The Project consists of two different gifts we are going to present to Lana:
1) Birthday Card:
The first is a simple birthday card that we would design for Lana that would be full of fans’ signatures. We thought of many different ways of acquiring these, but the simplest and most efficient way is for every fan to sign his or her name on a blank sheet of paper, which he or she would then scan onto their computer to send to us.

2) Birthday Video:
The second is something a bit more complex. We’re going to make a video for Lana consisting of videos, pictures, designs from fans, all wishing her a happy birthday. You could film yourself, take a picture of yourself holding up a card, design a graphic, anything goes!

The deadline to submit everything is the first of June (June 1). You can e-mail your submissions to us at lanadelreybirthdayproject@gmail.com any time before the deadline. The sooner, the better! We hope you guys participate!

The legendary producer-turned-record executive, who worked on seminal albums by Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks, was joined by friends and artists at The Village recording studio, along with hundreds of guests who raised their glass to the entrepreneur and audiophile. Among them: Universal chief Lucian Grainge, American Idol creator Simon Fuller, Eminem’s manager Paul Rosenberg, director Brian Grazer and Paris Hilton.

After a video segment featuring several vintage clips of Iovine working in the studio, the Interscope Geffen A&M chairman took some time to reflect on his tenure in the industry, thanking many in the room personally. He then introduced his latest signing, Lana Del Rey, who performed her breakout song, “Video Games” — competently and confidently, we might add.

The sexy newcomer has been the subject of much controversy in recent weeks after a shaky TV debut on Saturday Night Live. But the 25-year-old beauty clearly has Iovine in her corner. He called her “an incredible girl” and told the crowd that Interscope has “a real commitment to her “ just moments after complimenting Nicks, standing nearby, for her one-of-a-kind voice. “I dare anybody to tell me that’s shit’s not amazing,” said Iovine of Del Rey’s debut album, Born to Die. “It’s left-of-center, it doesn’t sound like anything on the radio, it’s not trying to be anything to anyone…”

After the performance, The Hollywood Reporter asked Iovine if was in fact comparison Del Rey to the iconic Nicks. His answer? “Lana haunts me the way that Stevie’s voice haunted me and I just love her album so much,” he said. “But I can’t compare anybody to Stevie Nicks because Stevie has the greatest tone of any female rock singer that I’ve ever heard.”

Reiterating his comments to THR last week — that the backlash is “a drag” — Iovine added, “Lana made a record that is incredible at a time when people aren’t making albums. People should support her like crazy because she’s done what people like Adele are doing — incredible music.”

Curvaceous and pretty in a dress, she brims with catchy songs, all a bit retro, ironic and modern. Without straying too far off the pop grid, she’s the perfect antidote to Rihanna-Gaga overload — dare we say, a skinnier Adele, a more stable Amy Winehouse? Since posting “Video Games” to YouTube last summer, she’s amassed tens of millions of hits, sold out concerts to fashion’s who’s who and now, finally, has released her long-awaited album, which is currently No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200 in America, and No. 1 in Britain, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria. If you were going to manufacture a star for this moment, you’d manufacture her. Some people believe that’s precisely what happened.

Sitting in her producer’s Chelsea studio in jeans and an oversize sweater, smoking Pall Mall Blues that share space — in a beat-up snakeskin bag — with an old Tennessee Williams paperback, Lana Del Rey tries to shrug off the suggestion that her father bought her success, that her face went under the knife, that she is some sort of industry creation, all accusations floating around the Internet. It’s absurd or maybe flattering, but despite her laugh and smile, it hurts.

“I mean, I met everyone who is anyone in the music industry over the last six years and I was unsignable,” she says. “That’s what I was told by everyone. I would play my songs, explain what I was trying to do, and I’d get, ‘You know who’s No. 1 in 13 countries right now? Kesha.’ ”

There’s a formula for a pop song and a prescribed length for radio. Nothing Del Rey’s written obeys either. “ ‘Video Games’ was a four-and-a-half-minute ballad,” she says. “No instruments on it. It was too dark, too personal, too risky, not commercial. It wasn’t pop until it was on the radio.” And even “Born to Die” — her first big video — was, with its double chorus that never lifts, described to her as “another monotonous depressing song.”

For an hour, Del Rey and her producer Emile Haynie play songs from the album. She points out jazzy idiosyncrasies, quirky lyrics and favorite melodies. Sometimes she sings; often she gets up and dances. The last song they put on is “National Anthem”:

Red, white, blue’s in the skies
Summer’s in the air and
Baby, heaven’s in your eyes
I’m your national anthem
…
I sing the national anthem,
While I’m standing,
Over your body
…
Money is the anthem
God you’re so handsome

It may not be her most lyrically complex song, but it feels emblematic. As she did in the “Born to Die” video (in which she wraps her body in an American flag), she equates her sexuality to the national anthem. And she knowingly conflates love with material success. It feels like a wink at the listener. The Twitter generation loves a wink.

