What does A.V. Club characterize as mystifying and alluring?
In an interview with NME in 2017, Lorde declared "I don’t think about staying in my genre lane". AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine characterised her style as primarily electropop. Upon the release of Pure Heroine, contemporary critics described her music as electropop, art pop, dream pop, indie pop and indie-electro. Critics also noted the influence of hip hop on the album's song structures, as well as its unconventional pop sound and minimalist production. Consequence of Sound pointed that the minimal production of Pure Heroine "allows [her] to sing any melody she wants, layering them over one another to create a choral effect". The Guardian compared Lorde's music to that of Sky Ferreira and Eliza Doolittle. Melodrama was a departure from the hip hop-oriented minimalist style of its predecessor, incorporating  piano instrumentation and maximalist electronic beats.Lorde utilises her vocals and does not play musical instruments on her records or onstage, elaborating, "[My] voice needs to have the focus. My vocal-scape is really important". PopMatters described Lorde's vocals as "unique and powerfully intriguing", while Billboard characterised her voice as "dynamic, smoky and restrained". The A.V. Club wrote that Lorde's voice "is the alpha and omega of her talent", characterising it as "mystifying and alluring" that harmonised well with the electronic production. Vice noted that her songs incorporated the mixolydian mode, a melodic structure used in "blues-based and alternative rock" music, which set her songs apart from those in pop music for not fitting a common major or minor chord.Regarding her songwriting process, Lorde explained that the foundation to her songs began with the lyrics, which could sometimes stem from a singular word meant to summarise a specific idea she had tried to identify. For "Tennis Court", Lorde wrote the music before lyrics. She stated that the songwriting on Pure Heroine developed from the perspective of an observer. Similarly, in an interview with NME, Lorde acknowledged that she used words of inclusion (such as "we" and "us") throughout her debut album, while her follow-up Melodrama presented a shift in narrative, employing more introspective lyrics inspired by Lorde's personal struggles post-breakup and viewpoints on post-teenage maturity. Lorde's neurological condition chromesthesia influenced her songwriting on the album; it led her to arrange colours according to each song's theme and emotion.
Lorde's voice