Lorde
Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (born 7 November 1996), known professionally as Lorde (/lɔːrd/ LORD), is a New Zealand singer and songwriter. She is known for her unconventional style of pop music, and introspective songwriting.
Not to be confused with Lordi or Lord (band).
Lorde
Lorde expressed interest in performing at local venues in her early teens. She signed with Universal Music Group (UMG) in 2009 and collaborated with producer Joel Little in 2011 to start recording music. Their first effort, an extended play (EP) titled The Love Club, was self-released in 2012 for free download on SoundCloud before UMG's commercial release in 2013. The EP's international chart-topping single "Royals" helped raise Lorde to prominence. Her debut studio album Pure Heroine was released that same year to critical and commercial success. The following year, Lorde curated the soundtrack for the 2014 film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and recorded several tracks, including the single "Yellow Flicker Beat".
Lorde's second studio album Melodrama (2017) received widespread critical acclaim and debuted atop the US Billboard 200. For her third studio album, Solar Power (2021), she ventured into indie folk and psychedelic styles. The album reached number one in Australia and New Zealand and charted inside the top-10 in numerous countries, although it polarised music critics and fans alike.
Lorde's accolades include two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, and a Golden Globe nomination. She appeared in Time's list of the most influential teenagers in 2013 and 2014, and the 2014 edition of Forbes 30 Under 30. In addition to her solo work, she has co-written songs for other artists, including Broods and Bleachers. As of June 2017, Lorde had sold over five million albums worldwide.
Artistry
Influences
Lorde grew up listening to American jazz and soul musicians Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Etta James, and Otis Redding, whose music she admires for "harvesting their suffering".[9] She also listened to her parents' favourite records by musicians including Cat Stevens, Neil Young, and Fleetwood Mac in her early years.[17] During production of Pure Heroine, Lorde cited influences from electronic music producers,[99] including SBTRKT, Grimes,[100] and Sleigh Bells,[101] impressed by "their vocals in a really interesting way, whether it might be chopping up a vocal part or really lash or layering a vocal."[21] She also stated that she was inspired by the initially hidden identities of Burial and the Weeknd, explaining, "I feel like mystery is more interesting."[8] Other inspirations include Katy Perry,[102] Grace Jones,[103] James Blake, Yeasayer, Animal Collective, Bon Iver,[104] the Smiths,[99] Arcade Fire,[9] Laurie Anderson,[10] Kanye West, Prince,[105] and David Bowie.[106]
Lyrically, Lorde cited her mother, a poet, as the primary influence for her songwriting.[17] She also named several authors, including Kurt Vonnegut,[107] Raymond Carver,[108] Wells Tower,[109] Tobias Wolff,[108] Claire Vaye Watkins,[109] Sylvia Plath,[108] Walt Whitman,[108] and T. S. Eliot as lyrical inspirations, particularly noting their sentence structures.[100]
When writing her second album, Melodrama, Lorde took inspiration from the melodic styles of a variety of musicians, including the 1975 especially their song "Somebody Else",[110] Phil Collins,[111] Don Henley,[70] Rihanna,[112] Florence and the Machine,[113] Tom Petty,[114] Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen,[115] and Robyn.[116] During the recording process, she stated that Frank Ocean's 2016 album Blonde inspired her to eschew "traditional song structures."[111] She frequently listened to Paul Simon's 1986 album Graceland while riding subways in New York City and on taxi rides on the way home from parties in her hometown of Auckland.[111] She cited the 1950 science fiction short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury as inspiration for much of Melodrama's story, relating it to her own realities she faced.[114]
Musical style and songwriting
Lorde is noted for her unconventional pop sound and introspective songwriting.[120] In a 2017 interview with NME, she declared "I don't think about staying in my genre lane".[114] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine characterised her style as primarily electropop,[121] while scholar Tony Mitchell categorized her as an alt-pop singer.[122] Upon the release of Pure Heroine, music critics described her music as electropop,[119] art pop,[123] dream pop,[124] indie pop,[125] and indie-electro,[126] with influences of hip hop.[127] Melodrama was a departure from the hip hop-oriented minimalist style of its predecessor, incorporating piano instrumentation and maximalist electronic beats.[128]
Lorde possesses a contralto vocal range.[129][130] Before Melodrama, Lorde only sang and did not play musical instruments on her records or onstage, saying, "[My] voice needs to have the focus. My vocal-scape is really important".[131] PopMatters described Lorde's vocals as "unique and powerfully intriguing",[124] while Billboard characterised her voice as "dynamic, smoky and restrained".[132] For the Melodrama World Tour, however, she played a drum pad sampler,[133] and xylophone onstage in some performances.[134] Shortly after finishing her tour, Lorde said she had started learning to play the piano.[135] 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.[136]
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.[9] For "Tennis Court", Lorde wrote the music before lyrics.[137] She stated that the songwriting on Pure Heroine developed from the perspective of an observer.[70] Similarly, in an interview with NME, Lorde acknowledged that she used words of inclusion throughout her debut album, while her follow-up Melodrama presented a shift to first-person narrative, employing more introspective lyrics inspired by Lorde's personal struggles post-breakup and viewpoints on post-teenage maturity.[114] 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.[70]
Philanthropy
Lorde has been involved in several philanthropic causes. "The Love Club" was included in the 2013 charity album Songs for the Philippines to support the people in the Philippines who suffered from Typhoon Haiyan.[158] In 2015, Lorde recorded "Team Ball Player Thing", a charity single, as part of the supergroup Kiwis Cure Batten. All sales from the song went towards research for the cure of Batten disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disorder.[159] Later that year, the singer was featured in the compilation album The Art of Peace: Songs for Tibet II to raise funds for the preservation of the Tibetan culture.[160] The following year, Lorde made a NZ$20,000 donation to Fuel the Need, a New Zealand charity that provides lunches for underprivileged schoolchildren.[161] In 2018, she donated NZ$5,000 to Starship Hospital to fund the purchase of "five new portable neurology monitors".[162] Lorde became a patron of MusicHelps, formerly the New Zealand Music Foundation, a musical charity helping New Zealanders who are vulnerable to or experiencing serious health issues, in November 2018.[163]
