After numerous projects, including her self-titled debut studio album (2010), Del Rey's breakthrough came in 2011 with the viral success of her single "Video Games"; she subsequently signed a recording contract with Polydor and Interscope.

Del Rey's ninth studio album, Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, was later released in 2023, supported by its title track[10] and the critically acclaimed single "A&W", with the latter being named one of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" by Rolling Stone.

In 2014, she recorded "Once Upon a Dream" for the dark fantasy adventure film Maleficent and the titular theme song for the biopic Big Eyes, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

At her first public performance in 2006 for the Williamsburg Live Songwriting Competition, Del Rey met Van Wilson, an A&R representative for 5 Points Records,[41][42] an independent label owned by David Nichtern.

[42] Kahne and Nichtern both said that Del Rey bought the rights back from 5 Points, as she wanted it out of circulation to "stifle future opportunities to distribute it—an echo of rumors the action was part of a calculated strategy".

[68] In September 2012, Del Rey unveiled the F-Type for Jaguar at the Paris Motor Show[69] and later recorded the song "Burning Desire", which appeared in a promotional short film for the vehicle.

[83] Over the next several months, she released videos of two cover songs: one of Leonard Cohen's "Chelsea Hotel#2",[84] followed by a duet with her then-boyfriend, Barrie-James O'Neill, of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra's "Summer Wine".

[101] Del Rey described the album as being "more stripped down but still cinematic and dark",[102] while some critics characterized the record as psychedelic[103] and desert rock-influenced, more prominently featuring guitar instrumentation than her previous releases.

[141] In November 2019, Del Rey was announced as the face of Gucci's Guilty fragrances and subsequently appeared in print and television advertisements with Jared Leto and Courtney Love.

[145] On the same day, Del Rey released the non-album single "Looking for America", which she spontaneously wrote and recorded earlier that week in response to back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

[167][168] In November, Del Rey appeared in the Amazon Prime special The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show, alongside guests such as Camila Cabello, James Corden, and Troye Sivan.

[169][170] In an interview for L'Officiel's first American edition in early 2018, when asked about her interest in making a film, Del Rey responded she had been approached to write a Broadway musical and had recently begun work on it.

[199] On May 19, 2023, Del Rey released her popular unreleased song "Say Yes to Heaven" as a single, having previously written and recorded it in November 2013, planning to include it in Ultraviolence, before cutting it.

[204] On July 20, 2023, Del Rey was spotted pouring coffee and chatting with customers at a Waffle House in Florence, Alabama, in full employee uniform complete with her own "Lana" name tag.

"[227] Of Born to Die, AllMusic stated that its "sultry, overstated orchestral pop recast her as some sort of vaguely imagined chanteuse for a generation raised on Adderall and the Internet, with heavy doses of Twin Peaks atmosphere".

[229] Kenneth Partridge of Billboard noted this shift in style, writing: "She sings about drugs, cars, money, and the bad boys she's always falling for, and while there remains a sepia-toned mid-century flavor to many of these songs, [Del Rey] is no longer fronting like a thugged-out Bette Davis.

[236] Del Rey cites a wide array of musical artists as influences, including numerous pop, jazz, and blues performers from the mid-twentieth century, such as Andrew Lloyd Webber,[237] Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Bobby Vinton,[238] The Crystals,[238] and Miles Davis.

[238] "[I really] just like the masters of every genre", she told BBC radio presenter Jo Whiley in 2012, specifically naming Nirvana, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.

[247][248] Del Rey has cited film directors, David Lynch and Federico Fellini, and painters, Mark Ryden and Pablo Picasso, as influences[227][249] and has stated actress Lauren Bacall is someone she admires.

[263] Her following videos for tracks such as "Summer Wine", "Carmen", and "Summertime Sadness" were produced off of significantly lower budgets and retained more elements of Del Rey's earlier style.

[267] A September 2017 concert review published in The New York Times noted: "For more than an hour, Ms. Del Rey was eerily casual, singing and smiling with the ease of someone performing at singer-songwriter night at the local coffee shop.

"[267] Another review by Roy Train for The Hollywood Reporter in 2014 noted "a distance in her bonhomie, obvious even from my perch at the opposite end of the stage high above the fray, the chill still palpable".

Prior to the release of her debut major label album Born to Die in 2012, Del Rey was the subject of several articles discussing her image and career trajectory.

[270] Harris wrote: The internet has allowed figures like [Del Rey] to come rapidly to the fore of the cultural landscape, whether or not their emergence is planned by a record executive or happens spontaneously from someone's bedroom.

[270]Tony Simon, a producer who had worked with Del Rey in 2009, defended her against allegations that she was a product of her record label: "To be clear, all the detractors saying she's some made-up-by-the-machine pop star are full of shit.

[174] In May of that year, she attracted criticism for an Instagram post defending herself against accusations of glamorizing abuse in part by pointing out an array of other female artists and their successes with works about "imperfect sexual relationships".

[288] During the release of the artwork for Chemtrails Over the Country Club on Instagram, Del Rey gained widespread press coverage for suggesting that her friends, featured on the cover, were "a beautiful mix of everything", saying that she had always been "inclusive without even trying to" throughout her career.

[285][289] Del Rey elaborated, saying her close friends and boyfriends had been "rappers" and addressed her critics, saying that before commenters turned it into a "WOC/POC issue", she "wasn't the one storming the capital" and was "changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there".

[293] In October 2020, she donated $350,000 from the sales of her book Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass to DigDeep,[294] a Los-Angeles-based[295] non-profit organization, founded by George McGraw in 2014, which provides electric-pumped[296] water for some of the most remote[297] families and communities[296] of Navajo Nation.

[300] Del Rey has been mentioned as an influence by a number of artists including Billie Eilish,[301] Lauren Jauregui,[302] Kevin Abstract,[303][304] Maggie Lindemann,[305] XXXTentacion,[306] Madison Beer,[307] Reneé Rapp and Olivia Rodrigo.