Lorde

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**Ella Marija Lani Yelich O'Connor**, otherwise known by her stage name, **Lorde**, is a New Zealand singer. Born in Takapuna, New Zealand, on November 7th, 1996 (age 25). She rose to become one of the most famous singers of 2013-2014, winning many awards and embarking on a world tour for her debut album, Pure Heroine. In 2017 she announced her new album, Melodrama, which is being released June 16th, 2017. She is noted for her lyrical genius, uniqueness in the modern music industry and success as a teen.

## Biography

Ella Marija Lani Yelich O'Connor was born on November 7th 1996, in Takapuna, New Zealand, to Vic O'Connor and Sonja Yelich.

 Along with her sisters, Jerry and India, and her brother Angelo, she was raised in Devonport, and attended Vauxhill School and later, Belmont Intermediate School, and during that school, she took public speaking skills and joined a drama club. Her mom was noted to encourage her to read a variety of books, which Lorde noted as an influence, "I guess my mum influenced my lyrical style by always buying me books. She'd give me a mixture of kid and adult books too, there weren't really any books I wasn't allowed to read. I remember reading *Feed* by M.T. Anderson when I was six, and her giving me Salinger and Carver at a young age, and Janet Frame really young too." She also played netball at a young age, with Vauxhill classmate Eliza McCartney. In 2009 Ella and her friend Louis McDonald won the Belmont Intermediate School Annual Talent show as a duo. On August 13th of that same year, the duo were invited for a talk on Jim Mora's *Afternoons* show on Radio New Zealand. They preformed covers of Pixie Lott's "Mama Do (Uh Oh, Uh Oh)" and Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" there. McDonald's father Ian sent both his home audio recording of her and Louis McDonald covering Duffy's song "Warwick Avenue" and his home video recording of the pair singing Pixie Lott's "Mama Do" to Universal Music Group (UMG)'s A&R Scott Maclachlan. In 2009 Maclachlan signed her to UMG for development. Lorde was also part of the band, Extreme, during her Belmont Intermediate Years. This band placed third on the North Shore Battle of the Bands finals. In 2011, UMG hired a vocal couch, Frances Dickinson, to give Lorde voice lessons twice a week for one year. During this time, she began writing songs and was set up with a succession of singers, but without success.

In December, MacLachlan paired Lorde with Joel Little, a songwriter, record producer, and former Goodnight Nurse lead singer. Lorde and Little began writing songs for an EP, which would become The Love Club EP. In November 2012, Lorde published the EP through her SoundCloud account for free download. After being downloaded 60K times, UMG decided to commercially release the record for sales in March 2013. The EP debuted on the record charts of New Zealand and Australia at number 2. In June 2013, Royals was released as a single, and later became a crossover hit, and it peaked on the US Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks. Lorde became the youngest solo artist to achieve a number one single on the Hot 100, and the single also won Lorde a 2013 APRA Silver Scroll Award, and two Grammy Awards for Best Pop Solo Performance and Song of the Year at the 2014 Grammy Awards. In 2013, Lorde released her debut album, Pure Heroine, in September. The album peaked upon the charts of New Zealand and Australia, and later the US. The album had sold 1.33 million copies by 2014. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album.

The album was preceded with four singles, "Tennis Court" was released in June 2013, topping the New Zealand Singles Chart, the third single, "Team", became a top-ten hit worldwide; and "No Better", a song only included on the extended version of *Pure Heroine*, and "Glory and Gore". In September 2013, Lorde's cover for the Tears for Fears song, Everybody Wants To Rule the World, was included on the Catching Fire album. In November 2013, Lorde signed a publishing deal with Songs Music Publishing, worth a reported US$2.5 million, after a bidding war between various companies, including Sony Music Entertainment and her label UMG. The agreement gives the publisher the right to license Lorde's music for films and advertising. Late that year, she started a relationship with photographer James Lowe. In December 2014, Lorde announced she was starting to write materiel for her second album, Melodrama.

In June 2014, Lorde said that her second studio album was in its early stages and that, so far, it was "totally different" from her debut album. In the first half of 2014, Lorde headlined various festivals, including the Laneway Festival in Sydney, Australia, the three South American editions of Lollapalooza—Chile, Santiago; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and São Paulo, Brazil—and the Coachella Festival in California.

To promote *The Love Club EP* and *Pure Heroine*, Lorde embarked on an international tour, the first leg of which was held in North America in early 2014. She later announced the Australian leg, held in July, and the second North American leg, held in August. In April of that year, Lorde performed "All Apologies" with the surviving members of Nirvana during the band's induction ceremony at the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame. On 1 August 2014, Lorde performed at Lollapalooza again in Grant Park, Chicago.

On 29 September 2014, Lorde released "Yellow Flicker Beat" as the first single from the soundtrack album for the film *The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1*; Lorde oversaw the collation of the album's content, in addition to contributing vocals to several songs. By her 18th birthday in November 2014, it was estimated that Lorde was worth NZ$11 million. In 2015, Lorde was featured on "Magnets", a track on Disclosure's second studio album *Caracal*.

