If one was to scan the apexes of most critics’ Best of 2011 roll calls, Lana Del Rey’s debut single ‘Video Games’ would be a recurring feature. Finally, here was a pop star the ‘serious’ music journalists could back, a “gangster Nancy Sinatra” presumably fresh out of Inglewood or Compton or some other exotic neighbourhood where such writers would never dare to tread - she was authentic.

Except she wasn’t. Prior to 2010, she was the privately educated Lizzy Grant from upstate New York. Lana del Rey, like all the characters that have best captured the public’s imagination, was a work of fiction; in the wake of this revelation, her champions promptly panned her highly hyped major label debut.

I think the delusion of authenticity has always been an integral part of the great rock ‘n’ roll swindle. Acts have always written their own mythology: Jack and Meg aren’t really brother and sister; David Bowie isn’t really from space. The difference is that no one has dared try it during the Facebook era, one that demands transparency for all and in which everyone’s truth can be recalled simply by igniting up a search engine. Lizzy Grant was naïve and got burned.

Her music may be able to replicate the sounds of the Golden Age of celebrity, but she cannot live their mystique. Born to Die could have been a slow-paced reflection on life in the fast lane; instead, it largely resembles a five-car pileup at the East Los Angeles Interchange. My disappointment in this record has nothing to do with Lana del Rey’s fluctuating identity: the problem is that what that personality has produced has no depth at all.

‘Video Games’ is still the incredible first single it always was: the soundtrack for pretty, jaded young things stumbling down Sunset and Vine, “singing in the old bars” where the heroes of Hollywoodland once held court. Its funeral march beat teeters on the edge of a dirge but just pulls itself back from the brink.

However, ‘Dark Paradise’ has an almost identical formula of sultry vocals and pounding drums but lacks the former’s catalyst: the lyrics are substanceless, with Del Rey’s vocal detached and lacking all conviction, one of the album’s problems. More aggravating is the persistent use of the same sampling technique; what was almost novel at the album’s opening becomes unbearable by ‘Diet Mountain Dew.’ That song rivals her performance on Saturday Night Live in terms of the bizzare, while ‘Off to the Races’ constantly jars, always seeming on the edge of soaring somewhere original but frustratingly being reined back by the same repetitive clichés.

On the plus side, disregarding lyrics that would constitue a feminist’s worst nightmare, the chilling closer ‘This Is What Makes Us Girls’ at least mixes up the recipe slightly. Similarly, the opening title track strikes a few thrilling notes; however, over the ornate production Del Rey’s vocals still sound lethargic and disingenuous. Born to Die is a thoroughly odd album not only due to it featuring material co-written by Fame Academy’s David Sneddon but also because the impact of the album’s highlights like ‘Video Games’ is actually diminished by sitting amongst its inferior siblings.

Tracks like the vapid ‘Carmen’ make the listener question the few moments where she does seems earnest. Is there really anything behind her full-lipped façade? Is Lana Del Rey’s ethereal air as thin as a backdrop on a film set? How can she expect the public to accept her reinvented personality when on Born to Die she sounds like she barely believes it herself, rather sounding as though she is terrified to dig below her own frosty exterior? Born to Die isn’t an absolutely terrible record; it has a few singles worth digging out, but it’s a major disappointment. It’s hard to know what, or rather who, Lizzy Grant can come up with next.