Lana Del Rey's journey has been unique. At first, she took many years to get things going. Then she became one of the most hyped artists of the last 20 years out of nowhere, she faded into obscurity through the years after her breakthrough album. Her bond with her fans remained strong, despite their diminishing number.

And then suddenly, she is a major selling force again. As fresh as she has ever been. Indeed, after moving 30 million equivalent album sales over her first decade, she has jumped by over 20 million over the last two years only, now securing a 50+ million total.

Born to die... and to succeed

Video Games goes viral

Lana Del Rey, born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant in 1985, moved to New York City in 2005 when she started recording music. After years and years of failed attempts, including a virtually unknown debut album, in 2011 everything changed in the blink of an eye.

She recorded two songs, filmed webcam-made music videos, and uploaded them to YouTube, just like any other young, contractless singer would do. Usually, that's when nothing happens. Unless songs you uploaded are Video Games and Blue Jeans.

Soon, everyone was talking about them, especially the former. The songs, the atmosphere, her singing, her face, her style, everything felt just so perfect for her new fans. Interscope and Polydor quickly signed her. In January 2012, the album Born to Die was out and stormed at the top of global charts, from the UK to Australia to France to Germany to Norway. She broke sales records in various places for both a newcomer and a January release.

A blockbuster with an asterisk

Single after single, sales of the album went up and up. It topped a million units in the UK and went well over half a million in both Germany and France. Weirdly enough, the American market was still resisting to their own artist. The album failed to reach Gold level in 2012 (479,000 sales).

Critics were also often bad, with a real, tedious debate emerging as some publications rated it as a classic, others as a forgettable, overhyped record. Of course, history gave a win by KO to the former argument, leading magazines like Pitchfork to include it among its rescored albums (from 5.5 to 7.8).

It's a great symbol, as nothing managed to resist this album. Not even the Americans. Born to Die first managed to get legs thanks to the successful Cedric Gervais remix of Summertime Sadness.

When all was supposed to be done, Born to Die contradicted its title, staying well alive. And it still is. As we speak, the album ranks at #82 in the US Top 200 Album chart, on its 556th week of presence.

Ultraviolent years

A negative spiral...

Quickly, Born to Die was deemed to be the new Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, or in other genres Tracy Chapman's debut and Lauryn Hill's Miseducation. Albums so precious, so impactful to their target audience that even fans are under the impression that the artist already gave his best.

The 5-million sales of Born to Die were followed by 2014's Ultraviolence, which struggled to sell a million. The following year, Honeymoon did only half that number. 2017's Lust for Life, 2019's Norman Fucking Rockwell!, 2021's Chemtrails over the Country Club, and Blue Banisters all sold less than their immediate predecessor.

It wasn't only a matter of market, as Lana Del Rey streaming figures were decent but not extraordinary either.

...while building an impressive catalog

During these years of commercial freefall, the narrative among critics took in the other direction. The Jack Antonoff produced Norman Fucking Rockwell! was possibly the peak of her commercial acclaim, making various lists of best albums of the year.

On streaming platforms, the engagement of her fans with her discography started to slowly increase as well. From below 3 million daily streams by 2018 on Spotify, she went up to score 8 million daily streams by August 2022 when at ChartMasters.org we last studied her sales figures.

These numbers weren't possible thanks to fans and critics praising her works. With new tools like TikTok, plenty of people shared Lana Del Rey songs, leading countless of her lost gems going viral since the start of the decade.

A global superstar

Selling near 200,000 albums every week

From 3 to 8... to 20 million. For the last 98 days, Lana Del Rey hasn't drop below 20 million streams per day on Spotify. This puts her among the top 20 most streamed artists in the world, one year and a half after the release of her last album Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. Her monthly listeners, more than 60 million, also put her among the very top artists of the streaming giant.

Hitting 10 billion streams there on December 1st, 2021, she was already at 20 billion by December 2nd, 2023. Now, 10 months later, she is at 26.6 billion.

On top of heavy streams, the singer songwriter also posts pure sales that would make any artist jealous, bar Taylor Swift. When current smash albums tend to shift from 200,000 to 300,000 pure sales, Lana Del Rey's catalog averaged 100,000 sales per month over the last two years.

Pure sales of Lana Del Rey albums

Born to Die alone sold over 700,000 units, now up to a lifetime total of 7 million. The stand-alone Paradise album, released mostly in North America, stands at 840,000 sales.

Ultraviolence is up by nearly 400,000 copies, close to 2 million. Honeymoon will soon close on a million, while Norman Fucking Rockwell! is over 750,000 copies, now ahead of Lust for Life.

Did You Know That There's A Tunner Under Ocean Blvd did extremely well by 2023's standards with over 600,000 sales, beating both 2021 releases.

Updated studio album sales

[wpdatatable id=30 var1=00FQb4jTyendYWaN8pK0wa]

Over 50 million sales!

Thanks to these updated sales, Lana Del Rey moves past 50 million equivalent album sales since the start of her career. Just below 30 million by August 2022, that's a 20 plus addition in just over two years. Incredible. Below are total units from each era.

With her new album Lasso, which will embrace the country albums trend, all eyes will be set on Lana Del Rey who will be aiming for big numbers. Will 2025 be hers?

We have more for you...

... our analysis of Lana Del Rey's full discography