Riffiter’s review of the albumBorn to Die

Born to Die sounds like a record by someone who watched a lot of old films and let the strings do the crying. "Video Games" is why it lasts: slow, mostly harp and strings, and it still stops a room. The middle stretch is weaker. "Diet Mountain Dew" and "Carmen" lean on the pose more than the song. The 2012 reviews treated the pose as the whole record, which missed how good the ballads are. Pitchfork gave it a 5.5 and later moved it to 7.8, and that second number is close to where I sit. It has 661 weeks on the Billboard 200 now. People kept coming back for the songs, not the arguments about her.