52 Facts About Lorde

Lorde is known for her unconventional style of pop music and introspective songwriting.

Lorde first gained recognition as a teenager during a talent show performance.

Lorde signed with Universal Music Group in 2009 and began collaborating with producer Joel Little in 2011.

Lorde collaborated with producer Jack Antonoff for her second studio album Melodrama, which received widespread critical acclaim and debuted atop the US Billboard 200.

Lorde ventured into indie folk and psychedelic styles for her third studio album, Solar Power.

Lorde's accolades include two Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award.

Lorde appeared in Times list of the most influential teenagers in 2013 and 2014, and the 2014 edition of Forbes 30 Under 30.

Lorde's mother was born to Croatian immigrants from the region of Dalmatia, while her father is of Irish descent.

Lorde is the second of four children: she has an elder sister Jerry, a younger sister India, and a younger brother Angelo.

Lorde's mother encouraged her to read a range of genres, which Lorde cited as a lyrical influence.

The results concluded that Lorde, age six, was a gifted child.

Lorde was briefly enrolled at George Parkyn Centre, a gifted education organisation.

Lorde was part of the Belmont Intermediate School band Extreme; the band placed third in the North Shore Battle of the Bands finals at the Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna, Auckland on 18 November 2009.

Lorde performed her original songs for the first time at the Victoria Theatre in November 2011.

Lorde later chose not to return in 2014 to attend Year 13.

UMG commercially released The Love Club in March 2013 after it had been downloaded 60,000 times, which signalled that Lorde had attracted a range of audiences.

From late 2013 to early 2016, Lorde was in a relationship with New Zealand photographer James Lowe.

Later that month, Lorde was featured on the soundtrack for the 2013 film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, performing a cover of Tears for Fears' 1985 song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World".

Lorde subsequently embarked on an international concert tour, commencing in North America in early 2014.

Amidst her solo activities, Lorde joined the surviving members of Nirvana to perform "All Apologies" during the band's induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2014.

In January 2016, Lorde relocated to Ponsonby, an inner-city suburb of Auckland.

Lorde's cover was widely acknowledged as one of the finest performances in tribute to Bowie.

Later that year, Lorde co-wrote "Heartlines", a song by New Zealand music duo Broods from their 2016 album Conscious.

On Melodrama, Lorde's songwriting showed signs of maturity with introspective, post-breakup lyrics.

Lorde later announced the North American leg, held in March 2018, with Run the Jewels, Mitski and Tove Styrke as opening acts.

Lorde revealed on 20 May 2020 that she started working on her third studio album with Jack Antonoff following the death of her dog Pearl.

On 25 May 2021, Lorde was announced as a headlining act for Primavera Sound's June 2022 festival, her first live show performance in over two years.

Lorde later described the response to the record as "really confounding," and "painful".

In early 2024, Lorde began teasing her upcoming fourth studio album in a series of cryptic Instagram posts.

In March 2024, Lorde covered Al Green's "Take Me to the River" as the third single from A24 Music's Everyone's Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense.

In June 2024, Lorde collaborated with Charli XCX on a remix version of the song "Girl, So Confusing".

Lorde grew up listening to American jazz and soul musicians Billie Holiday, Sam Cooke, Etta James, and Otis Redding, whose music she admires for "harvesting their suffering".

Lorde listened to her parents' favourite records by musicians including Cat Stevens, Neil Young, and Fleetwood Mac in her early years.

Lyrically, Lorde cited her mother, a poet, as the primary influence for her songwriting.

Lorde named several authors, including Kurt Vonnegut, Raymond Carver, Wells Tower, Tobias Wolff, Claire Vaye Watkins, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, and T S Eliot as lyrical inspirations, particularly noting their sentence structures.

Lorde cited the 1950 science fiction short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury as inspiration for much of Melodramas story, relating it to her own realities she faced.

Lorde is noted for her unconventional pop sound and introspective songwriting.

Shortly after finishing her tour, Lorde said she had started learning to play the piano.

Lorde stated that the songwriting on Pure Heroine developed from the perspective of an observer.

Similarly, in an interview with NME, Lorde acknowledged that she used words of inclusion throughout her debut album, while her follow-up Melodrama presented a shift to first-person narrative, employing more introspective lyrics inspired by Lorde's personal struggles post-breakup and viewpoints on post-teenage maturity.

Lorde described her public image as something that "naturally" came to her and was identical to her real-life personality.

Critical reception of Lorde is generally positive, with praise concentrated on her maturity both musically and lyrically.

Journalist Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic towards Lorde's styles, labelling the singer as "a pop property" that was indistinguishable from other mainstream artists.

Jon Caramanica, writing for The New York Times, credited Lorde for bringing forth a "wave of female rebellion" to mainstream audiences that embraced an "anti-pop" sentiment.

Lorde placed at number 12 on NPR's 2018 readers poll of the most influential female musicians of the 21st century.

Lorde's work has influenced various artists, including Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Conan Gray, and Troye Sivan.

Lorde's detractors have described her dance moves as "awkward" in comparison to other stage performers.

Lorde was parodied in the South Park episodes "The Cissy" and "Rehash", broadcast in October and December 2014, respectively.

In 2015, Lorde recorded "Team Ball Player Thing", a charity single, as part of the supergroup Kiwis Cure Batten.

Lorde became a patron of MusicHelps, formerly the New Zealand Music Foundation, a musical charity helping New Zealanders who are vulnerable to or experiencing serious health issues, in November 2018.

Lorde has received two Brit Awards for International Female Solo Artist.

Lorde had sold over five million albums worldwide as of June 2017 and 15 million certified single units in the United States.