BEFORE SHE ORDAINED HER BOYFRIEND the first “good cop,” Lana Del Rey was born to die. It was 2012. She was only five months away from twenty-seven, the age at which celebrity musicians are, anecdotally speaking, very likely to experience a turn of fate. (Amy Winehouse overdosed in her tenth month, Janis Joplin in her ninth.) The album she put out that year, Del Rey’s second, was considered a breakout hit. Born to Die, critics agreed, had changed the course of her life.

America has always been a death cult; the only variable has been its soundtrack. In the stereo age, boomers, armed with IRAs