There’s also more than a little of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” in the song. Both you could play alone dancing in your bedroom, sing along to in your convertible with the top down or (it might surprise Cyrus’s Disney producers) find yourself gyrating to at an illegal warehouse rave. Whereas Cyrus’s song is a bland pop confection that somehow wound up cool, Del Rey’s track comes from someplace dark thematically and unstructured musically and ends up with pop appeal.

I explain my theory to Del Rey, in a roundabout way, and she nods, sings a bit of “Party in the USA” and ponders the matter for a few moments. “I really like that chorus,” she says. “I love an interesting melody.”

Haynie is more direct. “That’s the beauty of it,” he says. “That’s kind of the magic. She is supercool. The songs are as cool as it gets, sonically and aesthetically. But it’s like, ‘Wait a minute, this could resonate with the world.’ She started underground, small and kind of tight-knit, but some of these recordings are like, ‘Wow.’ I mean, that’s what I heard when I listened. It’s cool and it’s dark, but I thought, This could be big, you know?”

***

We head to a 10th Avenue Italian restaurant that her publicist has chosen. It feels tacky. “Do you want to just get a coffee across the street, and sit on a stoop? It’s not too cold?” she asks. I agree, though it is in fact too cold.

At the pizza place she orders a large coffee with no sugar, lots of milk. The server spots the old Tennessee Williams paperback in her purse, which sparks a conversation about 1950s movies and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra.

Then he asks, “Are you two a couple?” and looks at me and says: “Today is your lucky day. I wish I was lucky like you.”

The presumption doesn’t stop him from flirting with Del Rey. “Big cup for you,” he says, handing her her coffee. “Just a little kiss for me.”

Del Rey laughs and hits him right back with: “Sure. Just a little kiss. Where do you want it?”

There was no kiss, but the subject of Del Rey’s mouth is an irresistible one. So, sitting on the steps of a 25th Street brownstone, I ask the seemingly preposterous question. “It’s fine,” she assures me. “They’re real lips, I mean. In real life my lips don’t look that big. I think because I cartoonized the footage of myself in the video for ‘Video Games’ things look exaggerated.”

If that video is to blame for a pernicious rumor, it is also to blame for putting her on the map. What it didn’t do was get her a record deal. Not until Fearne Cotton, a BBC D.J., stumbled across it and played it on Radio 1 last June. Suddenly the world was calling.

“I was struck by the wonderful combination of spine-tingling video footage, her haunting voice and the simplicity of the song,” Cotton wrote in an e-mail. “I watched it about five or six times in a row and became slightly fixated with it. The lyrics then started to really stand out and it became my song of last summer. … I had been waiting for a song like this.”

Hers is the typical experience. But falling in love with a video or a studio recording can set unrealistic expectations for Del Rey’s live performances. Look for her to break it down Nicki Minaj-style and you’ll be disappointed. Her turn on “Saturday Night Live” in January was widely criticized. She told me presciently about her anxiety beforehand: “I’m not by nature a showstopper. I love to write and play songs, but onstage, all these things come into play. I’m always saying to myself, Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up.”

Del Rey is a small-town girl. She grew up Elizabeth Grant in Lake Placid, N.Y., neither rich nor poor. She remembers as a kid asking herself cheesy meaning-of-life questions and thinking she was really special for doing so. Then, in high school, she took a philosophy class and realized she was like everyone else. While a philosophy major at Fordham University, she started finagling gigs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and the East Village. At 19 a small indie label signed her as Lizzy Grant for $10,000. “It was amazing. I got my own place to live. I lived on that money, finished school. At that point I envisioned having a very nice career touring small clubs, continuing my studies in philosophy and volunteering,” she tells me. “It’s actually the same vision I have today. I have a serious life here. I have a really big family. You know, I’m needed here.”

Needed by whom? She hints at family, which makes sense given the darker, psychosexual context of many of her songs.

What about love and loss, the other dark note in her oeuvre? “I felt the same way for a really long time, and then I met someone who I guess I fell in love with,” she says. “I just didn’t know I could feel differently. That time with him became sort of a place that I fell back to in my memory.”

And the breakup? “Well, I mean, the breakup is a part of it in the way that in the midst of loss you try to still look towards the light and not fall to pieces or do self-destructive things.”

She grows quiet, looks at her watch. It’s getting late. She admits that she doesn’t have an important industry meeting, as her publicist told me, but has to baby-sit for a friend.

Before she goes, I ask her where she lives. She’s looking to buy a place, but for now is in Williamsburg. “Staying with my ex-boyfriend,” she says nonchalantly, then bursts into nervous laughter and admits, “I live on his couch.”

I give her a look like, You just told me all that about falling in love and breaking up and you’re on the dude’s couch?

