Lorde (from New Zealand)

this was buried in the Rolling Indie thread, seems to be right up ILM alley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFasFq4GJYM

Ella Yelich-O'Connor, known by her stage name Lorde, is a 16 year old New Zealand singer-songwriter. She released her first EP, The Love Club, in December 2012 which reached #1 on the NZ charts and #39 on the Australian charts. It's been released as a physical copy on May 17, 2013.

Some of The Love Club is pretty good, and I like this Tennis Courts song alright, but she still seems undercooked. Check back in six months to a year.

She's no Lordi, that's for sure.

The single is precocious.

so this is kind of blowing up here in Los Angeles. KROQ is now playing "Royals" on a normal bases.

Yeah, her profile is kind of ballooning all over the internets.

Tennis Court is an earworm.

like the EPs, very LDR only a bit less DRAMA.

this is the second time someone has mentioned that "Tennis Court" song, going to have to seek it out.

i think my fave might be "swinging party".

a few weeks ago she had four singles in the NZ Top 40 which is pretty crazy

top 20** i should say

this thing is on the radio every time I turn it on. I went from hating it to liking it and back again to hating it in a week.

this single is precocious in a way that i like

seems like it is on its way to being huge all over the world

first woman in seventeen years to hit the #1 spot on the US Alternative chart.

Well that's pitiful.

alt has been a female hostile format for a long while now. not sure why this chick is clicking; I don't find her music interesting at all.

curious also how many stations make up that panel now; I think the format is on the wane

album's out in september by the way, same day as the HAIM one. it's called Pure Heroine

What a clever name, hard to tell she's 17

Meow. It really is an awful title tho, not that awful titles're in any way a hindrance rly

I guess this isn't as bad as the Naked & the Famous escaping NZ? Still p.bleak, and any significant overseas success = we'll hear nothing else for the next few years.

I actually liked TNAF a lot until the album came out, at which point it was revealed they'd already exhausted all of their good ideas. The new single is just more of the same.

This and Tennis Court are two of my favourite singles of the year. Precociousness is fine by me and the class-consciousness is interesting.

katherine st asaph's jukebox review otm:

Katherine St Asaph: The problem with Lorde is she makes sonically compelling music that’s nevertheless gotten the sort of rapid, iffy premature buzz (headline: Lorde: Meet the 16-Year-Old Pop Prodigy Who’s Sick of Rappers…“) that’s probably a bad thing for music, diagnosis Jessie Del J. (OK, that’s problem #1. Problem #2 is she is a child and you feel bad criticizing her.) But Lana Del Rey has a surprising amount of actual, non-astroturfed teenage fans, and from the sound of “Tennis Court” Lorde’s one of them (check the cadences on “thrill of it, killing it” and such, and compare.) The production hangs listless like air off a blacktop, but the lyrics have something to rankle everyone: obvious images (thank Toddlers and Tiaras, I guess, that “beauty queen in tears” lasted unused so long), obvious bait (“don’t you think that it’s boring” in line one, really?), unearned namedrops (“Wicked Game” this is not) or sheer laziness (too many songwriters lean on fake onomatopoeia like “like yeah.”) But again, she’s 16 and promising, and in a healthier music biz she’d be given time to develop that promise instead of a toss into the hype cycle.
[6]

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=7636

Good write-up but people only criticise the hype cycle if they're not convinced by the song. I don't share her issues with the lyrics so I just feel like a good song is getting its due. But the reservations in the first line are OTM.

I feel like there are so many great early singles that you could subject to that fine-tooth comb approach if you felt like it. If "like yeah" is lazy, so is every rock'n'roll song that uses "baby" to fill in a line.

i quite like the lyrics to royals

i dont get why "dont you think that its boring" is "obvious bait" and i dont see why she has to "earn" the right to use "wicked game" as a lyric

anyway i really like royals and bravado; the rest of it i can kind of take or leave

The whole idea of "earning" namedrops is absurd. There go 95% of hip hop namedrops.

Royals is a brilliant lyric imo. The way the first verse locates her in a crappy part of town without much money roots the chorus so it's not just sanctimonious bling-bashing.

i think its sort of ambiguous about the bling bashing. not hard to read it as a defense of fantasy materialism

the way she talks about it in the youtube description makes it sound like she intends it more as a criticism along generational lines rather than along genre lines in any event

(that being said i wouldnt be surprised if a big portion of the hype/popularity of the song is founded on simply reading it as "anti-rap")

I didn't take it as anti-rap specifically because it's common to so much pop now in that big rap/R&B/EDM/whatever middleground. I hear it as more of a personal expression of alienation - and it would be weird if a smart lower-middle-class teenager in smalltown New Zealand didn't feel alienated by VIP-room pop - than "ugh, those crass rappers" finger-wagging. Clearly some listeners are using it as vehicle for that kind of finger-wagging but it's not in the song.

