UPDATE: due to incredibly popular demand, Lana Del Rey's two upcoming gigs at the O2 Academy have been upgraded to a single night at the SECC on Thu 16 May.

Lana Del Rey’s ascension from all-but-unknown singer-songwriter ‘Lizzy Grant’ to the enormously successful, sepia-soaked sweetheart we know today has been quite remarkable. Coming to prominence in an age where ‘overnight sensation’ is a literal term, it’s pretty clear that a strong image and an eye for trends – both in music and fashion – can be much more effective than the old-school ‘hard slog’. But Del Rey’s success has been a bit of both, the result of a series of stop-starts, patience and persistence which have finally paid off.

For all the inevitable despair and uproar over her ‘manufactured’ image and the seemingly drastic change in personality it took in order to achieve this award-winning, chart-crushing success, you really have to hand it to Del Rey and co for creating a relatively tiny body of work that has had such a profound impact on popular music, fashion and mainstream culture in barely a year-and-a-half.

Regardless of whether she’s a pop star by committee or an organic artist of her own design, the cleverly stylised, smartly produced tales of excess and the damage of love, and her retro-fascinated, almost cinematic image continue to strike such a powerful chord. That fact is made abundantly clear by the slew of sold-out shows and extra dates tagged onto her Born to Die Tour.

Her links to Kassidy singer Barrie-James O’Neill have resulted in the doe-eyed chanteuse springing up around Glasgow, to the point where she herself refers to the city as her second home. And as she begins to bring her gruelling tour cycle to an end in support of Born to Die: The Paradise Edition, her two-day stint at the O2 Academy is bound to prove a spectacular ‘homecoming’.

SECC, Glasgow, Thu 16 May.

Lana Del Rey - Burning Desire