She pins it on the touring, letting out another embarrassed laugh. “Because no, I’m busy though!”

On her biggest indulgences: “My biggest indulgence is being an artist. I still think it’s beautiful that I make music for a living. The music videos that I make myself are expensive and it takes money to clear all the copyrights… My second indulgence is diamonds. I have a jeweler in Brooklyn named Uri and he makes me all my custom gold and diamond pieces—grills, triple rings, etc.”

On a secret from her life: “When I was young, I had a tree house and in order to get to the top of it, me and my sister had to climb up a satin Christmas ribbon. One day, on my way up the ribbon snapped and I fell 15 feet on to a fire pit. I broke my ribs and never told anyone except my mother. Last year I stopped into a Unitarian church and and a man came up to me out of the blue and told me he was a clairvoyant and that the reason why I had a shallow, breathy voice was because I had fallen out of a tree house 15 years ago. I still can’t get over how strange it is that he knew that.”

I prefer Adele and Florence Welch. But as a modern singer she is not bad.The thing at the moment is Adele. She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice. Lana Del Rey is not bad at all. She looks very much like a modern-time singer. In her photos she is beautiful. Is she a construct with all her implants? She’s not alone with implants.

What does that even mean, though?

“Born to Die” also charted higher this week, finally entering the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart after debuting at #11 last week.

Lana is set to debut at #2 on the Billboard 200, shifting 70k copies of the album in the US.

Dear Lana,

Congratulations on the release (and success!) of Born to Die, which is already my favorite album of all time. Having been a fan for roughly about a year now, I know much effort has been put into this album, how much blood, sweat and tears you’ve sacrificed to make it the masterpiece that it is, and I couldn’t be more proud.

I was a fan when you first uploaded the original music video for “Video Games” – the one that had scenes from Halo intercut throughout. I remember being mystified, completely blown away, and most of all, intrigued. Who was this gorgeous girl with an absolutely incredible voice? I remember spending the rest of the day just listening to your songs, watching your homemade music videos, going through any and every article I could find. I was hooked then, and I still am now more than ever.

Having been part of #TeamLana (what us fans like to call ourselves!) for awhile now, I have witnessed the highs, the “lows”, and everything in between. I was there when the “Video Games” music video (the second version) catapulted from 24,000 views to 24 million. I was there when it was first played on Radio 1, that crucial moment that resulted in your signing to Interscope Records. I was there when it received attention from anyone and everyone in the blogosphere. I was there when those same people unfairly turned against you when you were “becoming mainstream”. And through it all, I became more and more of a fan. I remember freaking out when I first saw the “Born to Die” music video. I remember being completely ecstatic when I heard the “National Anthem” and “This is What Makes Us Girls” demos. I remember being completely shell-shocked (in a good way) when I met you after SNL and you knew about this website. You still need to get back to me regarding the fanbook, yo!

So Lana, once again, I speak on behalf every single one of your fans when I say how incredibly proud we are of you. You managed to remain consistent and stayed true to who you were throughout it all. The naysayers can go screw themselves, you’re still the same girl who used to perform “Yayo” in ‘Open Mic’ events in New York City bars, just less blonde! Here’s to a hopefully incredibly bright future!

“No one even knows how hard life was, we don’t even think about it now, because we’ve finally found you!”

Special Mentions:
Ben Mawson and Ed Millett: Thank you for believing in our girl and sticking by her through thick and thin! Team Lana will always appreciate you guys for giving an incredibly talented girl a chance to make a difference in people’s lives, like she has done for us.

Justin Parker: Thank you for helping Lana co-write such amazing tunes! “Born to Die”, “Video Games”, “National Anthem”, “Radio” and “Carmen” are all absolutely fantastic, and it’s due in part to you. You’re so freakin’ talented. It’s nothing but smooth sailing from here on out!

Emile Haynie: Thanks for helping Lana realize her vision. The work you have done on this album is flawless and I, and thousands of other Lana fans, can testify to that. You’re a brilliant, incredibly diverse producer.

David Kahne: Thanks for that lovely interview you gave us! It’s nice to see you still support Lana. And thanks, as well, for the amazing, amazing, amazing Nevada album!

The Band (Ronald “CJ” Alexander, Leonard Tribbett Jr, Byron Thomas, Blake Lee): Thanks for always giving such incredibly amazing performances in every single Lana show you have done thus far, and for always keeping in touch with Team Lana on Twitter. You guys are all incredibly talented, and we hope to see you on tour with Lana! Good luck!

Sincerely,
Ahmed, LanaDaily.com

Last Friday, the BBC reported that sultry pop songstress Lana Del Rey would be reissuing her debut album Lizzy Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Rey later this year. The album was originally released on New York indie label 5 Points Records on January 5, 2010, but was pulled after a short digital release with no physical product to match.

