Photo: Courtesy of Republic Records.
The elusive New Zealand darling that is Lorde has decided to open up about her inspiration. Well, she opened up a little — in a recent interview with VH1, Lorde explained the spark behind her chart-dominating single, "Royals."
The song in question, an ode to the Millennial fetishization of the "good life," was reportedly inspired by a National Geographic picture of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. "I'd been kind of thinking about writing that song for a while and been pulling together a couple little lines here and there, and I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude signing baseballs," Lorde explained to VH1. "He was a baseball player and his shirt said Royals. I was like, I really like that word, because I'm a big word fetishist. I'll pick a word and I'll pin an idea to that."
So, there's that. The song that has faced ridicule for cultural appropriation and privilege was sparked by the Show-Me State. In other news, "Royals" is still one of the the top three tracks on iTunes. Kansas, you did this 17-year-old good. (Oh No They Didn't)
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On Being 17: A Mini-Essay By Lorde