MUSIC | In the presence of Lorde: you better BOW DOWN
WORDS | Moeima Dukuly
Wide eyed, long haired and sixteen. That only begins to break the ice that is Ella Yelich O’Connor - better known as Lorde, New Zealand’s beautiful virtuoso. Lorde blesses us with her EP, Love Club and the devastatingly new single you won’t want to keep out of your head (even if you tried) - ‘Royals’.
XO had the pleasure of getting to know Lorde better and our love, instantly turned into obsession. Take a look as we rap about everything from high school, Lana del Rey’s dream world, mean boys and girls and being broke (but beautiful).
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On music and her beginnings: “I have always sung. And I was in my school talent show, singing some Duffy song and it got [people made] videos and it ended up getting to my record company…I wrote stuff I was proud of… and I just put it out, really. I feel like I haven’t gone through that ‘musician’s suffering’, you know? A decade of playing shows and no one appears or whatever…I think my way of doing it, is just as good, I guess. Just as valid."
What inspired,’Royals’: “I’d just listened to the Lana del Rey [Born to Die] album. My response from all of that was, these different types of music talk about this extravagance this opulence…beautiful clothes, nice cars, all that sort of thing. I could listen to it and enjoy it, but I’d been talking to my friends about all this stuff, and we kind of all decided that that was bullshit! I mean..no one’s got a Maserati! …It was more of an inside joke with my friends, than anything."
Being too broke to pay for Subway: “Oh my gosh!! That was the most embarrassing thing in the world. It was really bad, I’m from a really small country so people kind of recognize me in the street here … the guy who made my subway was about my age, I could tell he recognized me. It got to the end and I couldn’t pay for it and it was SO embarrassing ..you have no idea. And it’s not like you could put it back, you know? I had to get my producer to pay for it. Oh man."
Her upcoming tour in NY/LA: “I’ve only been to one other city [besides her own] in my country. It’ll be cool to see how people are responding and stuff…I’ll be coming out to New York and LA. Everyone keeps saying, ‘Oh, you’ll New York, you’ll love New York.’ It’ll be rad to just explore, meet some people…and just hang out really!"
On being young and in the music industry: “I think alot of people forget, that I am a high school student. High school can be SO nasty, so…challenging and I think that’s the best possible training you can have for an industry like this. Now everyone that I deal with [in the industry] seem so nice! Some people are just so busy judging you on how big your boobs are! I think the advice I would give is, maintain control. People underestimate young people’s visions…we know what’s cool. 40 year olds know what’s cool…but they kind of don’t. Young people like me across the world, are going to be the art directors and the creatives in a few years. We know what’s going on. Maintain your control. Have input."
See? Love her.
Take a peek at Lorde’s recently released video below, ‘Royals’ and give a listen to her EP, Love Club - out now.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFasFq4GJYM]