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I remember buying the CD and listening to it on car journeys – some of the songs were miserable and melancholic, others sultry and sensual.

The stripped-back simplicity of ‘Video Games’, with its fluttering piano notes, flourishing bell chimes, and unmistakeable vocal performance, all hinging on its evocative chorus (‘It’s you, it’s you. It’s all for you.’) It should be no surprise that Q Magazine named ‘Video Games’ the Song of the Decade in 2019.

The overnight success of its viral music video catapulted Elizabeth to stardom. It is a carefully constructed montage of visuals; video clips of skaters and swimmers, young couples and yellow taxi cabs are interspersed between shots of Lana singing directly into the camera, hair coifed into a bouffant, lips pouted.

It is, in some ways, a cinematic odyssey. The expertly executed music video for ‘National Anthem’, has Lana and then-boyfriend rapper A$AP Rocky assuming the roles of Jackie and John F. Kennedy. ‘Blue Jeans’ depicts her embracing a heavily tattooed lover in a pool, through a black and white hued lens.

It all reflects the album’s highly theatrical production. Think the bells on ‘Summertime Sadness’, the striking string arrangements of ‘Lolita’, the woozy Bond-esque ‘Million Dollar Man’, or the static distortion on tracks like ‘Radio’ and ‘This Is What Makes Us Girls.’

Inflections of trip-hop crop up on ‘Diet Mountain Dew’ and ‘Off To The Races’, a realm that will be further explored on subsequent albums like Lust For Life. The latter track with its slow-burning opening soon accelerates into a thrilling sung-spoken verse before its infectious sing-along chorus. ‘Off To The Races’ is also the most obviously indebted to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, with the exception of its namesake song. Its pre-chorus refrain is borrowed from the book’s opening line ‘Light of my life, fire of my loins.’ One of the most notorious and controversial novels of the 20th century, Del Rey’s use of its imagery is of course intentional.

My personal favourite track on Born To Die was and remains ‘Radio’. Its crackly distorted beginning creates the impression that the needle has just been dropped onto a beloved old record. ‘Not even they can stop me now’ – her vocal kicks in, deep, hypnotic, determined – ‘Their heavy words can’t bring me down.’ As a teenage girl, I felt inspired, it imbued me with a sense of resilience. ‘Radio’ is a song about old acquaintances and ex-boyfriends coming back into Lana’s life now she is famous, with its sassy refrain ‘How do you like me now?’ figuratively sticking a middle finger up to those who doubted her.