BAZAAR’s December/January 2024 Art Issue: Lana Del Ray

Harper’s Bazaar: Lana Del Rey, born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, first released music under her own name, as Lizzy Grant. But when that failed to chart, she chose a stage name and a new look—one that pulled from the iconography of doomed beauty, a pastiche of pinup bombshell and gangster’s girlfriend. She was Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Priscilla Presley, Karen Black in Easy Rider. Her videos were a collage of images signaling the American dream gone wrong: blinking neon, leaves in the swimming pools, death and love and sex displayed before the flag. Was it one reference too many? Stage names, symbolism, and reinvention are nothing new to music. Yet in Del Rey’s case, some people felt inexplicably tricked. So, who is she *really?