by Marc Shapiro
At an age when most young pop singers thrust into the limelight would say yes to everything and be literal puppets on the string of calculating management, she has reportedly been quick to say no to anything that rubs her the wrong way. She acknowledged in Magazine Sunday that she was using famed Beat renegade writer William Burroughs as her guide to licensing, echoing his statement, ‘Build a good name for yourself because eventually that will become your currency.’ A pop icon who quotes William Burroughs? I know, it boggles the mind.
A recent article in Rolling Stone was full of such forceful ‘no’s’ in which she explained why she refused to do a blatantly commercial video for her single ‘Royals’, and insisted on a leisurely development process that avoided the almost expected quick pop strike in favour of fully developing her creative and performing style. On the wings of her earliest success, she has reportedly turned down massive amounts of money to do things that she felt would present her in conflict with her own personal beliefs and attitudes.
SHE OFFERED HER MANIFESTO IN A
CONVERSATION WITH POP CRUSH .
‘I’ve turned down easily millions of dollars doing what I do and saying no to things I think are corny. I’m trying to make something people my age will care about. I’m trying to keep my peers feeling like I’m doing something for them and representing them in some way.’
Likewise, Metro portrayed Lorde as somebody wise beyond her years, smart in the ways of the pop music machine, dealing with people twice her age in an intelligent, logical and direct manner on all elements of her career. Unlike her pop peers, she keeps long hours and gets up early, 7.00 a.m. New Zealand time when there’s an interview to do or some merchandising questions to consider. ‘I’m pretty good at telling people I have to keep normal hours,’ she explained to The Observer. ‘You can work hard and still make it manageable.’
Her Irish/Serbian lineage most likely had something to do with those oh-so-grown-up and, yes, contrary personality traits. It’s a mixture known for independent thought and driving ambition. And it is a safe bet that it was those forces that drove her to being something different than your average pop diva.
And make no bones about it, Lorde is definitely a by-product of the pop music world. Her songs are current with the requirements; a little bit of electro pop, a dollop of teen angst and just the kind of haunting Goth beats and orchestration that make her music fodder for the pop market. Since she proudly proclaims that she does not play an instrument, the emphasis is totally on her vocals and she has done a bang-up job with those; waxing disembodied, often hypnotically matter-of-fact and darkly contemplative on a plate of lyrics that defy expectations with taut emotions, smart narrative asides and stories that fit quite well in the more safe confines of pop music. But what ultimately differentiates her from the herd is one important thing.
INTELLECT.
There’s a deep, driving, alone-in-her-room confessional quality to what Lorde does. Her much-ballyhooed feminist take is legitimate but ultimately it is less rigid and more even-handed than the feminists of a previous generation. Make no mistake, Lorde’s songs are legitimate and, yes, timely. Just look at the young today. Clichéd sentiments and vapid, by-the-numbers lyrical outs are not part of her creative palette. Her songs are not without men, love and other coming of age emotions that are universal. Quite simply, she has taken a measured, straight ahead look at the consequences of having them in her life.
With ‘Royals’ being the prime mover in her creative life, much space and explanation has been devoted to dissecting what it and the rest of her songs are ultimately all about. Lorde has given numerous and detailed explanations of her diatribe against those who have and those who have not. But in a recent conversation with The Sydney Morning Herald, she ultimately cut to the chase.
‘When I wrote ‘Royals’, I was telling my friends that I had written songs about our lives. I think a lot of adults thought I was saying something quite profound. But my friends were like “Yeah we know. What’s new?”’
Lorde draws from some widely divergent influences, including authors such as Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff and Sylvia Plath. Her more recognisable musical influences are Prince and Kanye West, and they are balanced out by the ‘out there’ influences of Grimes, Sleigh Bells, Burial and The Weekend. All these influences drive her toward creating daring music in an often not so daring pop universe.
‘I think we’re past the whole pop girl thing,’ she declared to New Zealand Listener. ‘Everything doesn’t have to be about the boy. Every song doesn’t have to be “I’m absolutely lost without you”. That whole thing is just tired.’
However Lorde is not a one note defiant cry in the wilderness. With the tour of North America only weeks away, Lorde is a constant presence in the nuts and bolts touring meetings. With only a handful of live performances under her belt, she is constantly tweaking and fine-tuning the concert that will showcase her talents to many for the first time.
A bit of a fashion plate, she is diligent in picking just the right clothing to take her act to the stage. She is curious and excited at the idea that merchandise bearing her name and image will soon be available around the world. And, of course, ever vigilant at the prospect of an inferior product going out under her name.