Grant was signed by musician/producer/5 Points owner David Nichtern to a multi-record deal in 2007, while she was a senior at Fordham University. And Nichtern was no music-biz newbie with no plan in place. He penned the ’70s hit “Midnight at the Oasis,” wrote music for popular soap operas like One Life to Live and As the World Turns, and performed with the likes of Jerry Garcia, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon. Nichtern was all set to release Del Rey’s debut full length, when as she and her management pulled the plug. Hive spoke with Nichtern earlier today about the origins of Lizzy Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Rey, the buyout and what got him interested in Del Rey’s music.

Is it totally weird to see all this interest drummed up around Lizzy?

Well, not if you’re used to the entertainment business. Let me put it this way: I always thought she had potential to have a major breakthrough; that’s why we signed her in the first place. So you don’t know when the right conditions will come together to make it happen.

When did you all sign her?

It was 2007. She was a senior in college and had one more year to go. Our plan was to get it all organized and have a record to go and she’d be touring right after she graduated from college. Like a lot of artists, she morphed. When she first came to us, she was playing plunky little acoustic guitar, [had] sort of straight blonde hair, very cute young woman. A little bit dark, but very intelligent. We heard that. But she very quickly kept evolving. There’s a lot of misinformation that I’ve read that’s dead wrong.

Oh yeah?

Oh yeah. It’s a little bit of a lesson for me. Nobody even fact-checked. For example, her father never had anything to do financially with supporting her creativity. I don’t know if he was lending her money to live off of, but at least when she was with us, not a penny. I don’t know if he’s rich or not; I met him and he seemed like a pretty ordinary guy. But that whole thing that she was backed by her millionaire dad is a bunch of crap, basically. Certain facts about the record she did with us are completely misshapen.

What happened? Did she come to you guys or did you discover her?

I had a guy, Van Wilson, who was doing A&R. He found her at a songwriting conference in Brooklyn. I don’t think she won, but I think she had a prize in it. He thought she could be good and put a lot of energy into working with her, as did I. We wanted to develop her so we signed her to a multi-record deal. Then we went out scouting for producers and we got a lot of interest from very interesting people, because she was so unusual at the time. [David] Kahne (Paul McCartney, Regina Spektor, the Strokes) was one of the first few people we reached out to and he responded very, very quickly. She and I went down and met with him and they seemed to hit it off. She was ambitious and liked the fact that he was a known producer. We gave him a deal to make the record, which is another thing. They said the budget was $10,000, which is false. Have you read that?

I did read that. Was it more? Less?

It was way more. It was an all-in budget of $50,000. And we also gave her a significant advance. So I don’t know why … I’m not sure who’s saying what about anything; it seems like people are grabbing at loose facts, but nobody is verifying with anybody.

Did you retain the recording rights?

What happened was, we first put out an EP under the name Lizzy Grant. She got quite a nice notoriety from that. A guy at Apple, who’s a programmer for the new stuff, he loved it. So we got featured based on the EP as one of the iTunes emerging artists of that year. So that was a very positive circumstance. And then we were moving towards the whole album and that’s when things shifted. She wanted to change her name, got new management, they wanted to change the record. A lot of things happened that made it difficult to figure out exactly what image she was going to have, what she was going to support, and [she] clearly didn’t seem that excited about the record. The manager came in and was insulting about the record, and I thought, “Wow, we’re an indie label, we got David Kahne to produce this record and you’re negative about it.” I think it had some masterful elements to it and a huge amount of work went into it. He worked hard to get the vocals to where he wanted them to be. It was like any of those projects: there was a certain amount of friction between the artist and the producer. I went in a couple of times to kind of make peace. I always asked Lizzy if she was okay with this, does she want to be doing this? And it was emotional, but she did. So all along the way, I told her the right way to go, with the name, but she made certain decisions. That’s why I laugh pretty hard when someone said she was put into an image. There’s no way you can do that with her. She’s very headstrong and knows what she wants. That’s a mistake, too. She wanted to be known as Lana Del Rey pretty early on. That was her name, she cooked that up, I thought it was a little wack. [Laughs.] She was this beautiful young songwriter named Lizzy Grant, it was a cool name. But she wanted to create this thing, Lana Del Rey. We put out the album digitally and at first she wanted it “R-A-Y” and then we did one version of it that way, and then she wanted to change it to “R-E-Y” so that was now the third name we were using to promote that artist. Shortly after that, her and her new manager came in and said “We want to get this off the market. We’re going for a completely new deal. We’ll buy you out of the deal.” So we made a separation agreement.

So that’s why it never came out.

They literally insisted. That’s in the contract. We can’t have any reference to it anywhere. They were following up on it weekly, “Oh, there’s an obscure website in outer-Mongolia that still has a reference to it, can you tell them to pull it down.” We did. We took it off iTunes and never released it as a hard CD. When I read that it was shelved, that borders on libelous. It’s annoying.

So how does the time frame of her releases look?

