Lake Placid, NY

June 21, 1985

Lana Del Rey envisioned a Southern Californian dream world constructed out of sad girls and bad boys, manufactured melancholy and genuine glamour, and then she came to embody this fantasy. At first, her stylized noir-pop garnered skeptical sneers but Lana Del Rey proved to be tougher than her soft exterior suggested. Following a hit remix of her single "Summertime Sadness," she steadily gained not only popularity but respect; her 2014 second album Ultraviolence received positive reviews to accompany her sales, and her imitators (of which there were many) became merely an alluring accessory. By that point, Lana Del Rey had attained the ideal she intended to be: a damaged torch singer designed as the tragic romantic icon for her age.