“But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece/ Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash/ We don’t care/ We aren’t caught up in your love affair”
Coming from a 16-year-old who calls herself “Lorde,” an alternate feminine version of the royal designation lord, the song “Royals” should be another anthem celebrating the foolish dreams of riches-obsessed youths. It’s not.
Lorde’s music is all over campus right now. I listened to “Tennis Club” in the quad the other day and someone mistook it for a ringtone. This may not be the age when polyphonic beeping song covers reigned supreme, but a ringtone still says a lot about a person.
Her main appeal is that she appeals to everyday, working people. She goes on to sing in “Royals” that she and her friends count their cash on the train rides to parties, satisfied that they “didn’t come from money.”
The New Zealand native, born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, has been singing, songwriting and guitar-playing since age 13 under Columbia Records, yet, until a couple weeks ago, she had never been on a plane. Her parents are a Kiwi chemical engineer and poet, which, while not exactly blue-collar, doesn’t shout “regular tea with the queen.”
She has caught on with a variety of audiences because of the variety of influences she draws from, without a sense of judgement or appropriation. She loves literature as well as Nicki Minaj raps, but her songs don’t feel as though she is trying to emulate either.
She recently covered Kanye West’s “Hold My Liquor” in concert, but she is no Miley Cyrus, asking for music that sounds black from songwriters to promote an image she has no right to for the black women whose asses she’s slapping in her videos. But she’s also not dropping lines of Eliot or Salinger to impress us. There’s something unself-conscious in her style that is intriguing for such a young artist.
Lorde’s criticism is tongue-in-cheek, whether she’s scorning the life of excess celebrated in many rap and pop lyrics or poking at the folly of youth — like in her single “Tennis Court”:
“Don’t you think that it’s boring how people talk/ Making smart with their words again, well I’m bored/ Because I’m doing this for the thrill of it, killin’ it/ Never not chasing a million things I want”
If the popularity of “The Love Club EP” she released in March is any indication, her first studio album “Pure Heroine” should fire up the commoners faster than a bread shortage. Keep an eye out this month for its release.