Her first release was an EP called Kill Kill under her name Lizzy Grant. It’s one of her songs — a very good song, by the way. And it had three songs on it. That EP got posted on iTunes on October 21, 2008. That was our attempt to create a little buzz and begin to work with her live act. Then we were going to take a little time to release the full album. And that got picked up, as I said, by iTunes. There was a little bit of a buzz. About a year later — January 5, 2010 — we released a full album, digital from iTunes and all the digital suppliers. It was called Lizzy Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Ray. At that point, her name was spelled “R-A-Y.” I really want to emphasize that all the spelling are attributed to her. She was trying to figure out who she was. After that, she had another shift and decided “R-E-Y.” We did a minimal run of those CD’s that had “R-E-Y.” The reason we did that [album title] is because people knew who she was and we were trying to cross her over. At her request, we signed a new agreement with her on April 1st — which is only three months later — which she asked us to shelve the record. We took the record down at her request.

There was a small run of a physical CD?

Only to sell at gigs and to give as promo to people. The hard CD was not released. We put a lot of money into getting her live act together, marketing people, promotions. I’d say we easily spent … take the $50,000 on the budget, take the advance we gave her, and then you can double that all up again. Anybody that says there wasn’t a certain amount of investment here is not telling the truth.

Did you recoup all the cost?

We have a deal with her going forward. We don’t have ownership or control, but we have participation in that old record. And we have participation in her new records. That’s how you do these things.

What’s the stake in the new records?

We have a participation going forward in her first couple of records going forward as a result of her getting out of her deal. And we still have serious revenue participation if she does anything with her old one. I hope she puts it out. I think it’s a great record. To clarify a few things about Lana. Or Lizzy, whatever you want to call her for this story. One, she’s a great artist. I feel really bad she’s getting a bum rap for that. I thought of her as a “once in a decade” artist.

You were excited.

I was excited. She was very original. I didn’t think she was the same as the other alt-indie girls. She also is a very intelligent and creative person. She would ride around on the subways all night sometimes, writing lyrics and stuff like that. When I was pitching her, I said, “Here’s somebody with the outer manifestation of Marilyn Monroe with the inner manifestation of Leonard Cohen.” That’s how I saw her. For people to say she’s just this created thing is wrong. She’s probably going to continue to evolve and in a way, that probably didn’t get her too much time to do that, now she’s engrossed in the public. As an artist, I’m very supportive of her.

SOURCE

Lana is included in the front page of tomorrow’s issue of British newspaper, The Independent! Take a look at a low quality scan above, courtesy of @LoveLanaDelRey. We will have higher quality scans tomorrow, so check back!

In this exclusive interview from NextMovie.com, Lana talks about movies! Her favorites, her least favorites, her favorite actors, she discusses it all! You won’t wanna miss this!

The 25-year-old songstress became one of 2011′s most seemingly organic upstarts. Following the release of her breakout single “Video Games” and its vintage-shaded video, apparently filmed and edited on her Macbook, the Lake Placid, N.Y., native racked upwards of 13 million YouTube views and has sold 20,000 copies of her double A-side “Video Games” single since its October 2011 release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It debuted and spent three weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Singles Sales chart. Joining Ellie Goulding and Jessie J, Del Rey recently signed with Next Model Management.

But it’s her all-important authenticity that’s had the Internet atwitter. Multiple blogs have painted a target on Del Rey, whose previous musical incarnation as Lizzy Grant, her birth name, was almost entirely wiped from the Web. On the surface, her tactics could appear calculated: Del Rey’s 2010 5 Points Records debut, Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Ray, was on iTunes for only two months before vanishing from the store, while her website and social networking profiles were deleted and relaunched under her current guise.

Has a major label been silently orchestrating one of 2011′s greatest indie viral success stories? With her Del Rey debut, “Born to Die” (Interscope), arriving Jan. 31, the pillow-lipped singer/songwriter is the new year’s buzziest commodity, becoming the first artist since Natalie Imbruglia in 1998 to play “Saturday Night Live” (Jan. 14) before releasing her first major-label LP. She’s confirmed for “Late Night With David Letterman” on Feb. 2 and scheduled to appear on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” later the same month. Still, character assassination attempts on the Internet are a daily threat, even if acclaim outweighs the conspiracy theories.

“The Internet’s been well-established for 14 years,” Del Rey says. “It’s not like 1962 where you can’t find out about me. My intention was never to transform into a different person. What other people think of me is none of my business. Sometimes, it hurts my feelings. But I have to just keep going. The good stuff is really good. Some of the other stuff is difficult, but I’ll be able to tour now, probably sing for a while. That’s nice for me.”

