“The critic Ellen Willis once wrote of Bette Midler: “Blatant artifice can, in the right circumstances, be poignantly honest, and she expresses the tension between image and inner self that all of us— but especially women— experience.” But Born to Die never allows tension or complexity into the mix, and its take on female sexuality ends up feeling thoroughly tame. For all of its coos about love and devotion, it’s the album equivalent of a faked orgasm— a collection of torch songs with no fire.”