If Del Rey was really so bad for women, why were so many of them buying her record? The French academic Catherine Vigier pinpointed the source of Del ReyвЂ™s appeal: She was вЂњrepresenting and speaking to a contradiction facing thousands of young women today, women who have followed mainstream societyвЂ™s prescriptions for success in what has been called a postfeminist world, but who find that real liberation and genuine satisfaction elude them.вЂќДel Rey released a follow-up EP at the end of 2012, another one a year later, then the album Ultraviolence six months after that. When LanaвЂ™s first proper album, Born to Die, debuted on the heels of that SNL appearance, the New York Times called it вЂњalbum as anticlimax, the period that ends the essay, not the beginning of a new paragraph.вЂќ The public did not agree: Born to Die became the fifth-highest-selling album of 2012 worldwide. (The Village Voice called it вЂњearly-вЂ™00s singles bar music.вЂќ) Still, her image had real juice.

If writers paid more attention to her iconography than her music, well, that was partly because there wasnвЂ™t much music out there yet, and critics seemed to agree what she had released wasnвЂ™t interesting. вЂњItвЂ™s just that the aesthetic references surrounding her are all already so pungent, evocative, and well worn that itвЂ™s hard to reshape them.вЂќ вЂњItвЂ™s not that thereвЂ™s anything вЂinauthenticвЂ™ about Del Rey,вЂќ argued a Pitchfork writer.

By the time youвЂ™d heard of Del Rey, youвЂ™d probably also heard she was a fake, an industry plant who put the вЂњretroвЂќ in вЂњretrograde.вЂќ Soon, though, there was a backlash to the backlash: HadnвЂ™t plenty of male artists embraced alter egos? Critics noted this but remained unconvinced. That hair! Those lips! Who could forget the press release touting her as a вЂњgangster Nancy SinatraвЂќ? Five minutesвЂ™ digging proved her backstory was not very gangster at all: She had a marketing-exec father and a well-to-do upbringing upstate, and had previously released an EP under her real name, Lizzy Grant.

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