Sites like Hipster Runoff, which (at press time) has dedicated 29 posts to Del Rey since last September, have taken her integrity to task, needling her artistic reinvention and dissecting supposed misconceptions. From the start, Del Rey has felt the sting of Internet ire, which coincided with her rise in stature. “I began getting messages on my personal Twitter account, really creepy messages, like, ‘The blogosphere that created you is about to destroy you,’” she says. “And within three days, the strangest things were happening.” At @LanaDelRey, she has 93,000-plus followers. Her bio: Everything I want I have. Money, notoriety and rivieras — I even think I found God — in the flash bulbs of your pretty cameras. It’s in all-caps.

Many of the attacks question her personal history. Sharpening her octave-spanning pipes in a church choir, Del Rey initially came to New York as Grant, performing at open-mic nights with the likes of Lady Gaga (then known as Stefani Germanotta). She soon signed an indie deal with 5 Points Records to release debut EP Kill Kill in 2008, followed by her full-length, Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Ray, on the imprint.

The record, finished in 2008, collected dust for two years before its release. During a performance at the CMJ Music Marathon in 2009, she met her current manager, Ben Mawson, an entertainment lawyer (with the United Kingdom’s SSB Solicitors) intent on untangling her contractual obligations. Contrary to reports, Mawson claims that he and co-manager Ed Millett had nothing to do with naming her, or dictating her direction, instead negotiating her out of her deal with 5 Points and agreeing on joint ownership of the album.

“I’m a lawyer,” says Mawson, also of Hear No Evil Management. “And if I gave her advice on dressing, it would not be right.” His first move was to pull the album from iTunes two months after its release, so as not to confuse future consumers of music sold as Lana Del Rey’s. He hopes to release it as a collection of B-sides and claims it’s nothing that she’s ashamed of, but is more surprised by the overanalysis of past decisions. “It’s pretty crazy, this whole whirlwind of attention. Some of it’s great, but obviously, there’s been a lot of stuff — which is basically total fancy — about what she is and where she’s come from.”

David Kahne, who produced Grant as well as albums for Paul McCartney, Regina Spektor and Kelly Clarkson, thinks otherwise. Agreeing to work with her in 2008 after 5 Points connected them, he witnessed the beginnings of her reinvention from a platinum blonde guitar-cradler to an alt-indie princess. Contrary to what Del Rey asserts, Kahne is under the impression that she bought the rights back from 5 Points to stifle future opportunities to distribute it–an echo of rumors that the action was part of a calculated strategy.

“I think Lizzy Lana owns it, so [her team] wanted it out of circulation. That’s why they bought the rights from them,” Kahne says. “I think she wanted to be Lana Del Rey and didn’t want to be Lizzy Grant. That was her family name, and she’s very dramatic. She wiped [out] this other person. I think she actually thinks that she’s that other person, and she probably is. So that was the decision that she made, that she didn’t want traces of that whole person around, as far as I can tell.” He hasn’t worked with her since 2008.

To jump-start her transformation from Grant to Del Rey, she relocated to London and spent 2010 taking meetings with “every label,” but, she says, she was repeatedly rejected. Though his work with Del Rey ceased after they recorded three post-album songs, including “Yayo” and “Gramma,” Kahne observed the physical transformation that’s become a focal point of criticism.

“She looks different. [She] doesn’t sound different to me, though,” Kahne says. He claims that she was operatically trained, which Del Rey denies. But when it comes to songwriting, he praises her abilities. “She’s a clever writer, but she definitely has a very powerful angle on the image, the perfume of the thing that she wants to be. I think she probably didn’t feel that she was far enough into that, and by making this change, she’s more like what she wanted to be in the first place.”

According to Del Rey, she wrote more than 70 songs during her time in England, and soon filmed DIY videos for “Diet Mtn. Dew” and “Video Games.” A verbal agreement with Stranger Records to commercially release the latter gave Del Rey’s camp wiggle room to reacquire the song rights in case of a major-label signing. “[It was] a very free single deal. If we got a record deal for an album, they would let her take the single back and get the rights back,” Mawson says. “I just realized the other day we didn’t sign anything… It was a verbal agreement from chatting and then we confirmed by email.”

Labels came full circle when the BBC’s Radio 1 played “Video Games” last summer, thanks to Mawson’s European connections, and her Internet buzz kick-started. The artist began fielding offers from imprints that previously denied her, deciding eventually on a joint deal with Interscope Records in the United States and Polydor Records in the United Kingdom without holding any grudges.

“Signing someone and spending a lot of money, it’s a very dangerous thing to do. Largest failure-to-success rate in any industry,” Del Rey says. “I never had any help, and I really needed help.”

The timing of the deal and her video’s viral release raised eyebrows in the blogosphere. News of her signing broke in late October, but the ink on the contracts had dried in July, fueling conspiracy theorists to assume that the machine had helped with the clearance of copyrighted material included in the videos and promoted her material. It’s not unusual for labels to pull invisible strings for new artists, but rarely is the artist afforded both the creative and marketing freedom that Del Rey has had.

