Lana Del Ray has been a name on everyone's lips over the last year, with Video Games being such a big hit and her winning the International Breakthrough Award at the 2012 Brits. A lot of people have recently been criticising Lana Del Ray for being "fake". Personally I don't think that is fair. Many celebrated popular music artists throughout the years have created different public personas, such as Madonna, David Bowie, Bob Dylan and recently pop stars such as Lady Gaga. I would call this creativity rather than being fake. Surely music would be boring if it was only ever a completely true reflection of the singer with no licence to embelish anything.

Lana Del Rays invented persona allows her to add themes, imagery and recurring nostalgic American references into her album such as repeated references to "Coney Island queen" and "American dream". She uses some clever plays on words such as "take me like a vitamin". Her songs don't all have as much emotion of Video Games and some such as Off To The Races are quite stylised and slick. I find her intriguing and appealing.

Born To Die is a strong album with some variety in style. It has some very catchy, poppy moments particularly in the song National Anthem which is definitely an album highlight for me. "Red, white, blue is in the sky, summer's in the air and baby Heaven's in your eyes". As a commenter on Lana's last.fm wall wrote, "I hate the part when it stops"! However, the album does contain more sad pop along the lines of the well known Born To Die and Video Games. Summertime Sadness is a gem as well as the album's closing song This Is What Makes Us Girls.

I would encourage anyone to listen to this album and make their own mind up before they listen to the haters. Lana Del Ray has a great voice and this album is original, interesting and unlike anything else out there at the moment.