in March, I stumbled across a strange and fascinating phenomenon: an army of early Lana Del Rey doppelgängers; these are artists — or possibly AIs — uploading reworked versions of her unreleased/leaked demos.
Sometimes the vocals sound exactly like Lana. Other times, the lyrics are slightly tweaked, the production is altered, but the vibe remains pure Lizzy Grant. If you’re into Lana’s demo era, it’s honestly a goldmine. Even more surprising? Some of these songs are reaching millions of streams on Spotify, like this cover of Trash Magic.Some playlists also have the original demos, like this playlist on Spotify.
The accounts behind these tracks go by names like bulcadoshow, albi, michi, jumpropequeen, bbygirl, Lola Violet, lolitakiloss, among others — each contributing to this strange digital archive of Lana-esque melancholy. Some recordings are clearly Lana’s original voice (1:1 demos), others are almost perfect impersonations, and a few might even be generated with AI. It’s hard to tell. Some tracks get taken down — maybe copyright, maybe mystery.
Lizzy Grant
One artist I want to highlight in particular is Saint Avangeline. She doesn’t just cover unreleased Lana songs — she also releases her own music, and it genuinely sounds like something Lizzy herself could’ve written. There’s a track called Every Girl Gets Her Wish, where she slightly rewrites the lyrics and flips the perspective. Instead of singing about a man, it becomes a soft, queer anthem — and it works beautifully. Listen on Apple Music.
Some people created this thread on Reddit in which they asked – is this even allowed? Who is she?
The girl replied herself: Hey that’s me! Yes, I paid for a license, so I can legally publish this anywhere. I sang the entirety of this song - none of it is Lana’s vocals. This was a highly requested song my fans wanted me to cover!I seem to get a lot of hate in this subreddit and I just wanna say I cover a lot of Lana because my original fan base was from my Lesbian Brooklyn Baby cover I posted when I was like 17, but it’s not the direction my personal artistry is headed in! I make metal now, lol."
The whole thing messes with my head. Am I listening to Lana? Someone impersonating her? A neural net trained on Tumblr-core heartbreak? I don’t know — but I’m here for the mystery.
Lizzy Grant, June 21, 2006.
What I do know is that Lana’s archive of unreleased music includes over 200 songs — and somehow, these tracks keep resurfacing in unexpected corners of the internet. I’ve uploaded my own collection to this drive: feel free to download it and have a listen, if you’re curious about who Lana was before the flower crowns and fame.
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