del Rey; I actually still do, after 10 years. With elements from both Dido and Kate Bush, I think that producer Emile Haynie has created a sound that is very modern which incorporates the feelings of disillusionment which characterizes our times.
There are several really good songs which lyrically corresponds well to the music. The title track is perhaps the number most people will know from the radio, but for me "Blue Jeans" is the absolute highligt, both melodic and catchy - magnificent!

"Dark Paradise" has not been released as a single, even though the song to my ears was a more obvious choice than a couple of the other five singles that have been pulled from the album.

It can be stated that more songs remind pretty much of each other, but still each very good.

One song which really stands out from the rest is "Million Dollar Man", which has a more jazzy sound. There are also some James Bond-ish in both melody and production. I would not be surprised if Del Rey is offered the title song for one the next Agent 007 movies.

https://www.angelfire.com/nv/Badfinger/BANDlanadelrey.html

The style of music is consistent throughout with some huge hits which are some of her best tracks. However, due to the repetitiveness from song to song the weaker tracks really stand out as being inferior. This leads to an up and down listen where the consistency of quality is all over the place. This melancholic pop style does get boring and worn out by the end of the record as well with a few of the tracks nearer the end being a real drag. Despite this, her voice is fantastic all the way through and there is quite a lot of depth in the music as well. This is primarily due to the diverse instrumentation that is present on here and it is always enjoyable to have an album where you can notice new things with every revisit. Overall, there are some outstanding moments on here but I am not a huge fan of this style of music and for me it isn't as consistent as it could be.

From teague 03/03/2022 21:52

Yeah. This is fake deep. I still enjoyed it though. I don't know what that says about me.

Strong 6

From Boltzmann 12/30/2019 12:31

The main inspiration for the subgenre of sad pop (melancholic pop?), a subcategory of baroque pop I'd say. Strangely, I'd say it has been mixed with hip hop, since a lot of beats (the songs that do have beats) are boom bap on paper. People who do not intend to actively mix genres or evolve existing ones keep surprising me, while the people that put all effort in making something the critics will scratch their heads to keep boring me to death (cough* Joanna Newsom). And don't say they're comparable, 'cause following that logic even Moloko's late work can be held responsible for the sad pop wave in the early '10s, which would be ridiculous, and boils down to a logic that doesn't go deeper than "it's baroque pop plus a woman so it's the same", which might be followed by a condescending "everybody knows, it's the truth, kiss kiss".

In retrospect this album must be much more appreciated than its current position suggests. People at the time had no idea where Lana Del Rey would be going and what key position this album holds in single female singers' albums . This album will be remembered as a classic in due time.