Royalties

Lorde’s hit, “Royals,” combines fast-lane references with directness about privation.Photograph by Delphine Diallo

The New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s first show in the U.S. was in August, at the small Greenwich Village night club (Le) Poisson Rouge. Yelich-O’Connor, who is sixteen, performs and records as Lorde, a name that she chose because, she told the Daily Beast, it felt “kind of masculine.” The show was packed, and the V.I.P. area was unusually full, especially with older men. I’d never seen such clamor or crowding at this venue. Dressed in a black vest over a sheer black floor-length dress, Lorde played with the drummer Ben Barter and the keyboardist James McDonald. Her voice is low, casual, and it sounded strong and effortless, neither dramatically loud nor tentative in pitch. She displayed no visible nervousness, and there was a sense of mutual testing, as if she were gathering information about us as much as we were about her. Halfway through the eleven-song set, a man with white hair, dressed in a silver suit, turned to a companion, pointed to the stage, and, implying a big payday in Lorde’s future, said, “Zeroes. Lots and lots of zeroes.”

Lorde’s début album, “Pure Heroine,” and her current No. 1 single, “Royals,” may prove him right. The exciting thing about Lorde is not merely that “Pure Heroine” is perfect (it is close), or that “Royals” is perfect (it is), but that a teen-ager from Auckland, with an unnatural gift, has entered the suit-infested ruins of the music business with the confidence of a veteran and the skills of a prodigy. She is less a flashy new mansion in the suburbs than an architectural gem in a tony neighborhood.

Lorde’s origin myth is a bit like that of Justin Bieber and other young artists. At a school talent show, in 2009, she performed the British pop singer Duffy’s “Warwick Street,” and a video of the performance circulated. Soon, Universal Records approached her, and before her fourteenth birthday she was negotiating to release an EP on the label. After working with several collaborators suggested by Universal, she chose Joel Little as her songwriting partner. Early this year, the EP, called “The Love Club,” was released in the U.S. Initially, like many low-voiced female singers, Lorde was lumped in with Lana Del Rey. Though Lorde had listened to Del Rey when she was younger, she said she’d recently been listening more to hip-hop, including Kanye West and Drake.

“Royals,” which anchors both “The Love Club” and “Pure Heroine,” is simultaneously a pop song, a diary entry, a manifesto, a rejection of privilege, a defiant redefinition of wealth, and a wish list. It is worth close attention not just because it is so good but because it crystallizes so much of Lorde’s skill and her outlook. It begins with a layer of reverb over a muted, boxy kick drum and finger snaps. Few Lorde tracks go for the big or the fast or the showy. The production often represents a mixture of recent British styles without hewing to any of them; here, it bears traces of dubstep, as handed down through artists such as James Blake.

The song’s first words are “I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh. I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies.” That’s a hell of a way to say hello. The familiarity with privation implied here is a long way from the usual version of pop that climbs the charts. Lorde’s voice is calm; we don’t know her age, her location, or her plan. The original video for the song reveals the milieu. After a single static shot of Lorde, we see footage of her real-life Auckland friends lazing about an apartment, sparring in living rooms, and riding the train. The song continues, moving away from celebration, “And I’m not proud of my address, in a torn-up town, no post-code envy.” It’s Ken Loach as pop.

For the two-tiered chorus, she adds layers of her singing as background. The chorus calls out as theatrical fantasy the details that often run through hits: “But every song’s like ‘Gold teeth, Grey Goose, tripping in the bathroom, bloodstains, ball gowns, trashing the hotel room.’ We don’t care. We’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.” As in most of her songs, the focus is on voice and rhythms, with plenty of bottom and also lots of space. This isn’t pop as a barrage of fast-lane references but as a direct statement about the difficulties of lower-middle-class life. It’s a triumphant song that embraces the escape that pop offers while pointing out that the escape is only temporary. The royals still have all the power. Not bad for someone who was fifteen when she wrote the words.

“Pure Heroine” builds on the strength of “Royals,” keeping its clipped, airy, percussive sounds and its simple melodic motion, which only occasionally speeds up beyond a sauntering pace. Bassy thumps and synth lines provide structure underneath. Every song leaves room for Lorde to make the words absolutely clear, either on her own or with doubled backing vocals. (The album was made entirely by Lorde and Joel Little—there are no guest musicians credited.)

Our view of the “torn-up town” in “Royals” expands in songs like “400 Lux,” a diaphanous number about a romantic night out that can’t escape the concrete realities of life in a small town. In an almost tuneless speaking voice, Lorde softly recites, “Now we’re wearing long sleeves and the heating comes on. You buy me orange juice; we’re getting good at this. Dreams of clean teeth, I can tell that you’re tired but you keep the car on while you’re waiting out front.” For the phrase about orange juice, she drops in a sweet little moment of multitracked harmony. This may be a dead-end town for some, but Lorde never condescends to it or romanticizes the tough bits. Kissing is kissing, wherever you are.

“Ribs,” which Lorde calls her favorite track on the album, is a dance song with a four-on-the-floor beat that feels submerged and softened. Her vocals are high, crisp, and intermittently anxious. She’s talking to a friend, maybe a romantic partner, and she’s finally felt the chill of aging. When the verse arrives, the music clears out, leaving nothing but a plangent chord and a muffled kick drum: Lorde does not fight with her backing tracks. In her default style, low and deliberate, she sings, “This dream isn’t feeling sweet, we’re reeling through the midnight streets, and I’ve never felt more alone. It feels so scary, getting old.” In interviews, she repeatedly says that she is simply describing being a high schooler in Auckland, but her lyrics are good enough that she’s quickly finding a cohort across the globe, made up of all ages.

In several conversations with me, conducted in person and over Skype, Lorde made clear how important control is to her. She is like a pop star who has already watched the “Behind the Music” special about her, and has been tipped off to all the ways she might be exploited. Besides her choice of Little as her co-writer, she also had final say on the cover of “Pure Heroine,” which doesn’t feature her image, and has managed to release videos in which she barely appears.

In her return to New York, several weeks ago, for three celebratory concerts, two at Webster Hall, Lorde managed to change without changing. She took the larger stage with the exact same band as before; the musicians were just spaced farther apart. On the first night at Webster Hall, the lighting stayed monochromatic, sticking to warm yellows and white. She was dressed in a long black sheath dress and thick-soled black shoes. The crowd rarely reached for their smartphones as they watched her sing newer songs, such as “Buzzcut Season” and “Ribs.” She did a truncated cover of Kanye West’s “Hold My Liquor,” from “Yeezus,” and put “Royals” not at the end of the set but several songs before it, as if to prove that she didn’t need to follow the formula for someone who is, as of now, a one-hit artist. On the second night, she wore a green metallic knit mermaid dress, and moved around more, as confident as in the first show but more openly enjoying a fantasy that turned out to be surprisingly real. ♦