It’s here where her labels, which provided her a budget for videos and album completion, as well as hired a publicity firm (Shore Fire Media) in August, deviate from standard practices. Polydor president Ferdy Unger Gamilton says, “Apart from the strength of the song and the video [for "Video Games"], this shows how the world operates now. Something like this can just gather its own momentum. So many have been reached by it without traditional media or marketing.”

The viral factor of “Video Games” paralleled several breakout Internet sensations of 2011: Del Rey associate the Weeknd, and Frank Ocean. And for Del Rey, the gone-viral marketing method, which often hangs still on quality of music and artistic mystique, was key for convincing label executives wowed by her ability to navigate different Web cultures. She was embraced beyond genre lines, a Net star on sites like Stereogum and Pitchfork, and also popping up on sites like In Flex We Trust, MissInfo.tv and 2DopeBoyz.

“I don’t think she’s any sort of heavy-handed marketer. I think she basically has it down from start to finish. That’s what’s the allure is, in terms of what I saw and what other people are seeing. You have an artist and it’s all just so honest,” Interscope executive VP of A&R Larry Jackson says. “There’s no video treatment we’ve come up with. We haven’t produced the records. It’s 100% solely her. That’s the most honest part. And that’s all that matters. The honesty is the marketing.”

Translating her music to the live stage after a two-year hiatus, Del Rey tested new material at Brooklyn’s Glasslands in September, taking the stage for a secret show under the alias Queen of Coney Island. Not meant for review, the gig drew criticism from attending writers, tipped off by rogue tweets, who criticized her shaky delivery and live band of session musicians.

“I was noticeably scared,” says Del Rey, who popped her gum into the microphone throughout the performance. “I don’t get onstage trying to be spectacular. I act like it’s sort of still about the singing for me, because that’s all I have so far, are the songs.”

Del Rey didn’t allow the litany of mostly harsh comments on YouTube clips from the show deter her. She upgraded her official New York debut to Bowery Ballroom, where she performed to a sold-out crowd, and then played to packed houses in London and Los Angeles. The reviews have turned laudatory. (“The comment-board fights and blog posts don’t detract from the fact that she can actually sing,” the Village Voice wrote of her Bowery gig.)

On her tracks, Del Rey, who initially described herself as the “gangster Nancy Sinatra,” disaffectedly intones about both eternal and finite romance over cinematic arrangements garnished with hip-hop drums. Though indie artists like Bon Iver and St. Vincent shape-shift to respectively appear on cuts by rappers like Kanye West and Kid Cudi, Del Rey casually massages hip-hop into her stand-alone compositions, working directly with such producers as Jeff Bhasker (West, Jay-Z) and Emile Haynie (Cudi). Bypassing the almighty guest feature has supplied her enveloping tracks with a unique twist on indie-pop.

“I brought Emile in because the beats were still raw and hard to get… sort of the danger I wanted to incorporate,” says Del Rey, who slings hip-hop slang (“You so fresh to death”) on her cowgirl anthem “Blue Jeans.” Friendships with the Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye bolster her hip-hop credibility, but it’s her effortless infusions that punctuate her tunes. “She wanted to integrate hip-hop into it because she loves [it] and added some beats to make it a bit more radio-friendly and palatable for a broader audience,” Mawson says.

Just last month, the Internet fanfare reached new heights following the unauthorized leak of the intensely slick video for “Born to Die,” making her a top trending topic on Twitter and earning praise from West, who broke his social network silence to post the clip to his account. For Del Rey, the relief wasn’t the assurance of reaching a global audience, but rather having a budget for her art. “The good thing is that the record is beautiful. And I get to do so many things that I love. I get to work with [director Yoann] Lemoine and finally, I don’t have to make my videos by myself anymore. Thank God. It’s embarrassing,” she says. “I’m just going to get help in all the right ways.”

For an artist whose homemade approach shifted her career out of obscurity, her labels aren’t concerned with losing her indie prowess. “It’s not about old-school label tactics and all of that crap. It’s really about helping an artist who has a clear-cut vision for herself, really bringing the muscle to make this work on a worldwide level,” Jackson says. Unger Gamilton adds: “The real brilliant artists move the mainstream toward them, not the other way around. She’s doing something that no one else is doing, and it’s just going to draw people in. It’s already drawing people in.”

In anticipation of “Born to Die,” the voluptuous-voiced songstress has been teasing the Web with sneak peeks of the project, releasing a graphic, found-footage video for “Off to the Races” and a YouTube clip of her song “Yayo.” Her single, “Born to Die” was recently iTunes’ Free Single of the Week. Del Rey also plans on “extensively touring” the international circuit through the new year. But she’s almost entirely unplugged from the online realm, save for sporadic tweets and Facebook updates.

“I’d rather it was just as simple as being just the songs and no one else talking about it at all, because it makes things more bittersweet instead of just clear and easy,” she says. “It just seems to have taken a funny turn. I’m not really sure if it’ll come back around. I don’t know. But the record is really good. I have that.”