In 2016, Lorde gave a tribute to David Bowie, singing his song "Life on Mars." That same year, she announced she had finished the album and it was in production stages. On her birthday, she posted a note

> which read: "Tomorrow I turn 20, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for days. I walk around the city, up by the park and by the health food store and down into the subway, this new age hanging in front of my eyes like two of those Mylar balloons that never come down. Can people see it, I wonder, that I’m about to cross over? On the subway I stare at boys I want to kiss and girls I want to hug. Do you see me? I’m eating raspberries sitting up in bed, thinking about watching The Crown, and I probably should have written something nicer ages ago but my head is so full of lyrics and drums these days that this is all I can manage. But it feels very important I write to you, for some reason. I was 16 when most of us met. Can you believe it? I laugh thinking about that me now - that glossy idiot god, princess of her childhood streets, handmade and ugly and sure of herself.All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled. I knew they knew something children didn’t know, and adults ended up forgetting. Since 13 I’ve spent my life building this giant teenage museum, mausoleum maybe, dutifully wolfishly writing every moment down, and repeating it all back like folklore. And now there isn’t any more of it. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) (\*insert that emoji that looks like it's eating its own face with worry, and also the one with sunglasses, and maybe also the poo\*) And I know, I know! There’s different stuff. Stuff that’s just as good, maybe better, just in a different way. If I’m being real with myself, in some ways I stopped feeling like a teenager a while ago. Sometime in the last year or so, part of me crossed over. For one thing, I made a very deliberate choice to withdraw for a little while from a public life. I haven’t had my hair or makeup done in a year, the free handbags dried up LONG ago, and the paparazzi at the airport are almost always for someone else. And let me tell you, as much as I love being full noise album cycle girl, it's been a motherfu--ing joy. (every once in a while I am recognised on the street - one of you breathlessly clutches my hand, shaking and speaking quickly, and I feel this SHOCK of love.) I turned inwards to my friends, my family, towards this moment, so I could learn more about who I was, and so I could let this new project show itself to me. And oh my god, it was a colossal year! One for the ages. I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover.
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> My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both. I started to discover in a profound, scary, blood-aching way who I was when I was alone, what I did when I did things only for myself. I was reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender. I threw sprawling parties and sat in restaurants until the early hours, learning what it’s like to be an adult, even talking like one sometimes, until I caught myself. All I wanted to do was dance. I
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> whispered into ears and let my eyes blaze on high and for the first time I felt this intimate, empire-sized inner power. And then I wrote a record about it, all of it, so much more than what I’ve written down here, and I’m in new york getting it done. And tomorrow, I’m not a kid any more, and more and more I'm realizing that the weirdness of those Mylar balloons is going to be okay. Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record - well, this one is about what comes next. I want nothing more than to spill my guts RIGHT NOW about the whole thing - I want you to see the album cover, pore over the lyrics (the best I’ve written in my life), touch the merch, experience the live show. I can hardly stop myself from typing out the name. I just need to keep working a while longer to make it as good as it can be. You'll have to hold on. The big day is not tomorrow, or even next month realistically, but soon. I know you understand. Oh my god it's midnight now!!! I'm 20 fu--!!!!! And my perfect little brother Angelo is 15!! Happy birthday, kid. Sorry your sister is so weird and emotional in public all the time. What i'm trying to say is: this is a special birthday. The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world. I love you forever. L"
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In February Republic Records, her recording label, published the date 3/7 under "Confidential Title" that revealed Lorde's sophomore album. This was later cleared. Soon after, Lorde posted a strange ad featuring her sipping a drink, eating snacks, in the back of a train. It ended with the dates 3/317 NZ and 3/2/17 NYC. After this, she posted another ad featuring her walking down a street with music playing in the background. The last ad featured her dancing to the lyrics to her song Green Light. The night before the new single premiered, green strobe lights were going off all over Auckland, NZ. Lyrics to the song were written in different places, and snippets of the song were played in buildings.

On the 2nd of March, the song, Green Light, was released along with a music video, to good reviews and instant success. It debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 98, then went down to number 18 the second week. the next week, she released another song from the album, Liability. She also revealed the release date for the album, June 16th. Later, she appeared on SNL and sang the two new songs. On twitter, she teased another song from the album, which is evidently "her favorite song from Melodrama." Later, this was revealed to be Sober.

She sang at a "tiny pre-coachella gig" on April 14th and revealed titles for some of her new songs, Sober and Homemade Dynamite, as well as Perfect Places and Sober II (Melodrama). She performed at Coachella on April 16th and sang her new song, "Homemade Dynamite". She said she had many surprises for her fans coming soon. She released "Melodrama" in June to stellar reviews, with some citing it as the "best pop album of 2017". In August, she performed at the MTV VMAs and did an interpretive dance to "Homemade Dynamite". She also teased a "\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* \*\*\*\*\*" that would be "coming soon!".

