Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (Lana Del Ray) is an American singer-songwriter. Her music is a throwback to the musical influences of the 1950s-1960s. Elizabeth grew up in Lake Placid, New York but moved to New York City at age 18 where she started singing at open mic nights like Lilo’s Lounge in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She also lived in a New Jersey trailer park for some time. Del Rey first released a three-track EP titled ‘Kill Kill’ in October 2008 under the name Lizzy Grant, featuring the tracks ‘Kill Kill’, ‘Yayo’ and ‘Gramma (Blue Ribbon Sparkler Trailer Heaven)’. In 2010, Elizabeth released her first studio album on the independent label ‘5 Points’. The album was called ‘Lana Del Ray aka Lizzy Grant’. It appeared briefly on Itunes and got a decent reaction but then was pulled shortly after. Speculation is that Lana pulled the album off Itunes and bought back the rights to the album from the label as way of making it unavailable to the public.

Elizabeth explained the change of her stage name from Lizzy Grant to Lana Del Ray by discussing her love of the Spanish language and Miami and the way that the name brings a touch of glamour when you hear it for the first time. Lana would release the single ‘Video Games’ on youtube and the video for the song was shot with iMovie and directed by Lana. The song went viral and became a huge hit and helped Lana to get the attention of major music labels. In 2011, Del Ray signed a joint deal with Interscope and Polydor and released another album called ‘Born to Die’ that was launched worldwide on January 31, 2012. The album went #1 in seven countries. Del Ray would do a live performance on SNL which got a lot of negative attention from critics who said that her performance lacked confidence and that the singer looked nervous performing live in front of a studio audience. Del Ray has kept pushing past the critics and released another music video for the song ‘Carmen’. She plans on re-releasing her fist album ‘Lany Del Ray aka Lizzy Grant’ sometime in 2012.

You can listen to a tiny bit of her single ‘Video Games’ in the media player below.

Thanks to http://www.nme.com/ for some biographical information.

Image source: http://www.last.fm

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