Photo: Courtesy of Billboard.
Barely three days away from the release of her first official LP, Lorde is continuing to dominate the airwaves. The 16-year-old has garnered more press in the past few weeks than most emerging artists could dream of. She's not the niche darling of Tumblr anymore, and her emergence into the mainstream is both welcome and deserved. We've been singing her praises (and thanking the Top 40 gods for awarding a not-so-formulaic track the top spot) for a hot minute, and likely will for a while.
You see, Lorde is a new breed of pop star. Ella Yelich-O'Connor, Lorde's given name, gave one of her most intimate interviews ever to Billboard, in which she talked about everything from idealistic dreams to the state of pop today. "People respond to something that intrigues them, instead of something that gives them all the information — particularly in pop, which is like the genre for knowing way too much about everyone and everything," she muses. Lorde, instead, wants to follow in the footsteps of Mazzy Star, Portishead, and this generation's go-to enigmatic musician, The Weeknd. As much press as she's getting these days, a small fraction of it is actually about Ella herself.
And that's exactly how she wants it: "In a perfect world, I would never do any interviews," she said. All we know about Lorde comes from her stories recounting the euphoric facade of luxury, and her keen awareness of the teenage scene that she is both immersed in and looking in on. Add on her extraordinarily stunning looks, and we've got ourselves a future voice for a generation. Now, we've been taught not to put all of our eggs in one basket, but if music bigwig Jason Flom of Lava is already singing her praises, we're pretty confident our eggs are safe in Lorde's. (Billboard)