Born To Die

Lana Del Rey - Born To Die
Critic Score
Based on 39 reviews
2012 Ratings: #932 / 1118
User Score
2012 Rank: #230
Liked by 644 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Independent
It's tempting, when considering the phrase "Hollywood sadcore" – Del Rey's own description of her musical style – to dwell too long on the second word. But the "Hollywood" part signifies more than simply silver-screen glamour.
90
FACT Magazine

I can’t think of an album since My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that was this big and sounded this good.

80
Q Magazine

Confirms her as the most compelling new pop star around: half doomed romantic, half mordant cynic, with a distinctively conflicted vision of how love, fame and America work.

80
Gigwise
No, Lana Del Rey isn’t the indie singer songwriter we all initially believed she was. But what she is is a finely tuned popstar. She is a performer, and 'Born To Die' is a well thought out project that has been hammered into elegant shape over time.
80
The Telegraph

Lana Del Rey's Born to Die doesn’t walk on water but its misty-eyed retro-pop makes for compelling listening.

80
Mojo
Tune out the background media noise and immerse yourself.
80
NME

Although it’s not quite the perfect pop record ‘Video Games’ might have led us to wish for, ‘Born To Die’ still marks the arrival of a fresh – and refreshingly self-aware – sensibility in pop.

80
The Guardian

What Born to Die isn't is the thing Lana Del Rey seems to think it is, which is a coruscating journey into the dark heart of a troubled soul. If you concentrate too hard on her attempts to conjure that up, it just sounds a bit daft. What it is, is beautifully turned pop music, which is more than enough.

80
Slant Magazine

Del Rey may be the pop-star equivalent of a teenage girl naïvely playing dress up in her grandmother’s vintage clothing and singing into a hairbrush that conveniently looks like an old-fashioned microphone, but that doesn’t make Born to Die any less close to pop perfection.

80
Sputnikmusic

The heights it reaches at its best still leave you wanting more. Born to Die is a brilliant album, but it's one that leaves room for a few improvements, and inspires confidence that they'll happen.

80
The Fly
‘Born To Die’ may ultimately prove too-blinkered a vision to fully appeal to the Sheeran-loving public in the long run, but Lana has certainly proved that she’s not just here to play games.
70
Drowned in Sound

Whole thing sounds like a poppy Bond soundtrack remixed for the clubs, although even her faster songs sound slow.

70
DIY

As brilliant as the character of Lana Del Rey may be it can, at times, feel to be repeating the motif more than adding anything new.

70
The 405

Forget what you used to think about Lana Del Rey, Born To Die provides more than anything you could ever expect from an internet sensation.

67
Beats Per Minute

There is a lot of room for Del Rey to grow if she wants to, as she already has a developed style for delivering her ideas and just needs a bit more to say.

64
Paste
Unplug your modem and these expert pop songs still exist in a world they won’t change. But shutting them out for the sake of it is to deny highly listenable pop songs that defy easy answers.
60
Evening Standard

Born to Die is no disaster but it's no work of genius. Much as Lana Del Rey aspires to be Lady Gaga's successor, she may well be Clare Maguire's. Who? Exactly.

60
Under the Radar

On the one hand, Del Rey's aesthetic of purring sex kitten, luring you in with deliberate devilish angel vocals, hip-hop beats, and the occasional lush orchestration, is alluringly original ... On the other hand, however, Del Rey’s faux rap posturing and often ridiculous lyrics border on the offensive.

60
The Arts Desk

Crafted, but not consistent, the unsure-of-itself Born to Die doesn’t sustain or build on the impact of “Video Games”.

60
The Observer
If Del Rey is wild at heart, she is just weird enough on top to remain compelling.
60
Prefix
The sequencing wouldn't seem so top-loaded if what followed was half as compelling as the breakout "Video Games." After that highpoint things head downhill quickly.
60
musicOMH

There's just enough promise here to show that there is indeed talent beyond all the hype.

60
God Is in the TV
It’s a fantastical and elegiac powerful album, when all said and done; one that depends on the allurement of something special – and the hefty million dollar plus price tag – yet it fails to deliver on the promise of those early minor-opuses.
60
SPIN

This record is not godawful. Nor is it great. But it's better than we deserve.

60
Time Out London
Del Rey's debut definitely needs a re-edit, but she's still a promising prospect. Haters keep hating; we're on Team Lana.
60
No Ripcord

Through it all, she credibly makes us see through her own lens, one that reflects an artist who’s so sure of herself she’ll bypass any critique brought upon her.

58
Entertainment Weekly

All tabloid tawdriness aside, she unleashes some truly A-level songs. But its baffling failures drop Die to a middling, maddening C+.

55
Spectrum Culture
Unfortunately, most of the appeal of the record ends with its earliest tracks.
55
Pitchfork

Born to Die attempts to serve as Del Rey's own beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy, but there's no spark and nothing at stake.

50
AllMusic

She's unable to consistently sell herself as a heartbreaker, and most of the songs here sound like cobbled retreads of "Video Games."

50
The Line of Best Fit

It’s telling that Born To Die’s notion of success relies on such unimaginative signifiers.

50
Consequence of Sound

Listening to Born To Die is like watching a movie billed as a comedy and discovering that the only funny scenes are in the previews

43
Pretty Much Amazing

Born to Die is neither a fiasco nor a triumph, but a sometimes competent, mostly mediocre album, unworthy of the tidal wave of infernal nattering it rides in on.

40
Rolling Stone
She’s a starlet to music bloggers, who’ve been buzzing over her for the past year. But for the rest of us, she’s just another aspiring singer who wasn’t ready to make an album yet.
40
NOW Magazine
Much of her music aims to capture elusive emotions, yet she ends up spelling them out with literal refrains, banal narratives and sexed-up histrionics that leave little to the imagination.
40
PopMatters

A deeply, deeply flawed meditation on love, image, and fame in the 21st century, and a collection of ideas thrown at the wall to see what sticks.

30
The Needle Drop
On Lana Del Rey's new album, the American singer-songwriter brings a fresh approach to baroque pop, but doesn't really bring the depth or substance to back it up.
25
A.V. Club

Shallow and overwrought, with periodic echoes of Ke$ha’s Valley Girl aloofness, the album lives down to the harshest preconceptions against pop music.

0
Tiny Mix Tapes

Born to Die is the most unintentionally depressing thing I have listened to in a long time.

Sagittarius
3

SHUT UP!!!!! SHUT UP!! PLEASE JUST SHUT UP!!!!!!! SUPID DUMB!!!!!! SHUT UP NO ONE CARES!!!!!@! SHUT UP!!!!!!!

CLJesse
50

If you need to sleep then this is the album for you

Scre4meh
76

𝙉𝙤𝙩 𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙜𝙞𝙧𝙡𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨⁉️ (GF'S PICK #2)

"Tell me i'm your National Anthem"

The perfect thot pop music.I can only imagine this being some people's life soundtrack.

Lana 's debut studio album is actually better then her first project, and that's simply because it's definetly mixed better and she also shows somewhat of a vocal improvement and more variety. As far as i can tell, this album was mega hyped ... read more

jxde
78

Second half was wayyy better than the first

TIW
74

Timeless pop bible

75

favs:
Born To Die
National Anthem
Carmen
Lolita

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Track List

Year End Lists

#4/Complex
#9/Slant
#11/The Fly
#17/The Guardian
#19/FACT Magazine
#42/Gigwise
#45/NME
#45/Spinner
#50/Earmilk
#51/Uncut
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Added on: November 27, 2011