A zeitgeist-grabbing, history-making song from a new pop superstar.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still astounding that \u201cRoyals\u201d was Lorde\u2019s debut single, released when she was just 16 years old.\u00a0In a matter of weeks and months, the song became a phenomenon, seemingly born out of nowhere. Where did this preternaturally gifted artist come from? How did she write a song this mature at such a young age?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always tempting to attach mythic qualities to a story like this, but Lorde was both an overnight sensation and not.<\/p>\n
A Universal A&R rep spotted the talent of Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O\u2019Connor when she was just 12, and she signed a development deal with the label when she was 13. Her team spent a while trying to pair her up with different songwriters and producers, to no avail.<\/p>\n
There was no connection to be found, until Lorde met Joel Little.<\/p>\n
The former Goodnight Nurse frontman was just starting out in his production career (a career that\u2019s since soared) when he met Lorde, and the Kiwi pair clicked immediately. Instead of trying to imprint his own style and vision onto Lorde, Little recognised her songwriting ability \u2014 she\u2019d been writing lyrics consistently since she was 13, after all.<\/p>\n
One of the first songs they created together was \u201cRoyals\u201d, which took its name from a photo Lorde seen of George Brett signing baseballs in the \u201970s.\u00a0\u201cHe was a baseball player, and his shirt said \u2018Royals.\u2019\u2026 It was just that word. It\u2019s really cool,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoyals\u201d isn\u2019t about baseball or Brett, of course. The song offers a critique of materialistic lifestyles, Lorde musing on the dangers of conspicuous consumption. She ridicules the luxury items beloved by pop and hip-hop stars of the day: \u201cBut everybody\u2019s like \/ Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece \/ Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash,\u201d she sings. An admonishment follows. \u201cWe don\u2019t care \/ We aren\u2019t caught up in your love affair.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
How minimal the sound is, instantly standing out in an era of bombastic production and sonic excess. Lorde and Little pare everything back, relying on simple synth stabs and timid drum beats, leaving plentiful empty space for finger snaps and the former\u2019s breathy vocals. Even when Lorde\u2019s voice rises in volume in the chorus, the instrumentation barely rises with it; when it comes to pop music, the pair realised, less truly could be more.<\/p>\n
As a result of this minimalism, \u201cRoyals\u201d doesn\u2019t transfix a listener upon first listen. Its full effects are felt afterwards, on the second or third or even fourth listen, its pointed lyrics and unprecedented production lingering in the mind.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to remember Lorde\u2019s age when listening to \u201cRoyals\u201d. The song\u2019s observations are earnest and messy, a little pointed without being all that pointed. They are diaristic thoughts from an evolving young mind, waking up to the world around them. If Lorde sounds in danger of romanticising the very things she purports to be against, that\u2019s because she\u2019s a girl in her mid-teens; it comes with the territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoyals\u201d obviously topped the charts in New Zealand, but it spent an impressive nine weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100. \u00a0The song won big at the 2024 Grammy Awards, winning Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance; the Silver Scroll Award win in her home country was an inevitability; it also won Single of the Year at the 2013 New Zealand Music Awards. Most publications, including Rolling Stone, featured the song high up on their year-end lists in 2013, while it also made it to No. 2 on triple j\u2019s Hottest 100 of 2012, only edged out by Vance Joy\u2019s ubiquitous \u201cRiptide\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoyals\u201d catapulted this Auckland teenager to stardom, and she\u2019s spent the past decade-and-a-bit attempting to deal with her growing fame. She\u2019s always been the most reluctant of pop stars, evading the public spotlight when she can. One wonders what she thinks of her own debut song now \u2014 how prescient her own words must sound to her.<\/p>\n
Lorde fans can debate her best song long into the night \u2014 one could make a strong pitch for \u201cRibs\u201d or \u201cGreen Light\u201d, which feature further back in our list, to take out the top spot \u2014 but \u201cRoyals\u201d, for its unexpectedness and subsequent influence, is the only one that deserves the number one position. No other song can claim to have changed the landscape of pop music. \u2014Conor Lochrie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A zeitgeist-grabbing, history-making song from a new pop superstar. It\u2019s still astounding that \u201cRoyals\u201d was Lorde\u2019s debut single,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-340045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}