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Advertisement - Continue Reading BelowLorde's current number one status on iTunes may have earned the 16-year-old New Zealander the ire of Miley Cyrus fans the world over (She bumped the pop star's "Wrecking Ball" out of the top spot). But the Kiwi phenom tells us she's still a typical teen who sings in show choir, just discovered The Replacements and is "catching up" on Britney's career.
We know you're very interested in royals and you follow aristocratic family trees. Is that where the name Lorde came from?I was just looking for a name that felt compelling and was going through different titles for aristocrats. I stumbled on Lord but it was really masculine so I just put an "e" on the. I'm kind of a word fidgeter. I was like, "Okay, this is good."You're particularly adroit in writing about teenage life, especially the boredom with the typical experiences that can come with growing up in a small town.I'm probably best at writing that stuff because it's my life. I read this thing that Patti Smith did and she was like, 'It's, a writer's curse, even if you're having fun, you're partying, you're dancing, you're thinking, 'I'm at this party, I'm dancing, what does this mean? How can I break this down? How can I turn it into something of creative use to me?' I'll be at a party and be experiencing it but still trying to process it and think about how I can use it as material.Do you feel like you need to write for a certain audience, or do you just write about what you want to write about?I honestly don't think about anyone else listening to my music at all. And I don't think that's a very healthy thing to do, maybe. It's best to just write exactly what you want to hear, and if people like it, then that's cool. I've never thought about writing up or writing down. I'm just writing at eye level with other people.You cover The Replacements' "Swingin' Party" on the B-side of "Tennis Court." How did you get into them?My producer just played me some stuff. As soon as I heard that song I was like, "F*ck, this is so, so good lyrically." You know it's so perfectly sad but a little bit wry and a little bit funny.We also noticed you have a lot of choral effects in your singing. Have you ever been in a chorus?Up until this year, I've been in a barbershop chorus.Like a barbershop quartet?It was, like, a quartet but there were 30 people in it. I've always just been really drawn to that sort of singing. I find it like pretty haunting.Do you come up with all the concepts for your videos—staging, clothing, etc.?Everything I wear, every photo of me that goes out, every video I'm in, has been controlled by me. I'm probably such a nightmare to work with just because, you know, I have a very clear idea of what I want. If you let a bunch of people who have been in the music industry for 20 years do it then you're probably not going to end up with anything cool. As much as those people know, maybe they don't know so much about being 16.For a while you didn't even have a promo photo, right? Why did you make that decision?So much in pop has to do with appearance, and as soon as someone makes music, we want to know what they look like and what their body is like and, you know, what their skin is like! I feel like that crazy culture around celebrities is just mental. I didn't want that to be a factor when people were into my music.On this new album, you've indicated that the songs are going to be more intimate and focused on relationships with people.Well, I was 15 when I wrote everything from the first EP from a much broader outlook. I was also figuring out my sound and who I was as an artist. That's definitely strengthened. On the album, I have moments that are more intimate, and a lot of weird self-analysis: "You like hotels now but when's that gonna change?" Just because my life has become so mental in the last like six months, you know, I couldn't not write about it.So you write about feeling weird about your changing lifestyle?Yeah. I've always been brutally honest with my writing, even if it makes me look dumb or one of my friends gets annoyed at me because I wrote something that happened to us. I think that's a good way to be. As soon as you [stop] being as truthful in songs, you stop relating to people.