### Artistry

Lorde is described to have a alternative and pop music style, along with art pop, indie pop, dream pop and

electropop. Her main influences were noted to be jazz musician Billie Holiday, and soul musicians Sam Cooke, Etta James and Otis Redding, whose music Lorde admires for "harvesting their suffering." She also listened to her parents' favorite records, Cat Stevens, Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac in her early years. he cites the unusual vocals of Grimes, Sleigh Bells and producer SBTRKT as her prominent influences. Other inspirations for Lorde include Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, Grace Jones, James Blake, Yeasayer, Animal Collective, Bon Iver, Radiohead, Jamie Woon, Arcade Fire, Kurt Vonnegut, Laurie Anderson, Kanye West and Prince.

### Public Image

Lorde is known for having "exotic" dance moves on stage, which some people deem as "demonic." Lorde replied to this on twitter saying QUOTE "one day i will do a normal dance choreographed by a nice person and I will look more like your other favourite performers but we have not yet reached that day ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯." She is a self identified feminist and sex positive person. In an interview she commented:

> "People like to paint me in a certain way, but I'm a hugely sex-positive person and I have nothing against anyone getting naked. For me personally I just don't think it really would complement my music in any way or help me tell a story any better. It's not like I have a problem with dancing around in undies—I think you can use that stuff in a hugely powerful way. It just hasn't felt necessary for me."
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She broke up with her former boyfriend, James Lowe, later after they began dating. She has not confirmed having any other relationships to this date, but it was rumored that she is in a relationship with record producer Justin Warren. Warren publicly denied these rumors, saying they were just "good friends".

Lorde has revealed she has synesthesia, which helped her write Melodrama.

In an interview, she revealed she was body shamed after the release of "Royals", which QUOTE "Could've f--ked me up." She also said that she "sucks at being famous". She cited hearing her songs while going to the bathroom at a store as something she'd never gotten used to.

## Discography

*See Also: Discography*

* *Pure Heroine* (2013)
* *Melodrama* (2017)
* *Solar Power* (2021)

## Tours

* The Lorde Tour (2014)
* Melodrama World Tour (2017)

## Awards

*See Also: Awards*

* Song of the Year (2014)
* Best Pop Solo Performance (2014)
* Top New Artist (2014)
* Top Rock Song (2014)
* Best Rock Video (2014)
* International Female Solo Artist (2014)
* Best Musician (2015)
* World's Best New Artist (2014)
* World’s Best Alternative Act (2014)
* World's Best Selling Australian Artist (2014)
* iHeartRadio International Artist of the Year (2014)
* iHeartRadio International Artist of the Year (2017)
* Best New Artist (2014)
* Best New Zealand Act
* Outstanding International Achievement Award (2014)
* Silver Scroll Award (2013)
* Most Performed Work in New Zealand (2014)
* Most Performed Work Overseas
* Most Performed Songs (2014)
* Single of the Year (2013)
* Breakthrough Artist of the Year (2013)
* People's Choice Awards (2013)
* International Achievement Award (2013)
* Single of the Year (2014)
* Highest Selling New Zealand Single (2014)
* International Achievement Award (2014)
* Single of the Year (2015)
* International Achievement Award (2015)
* Taite Music Prize (2014)

## Official Accounts

* Facebook
* Instagram
* Twitter

## References

1. ↑ "Discography Lorde" - Charts.org.nz. Hung Medien
2. ↑ "Lorde, Coldplay feature on Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack" - 3News.
3. ↑ "Lorde signs $2.5m publishing deal, and may write for other artists" - *The Guardian*
4. ↑ "Dear Internet: Lorde is dating an Asian guy — get over it" - *Los Angeles Times*
5. ↑ Lorde Working on New Material, Australian Tour Being Planned - Billboard
6. ↑ Nirvana Joined by Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, St. Vincent, Lorde at Rock Hall Ceremony - Billboard
7. ↑ "Lollapalooza Day One Reviews: Lorde, Iggy Azalea, Eminem with surprise guest Rihanna, and more" - *Milwaukee Journal Sentinel*
8. ↑ "Lorde's 'Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Pt. 1' Soundtrack to Feature Kanye West, Chvrches, Charli XCX - Billboard
9. ↑ "Birthday girl Lorde's earnings estimated at $11m-plus" - *The New Zealand Herald*
10. ↑ "Disclosure and Lorde join forces on the excellent 'Magnets'" - Consequence of Sound
11. ↑ David Bowie's Son Thanks Brits For 'Beautiful' Tribute By Lorde - The Guardian
12. ↑ Revealed on Lorde's Instagram
13. ↑ Revealed on Lorde's Facebook
14. ↑ Lorde is Releasing New Music on March 7 - Idolator
15. ↑ "Watch Lorde tease new music in mysterious adverts - NME"
16. ↑ Revealed on Billboard Hot 100
17. ↑ "Lorde Releases New Song 'Liability'" - *Billboard*
18. ↑ "See Lorde Unleash Spirited 'Melodrama' Songs on 'SNL'" - *Rolling Stone*
19. ↑ Revealed on Lorde's Twitter
20. ↑ Revealed at "tiny pre-Coachella gig"
21. ↑ Lorde Brings New Song "Homemade Dynamite" to Coachella - The Los Angeles Times
22. ↑ Revealed on Lorde's Facebook
23. ↑ Lorde uses her synaesthesia to write songs that match pictures - the Sydney Morning Herald