In fact, a lot of the lines - "I'm not proud of my address, "We count our dollars on the train to the party", "We didn't come from money", "We're driving Cadillacs in our dreams - are reminiscent of hip hop origin myths. My favourite celebrations of wealth are songs like Juicy, where it's still a novelty and the present shines brighter because it's contrasted with a hard-knock past.

She's upper-class from the biggest city in the country & had a development deal since she was 12 or so, FWIW; Darcy Clay she ain't.

it's totally about rappers and I have no idea how you can see it any other way. since one jukebox blurb's already been copied/and/pasted: "She’s not dreaming of Windsor Castle in St. John, is she? Things have connotations."

fwiw I criticize hype cycles even for stuff I really like.

oh, i dont know! i like to hear it as a kind of defense/apologia for the materialist fantasy content of "every" song." i mean, you know, "let me live that fantasy"! she and her friends are "driving Cadillacs in our dreams," unless in NZ cadillacs are symbols of poverty or something

"let me live that fantasy" is in response to the lovey-dovey stuff of the chorus. about the bling stuff (and seriously what else would "gold teeth, Grey Goose" code as?) her response is "that kind of lux is not for us, we crave a different type of buzz."

and again I don't really blame Lorde so much because she's 16, but the people who speed-launched what's in part a songwriting career at this age, and the grown-ass adults who are buying into it?

right, the fantasy stuff about "ruling," being "queen bee," etc. i dont personally see much of a distinction between those fantasies and fantasies of blood stains, ball gowns, etc. well never *actually* be royals! that kind of lux is not *really* for us! but we will still live that fantasy b/c every song is about jet planes, islands, etc.

the fact that it's commonly being interpreted as anti-rap kind of surprises me but maybe i am just rly obtuse

This profile and interview sheds some light on Royals:

http://www.listener.co.nz/culture/music/lorde-moves-in-mysterious-ways/

She certainly is well read for her age.

i dont think she's anti-rap

so "Royals" is like number seven in the US pop charts this week. wow, didn't think this song would blow up to be this big.

it struck me as a potential "somebody that i used to know"... it has been selling a lot compared to its airplay since early summer.

zzzzzzzz

maura otm

In rare and intense disagreement with maura in this case.

I'm just surprised this thing hasn't been a hit in the UK. Isn't this the type of music that people over there go crazy for?

A truly cool list would have included “The Love Club"

On Bluesky music critic, Ann Powers compares Lorde's new single to:

"I’m hearing Kate Bush’s “Top of the City” in this"

Kate Bush - Top of the City - Unofficial music video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27omnj0m9k

New album will be called Virgin out June 27, 2025 via Republic.

Next she should release an album called Republic on Virgin!

this is a really bad album cover

she told her art director to pull from this article: https://defector.com/what-did-we-get-stuck-in-our-rectums-last-year-5

In a release, Lorde further teased the direction of the record. “THE COLOUR OF THE ALBUM IS CLEAR,” she wrote in an all-caps statement. “LIKE BATHWATER, WINDOWS, ICE, SPIT. FULL TRANSPARENCY. THE LANGUAGE IS PLAIN AND UNSENTIMENTAL. THE SOUNDS ARE THE SAME WHEREVER POSSIBLE. I WAS TRYING TO SEE MYSELF, ALL THE WAY THROUGH. I WAS TRYING TO MAKE A DOCUMENT THAT REFLECTED MY FEMININITY: RAW, PRIMAL, INNOCENT, ELEGANT, OPENHEARTED, SPIRITUAL, MASC.”

“I’M PROUD AND SCARED OF THIS ALBUM,” she added. “THERE’S NOWHERE TO HIDE. I BELIEVE THAT PUTTING THE DEEPEST PARTS OF OURSELVES TO MUSIC IS WHAT SETS US FREE.”

Oh, I see. It's a belt buckle, a zip, and some buttons. She was wearing jeans when she had the X-ray taken. I thought it was a backstage pass on a string that had been shoved up the subject's... front bottom.

