‘Born to Die’: The Lana Del Rey song inspired by “true love lost”
Although Lana Del Rey remains one of the most successful solo artists of the century, it took the musician a number of years to break through into the mainstream, an achievement secured in 2011 with the release of ‘Video Games’. The artist experimented with different stage names before that, working under Lizzy Grant and May Jailer and recording hundreds of demos before finding critical acclaim.
However, Del Rey proved she was not a one-hit-wonder when she followed ‘Video Games’ with ‘Born to Die’, a cinematic slice of orchestral pop that displayed the tragic opulence that defined much of her early work. With dramatic strings opening the track, the song segues into a hip-hop-inspired beat that welcomes Del Rey’s rich voice. She poses questions to her lover, asking, “I feel so alone on a Friday night/Can you make it feel like home, if I tell you you’re mine?”
Lyrically, Del Rey expresses her love intensely, declaring that she and her boyfriend were “born to die”, alluding to the idea that to live without love and connection is not worth existing at all. She weaves themes of passion with sadness as she sings, “Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry/ Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough,” creating a dichotomy between two opposing emotions.
During numerous interviews, Del Rey has explained her exploration of love and sadness as co-existing forces, referring back to her struggles as a teenager, a time when she grappled with the idea that everyone she loved would someday cease to exist. Talking to The Telegraph, the singer explained: “I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal. For some reason, that knowledge sort of overshadowed my experience. I was unhappy for some time. I got into a lot of trouble. I used to drink a lot. That was a hard time in my life”. Thus, in ‘Born to Die’, Del Rey attempts to find solace through a lover, asking him to “keep making me laugh—let’s go get high” before stating: “The road is long, we carry on/ Try to have fun in the meantime.”
Talking to The Sun, she further elucidated: “I consider the record a homage to true love lost and a tribute to living life on the wild side. When I was young, I was overwhelmed by thoughts of my own mortality, but I also found fleeting moments of happiness in the arms of my lover and friends. This track and the record are about these two worlds — death and love — coming together.”
The song appeared on the album of the same name, released in January 2012. That year, it became the fifth best-selling album worldwide, spawning another hit single, ‘Summertime Sadness’. The album continued the song’s foray into themes of intense love, melancholia and death, often intertwining the three. Born to Die cemented Del Rey as a modern American icon, with the eponymous single remaining one of her most captivating tracks.
