Her dog Pearl died of cardiac arrest in 2019 and it put a halt to her productivity.
I think this next one will probably be born around the piano in my house, me and my friends, keeping it simple.” “I’ve been teaching myself to play piano, and here and there little bits come out. In 2018 she revealed the album, which she had just begun, would be less complicated than its predecessors. So why has this album taken so long? It’s difficult to know with the elusive Kiwi. There was definitely an element of popping down the hall and Lena being, like, ‘what are you working on today?’ I felt like their child.” I’d go there every day, root around in the fridge. “I love that family,” Lorde later recalled. Antonoff was the album’s co-writer and Grammy-winning producer (he is also behind the console on the forthcoming album), while writer Dunham played her own part. “The good parts and the bad parts,” she explained.Īnother influence was the fact that, when she was making it, she was living on and off with Jack Antonoff and his then girlfriend Lena Dunham at their Brooklyn apartment. She said it was an album about being alone. The album was also influenced emotionally by her break-up with long-time boyfriend, photographer James Lowe. Photo: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo However, Melodrama, released in 2017, seemed less a homage to Bowie than to the sound of Gracelands -era Paul Simon and other 1980s voices such as Don Henley and Phil Collins.īowie was a big influence. Parts of her next album Melodrama were recorded in 2016 in New York’s Electric Lady studios, where Bowie wrote ‘Fame’ and recorded his last On January 10, 2016, her hero Bowie died of liver cancer at his home in New York.Īt the following month’s Brit Awards in London, Lorde gave a performance of ‘Life on Mars’ (backed by Bowie’s touring band) that was a fitting tribute to the late star man. Later that year she curated the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, getting Kanye West, Grace Jones and the Chemical Brothers on board. In April 2014 she sat in for Kurt Cobain with the surviving members of Nirvana to sing ‘All Apologies’ at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. After her performance she was introduced to David Bowie, who told her: “Your music is like listening to tomorrow.” In November 2013 she performed at a show for actress Tilda Swinton’s 53rd birthday at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Taylor Swift became a fan (and a friend), as did Kanye West and Lily Allen – she sang on ‘Sheezus’: “Lorde smells blood, yeah, she’s about to slay you/Kid ain’t one to f**k with when she’s only on her debut.” Pure Heroine sold five million copies and got her the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. “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,” she sang on ‘Ribs’. The most important part of all this was that she was a 17-year-old singing about growing old. In search of the real Phil Lynott – the rock star’s friends share their memories.Gilbert O’Sullivan opens up on his career, crippling shyness, meeting Van Morrison and avoiding Paul McCartney.That kid released her magnificently angsty electropop debut album Pure Heroine in 2013. “As a young teen I went to a lot of David Lynch films, I read a lot of strange books, I loved to go to the museum all day. It would go on to win Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards and Time magazine put her on the list of the world’s most influential teenagers. The following year, her breakthrough single ‘Royals’ went to the top of the charts across the world. In 2012, she released her debut EP ‘The Love Club’ as Lorde (pronounced “lord”).
She was signed by Universal Records on a development deal. For this reason her songs evolve like paintings.Ī music exec saw a video of the pop prodigy singing at a talent show at her school, Belmont Intermediate, when she was 13.
When she hears sounds, she sees them in her mind’s eye as colours. She has a rare neurological condition called chromesthesia, a form of synesthesia. When she was 12 she started writing and performing her own music.
Of Croatian and Irish ancestry, she was born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor in Auckland, New Zealand, the daughter of award-winning poet Sonja Yelich. ‘Solar Power’ should excite her millions of fans – as it perhaps will Primal Scream’s lawyers. As a taster of her imminent, and as-yet-untitled, new album, Lorde is like a prettier Brian Wilson singing a Kate Bush song. “Come one, come all, I’ll tell you my secrets/I’m kind of like a prettier Jesus.” “Lead the boys and girls on to the beaches,” she sings. It veers from George Michael’s ‘Freedom! ‘90’ to Primal Scream’s ‘Movin’ on Up’. ‘I don’t think about staying in my genre lane,” 24-year-old singer-songwriter Lorde once said, and her new single ‘Solar Power’ has caused a major pile-up on the sonic highway.