–

Steven J. Horowitz ( @speriod) is a New York-based journalist who serves as news editor at HipHopDX and associate editor at YRB magazine.

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Lana’s first SNL promo has finally arrived! Check it out above! Remember, Lana’s set to appear on the show tomorrow!

Lana has scored the cover of the Russian version of Interview Magazine! Check it out above! Absolutely gorgeous, right? We’ll have scans and pictures from the photoshoot REAL soon, so stay tuned!

Billboard are releasing a special 2012 issue of their famed magazine, and none other than Lana is on the cover! Here’s what they had to say on the matter: Love her or hate her (and trust us, it’s usually a polarizing reaction), Lana Del Rey covers our Best Bets 2012 issue. Full cover story hits Billboard.com tomorrow. Check back tomorrow to read the full article!

According to Billboard.com, Lana is set to perform on both the David Letterman Show (on February 2) and the Ellen Degeneres Show! Both are really huge platforms, Lana’s team is making all the right moves! Kudos to them, good for us. What an exciting time to be a Lana Del Rey fan!

A couple of days ago, Lana filmed some promos for her upcoming Saturday Night Live performances alongside host Daniel Radcliffe and cast member Kenan Thomposn. Fortunately for us, some sneaky snake decided to take a picture. Check it out above! Doesn’t Lana look gorgeous?

But for an artist who has been the subject of so much discussion, Del Rey remains strangely silent when it comes to her critics, the folks who like to bring up points like “authenticity” and “paying your dues.” Though you get the feeling she’s growing tired of keeping her mouth shut.

“I don’t agree [with it] … it’s a f—ing personal thing, in terms of whether people like me or not, it has to do with my personality getting in the way of the music,” she told MTV News. “I personally don’t like drama of any sort … I just think it’s reflective of the times we live in, and have been living in since the dawn of humanity. People love terrible news, they love when things go wrong, and they like to see people going off the tracks and people fighting, because it’s exciting, and life is f—ing boring.”

And that’s an odd thing to say, especially considering that, in recent months, Del Rey’s life has been anything but boring. She’s been whisked around the world to promote Born To Die, she’s been the subject of countless magazine spreads, and this weekend, she’ll perform on her biggest stage to date: “Saturday Night Live.” And through it all, she’s tried very hard to keep the focus squarely on her music, a task that grows increasingly difficult by the day.

“The goal is definitely just to sort of try to re-create myself in song form, that was really my only ambition in this whole thing. I mean, I’ve been making music for a long time, but it was really only ever to please myself,” she said. “I really write because I love to write and I sing because I love to sing … and I think the way I make music is different from the way some people make music, in the way that I write for myself.

“I started working [on Born To Die] with this kid from London, Justin Parker; he sort of wrote a lot of the chords on the record. And then I was looking for a producer to tie everything together, sonically, and Emile [Haynie, who's worked with the likes of Kanye West and Eminem] was perfect, because, musically, we’re on the same path,” she continued. “We love mixing the light and the dark together, and I was in love with his beats … he understood what I meant when I was talking about wanting a mix of a sound similar to Thomas Newman’s ‘American Beauty’ score, mixed with a Springsteen, summertime sadness feel. And everything came together … Sonically, I always knew exactly what I wanted.”

And that focus extended to the big-budget video for the album’s title track, a gorgeous, gigantic thing Del Rey shot in Paris with director Yoann Lemoine. It sprung from a treatment she penned, and doesn’t skimp when it comes to scenery, sex appeal and, of course, seriously hormonal tigers … all courtesy of the good folks at Interscope, of course.

“I always feel uncomfortable spending anyone’s money, but I really did want the tigers, just because of what they symbolize to me, and just visually, they’re so striking,” she laughed. “I always like the vision of a girl in a white nightgown with two majestic tigers. [In one scene], I was sitting on the throne first, and then I had to leave the room and then the tiger was filmed right by the throne, and then spliced in … Tigers and women can’t be in the same room, even if the tiger is a female, because of the pheromones.”

And so, Del Rey is quickly learning that acrimony sort of comes with the territory these days. And as she moves forward as a major artist, she’s willing to trade a few nasty comments for the opportunity to create videos (and albums) that are uniquely her. It’s been a rollercoaster ride just to get to this point, and Del Rey is determined to enjoy her lofty new perch … no matter what her detractors have to say.

“I’m a very happy person. I feel really at peace with my life and where it’s been for the last long time, really,” she said. “I’m grateful for my life, I’m grateful for being able to make music, and for everyone around me. So, yeah, overall, I feel happy.”

Great news! Lana was nominated for a Brit Award! Specifically, the International Breakthrough Act, alongside such great artists as Nicki Minaj and Bon Iver. We will provide further coverage when it becomes available, so watch this space!