Not many artists can say that they've irradiated their front bottom.

how I know ILM is just a bunch of dudes: no one has mentioned the IUD yet, which was the thing that jumped out at me immediately and is incredibly potent imagery for an album called Virgin

great album cover imo

as a woman i hate all of this but whatever

i’m not a ”normal” woman though. i could never have an iud. make me transparent and im probably not feminine to most ppl. anyway. i will never listen to or pay attention to lorde again after this post!

sorry ivy, I didn’t mean to exclude non cis women with my post but I can see how it can come across that way. Not even a lorde fan, I just think it’s a great, stark image for a pop album

yeah i guess!

the sticky fingers zipper is clever

regardless i think i should stay out of this thread from now on lol

<3

New single:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynrSkSYirB0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7xnBdx70GU

I like "Hammer" the most of these first three songs.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91KIBAp8iWL._SL1500_.jpg

Virgin

1. "Hammer" 3:13
2. "What Was That" 3:29
3. "Shapeshifter" 4:17
4. "Man of the Year" 3:00
5. "Favourite Daughter" 3:28
6. "Current Affairs" 3:18
7. "Clearblue" 1:57
8. "GRWM" 2:35
9. "Broken Glass" 3:14
10. "If She Could See Me Now" 2:56
11. "David" 3:24

this is going in one year and out the other. "man of the year" stands out in context, enjoy it more here than i did as a single.

"Some days, I'm a woman, some days, I'm a man,"

Not quite done with it but really enjoyed it. Sounds like summer.

It’s fine, don’t know that I’ll listen to it twice. I feel her trying to create luminous pop and only getting halfway there.

I was wondering why people were so down on this record. I only heard thru "Current Affairs" and now get it. Second half is forgettable and quite frankly not that good. Lo and behold all the singles are on the first half. I still think there are some good songs on here but yeah that second half...

Pitchfork gave it a 7.6, her second best rating and above the debut. Stetogum seems to like it too but the comments are polarized like here.

i gave it a listen bc i hate being a hater. it’s so funny to read the pfork review’s appreciation of the bold, blunt lyrics but to me there’s not very much to think about beyond their boldness or bluntness and they are often embarrassing. the production can be very good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R07Y_i1En_Q

That line about love or ovulation is terrible

i...am really into this album actually. think it's interesting that she allows herself the freedom to be unresolved, i think she described the album as like "scaffolding" or a "construction site" and i can definitely hear that, that she's accepted that she's a work in progress and that she needs to sit in this tense, taut, uncomfortable place

"current affairs", "if she could see me now" are my favourite of the new tracks and "favourite daughter" is one of her biggest choruses

I'm seeing stuff on, er, Reddit that the 'Clear' CD edition of Virgin won't actually play on most
(i.e. more than a few years old) CD players because of the thinness of the metallic layer or something.

I'm quite into "If She Could See Me Now."

I do have to say that it kind of amuses me that last time ‘round, she sold empty CD cases with just a download code because of “environmental concerns”, only to this time manufacture a bunch of CDs that apparently won’t play on most players:

https://www.stereogum.com/2313791/lordes-transparent-virgin-cd-doesnt-play-fans-say/news/

lol! well done

this album is fine, better than the last one, not as good as the first two, I guess.

On second listen, I like it a lot.

I do too.

I wouldn't sit around and listen to this but I'm very much enjoying the Tape Notes deep dive on the production with her and Jim-E Stack. And I appreciate the commitment to the kind of minimalism that you can only really pull off with a strong vocal on top.

Second half is forgettable and quite frankly not that good. Lo and behold all the singles are on the first half. I still think there are some good songs on here but yeah that second half...

I disagree. The second half has some of the stronger songs--particularly "If She Could See Me Now" and "Broken Glass."

Hmm, I guess I'll at least give it a second listen and see if I was too harsh on it the first time thru ...

"If She Could See Me Now" is my favorite song.

agree

"If You Could See Me Now" is such an interesting amalgam to me...kinda sounds like "Pony", the "Suga Suga" interpolation, I feel like it's about to turn into Justin Timberlake "Mirrors" at points too, and then the chorus...is full-on William Orbit oceania. Those Fabiana Palladino (I can only assume it's her contribution) arpeggiated synths that come in near the end are such a lovely touch.

if she** could see me now oops

I think Palladino did co-writes but not production? On that Tape Notes they get into the particular synth for all those arps. Really impressed by those tracks, guess I'm gonna have to listen to this.

this is a really bad album cover

the cover for this is good

i wasn't really expecting much but this is pretty nice. i don't know if it's really good enough for me to keep coming back to though, except "shapeshifter" which i love. lyrics are definitely a weak point

I've listened to this a bunch now, much more than I expected to. I'm not sure what lyrics people are finding 'bad', I find some of it rather affecting, particularly Favourite Daughter. But I think David might be my favorite song on here, with that Low-Double-Negative sounding throbbing swell.

Lyrics on this are no worse than her other albums and significantly better than that “prettier Jesus” line from Solar Power.

'david' live. Might need to pony up for aftermarket tickets for this show next month.

https://www.reddit.com/r/lorde/comments/1nkhmnn/david_in_full/