Even with a tour on the horizon and a boatload of music already lighting up the charts, Lorde never seems far from the next thought, the next line scrawled on a scrap of paper, the next impromptu take that sends her voice and her ideas into uncharted territories.
Because unlike many of her peers, Lorde sees herself as an artist with ideas that have so far touched millions. She is a purist, plying her trade in a very commercial universe, with her artistic sensibilities above reproach and not for sale.
This in a nutshell is Lorde. But it is a nutshell that has proven to be as elusive as mercury.
There is the eccentric, the unpredictable, the seventeen-year-old who can occasionally come out to play. After long stints in the studio, she has been known to suddenly just lie down on the floor and be completely uncommunicative. She has also been reported, on several occasions, to suddenly disappear. There’s a quietly nervous energy about her . . .
One eye on the quick rocket to the top that has brought her to this point. And one eye on a future that is just around the corner.
JUST A STONE’S THROW
FROM DOWNTOWN AUCKLAND,
DEVONPORT IS A SEASIDE
SUBURB ON AUCKLAND’S
FAMED NORTH SHORE.
It is known for being the hub of New Zealand’s military might as the home of the Devonport Naval Base, as well as for its low key, tourist-oriented main drag that consists of antique shops, bookstores and restaurants.
Lorde looked back on Devonport, or as it was affectionately known, ‘The Bubble’, in a conversation with The Guardian. ‘It’s so insular and closed off from everything,’ she offered. ‘It’s the kind of suburb that people make movies about.’
Lorde has said that growing up in Devonport was an important influence in her songwriting. Lorde addressed the teen angst attached to the suburb and how it influenced her approach to life. She often recalled that Devonport was a kind of a barren life for teens who, typically, had no money, no car and were at an age where boredom and the inability to test the bounds of adulthood put herself and her contemporaries in an emotional shell.
As she grew older, Lorde would often revisit that time when teen angst and the proverbial ‘right of passage’ usually hinged on not having much to do in Devonport.
‘We’d all kick around and everyone would ride bikes everywhere because no one can drive,’ she told Spotify. ‘There’s lots of finding underpasses and tennis courts and places that we would make our own.’
She would also make the point on the Swedish television show Skavlan that while they grew up comfortable, she and her peers never seemed to have any money, as most teens didn’t. ‘If we wanted to go someplace that was too far to go by bike, we would usually have to take the bus. And then
it was, like, “Okay, we have a dollar but we need another 24 cents, and so then we would be standing around counting out change and hoping we had enough.”’
But the popular notion that Lorde grew up in poverty wearing rags and struggling to find scraps of food is laughable according to the singer. ‘I’m not poor,’ she told New Zealand Listener. ‘I was extremely lucky. I haven’t had times in my life where I’ve been hungry or anything like that.’
But she also admits that as she has got out in the world, there has been a growing sense of nostalgia for a life that she has only recently left behind. In a brief but moving video made available through Vevo Lift and devoted to grainy black and white scenes from Devonport, Lorde walks through the town, exploring its sights and extolling the simple pleasures of being from there. ‘I’m happy I grew up there,’ she intones over the images. ‘Friday nights. The parties. The beaches. Jumping off the roof of the ferry building. The swimming and the skateboarding. I’m all right here which is nice.’
A big reason for her hometown being her comfort zone has always been a sense of forthrightness and honesty that permeated the town and the people. She has often stated that she learned early in Devonport to take people at their word and to be a quick study when it came to bullshit artists. ‘I’m glad I grew up there,’ she said in a Grammy.com interview. ‘I learned how not to be jaded and being from there gave me a chance to figure out who I was.’
But the singer, in later years, would readily acknowledge that Devonport and Auckland in particular would always be in her head and would go hand in hand with the normal teenage desire to be somewhere else.
‘When I was a teenager I ached to get out,’ she reflected in Vogue. ‘But after I got out and travelled and saw the cities and came back, I was not sure. I had questions. Did I want to grow up? Did I want to leave the suburbs? Where I live is a beautiful place.’
Not a lot of people live in Devonport (less than ten thousand at the last census), but those who do have become notorious for being part of a tight-knit community. The local paper, The Devonport Flagstaff, was regularly full of stories of the community banding together quite vocally to fight the good fight if something in their community was considered not right.
Devonport is a hardworking middle-class suburb, full of blue- and white-collar workers of the nine-to-five variety. It is also a welcoming place, which has worn its racial diversity and tolerance as a badge of honour and has had its share of local celebrities. Among those who made headlines over the years are singers Debbie Harwood and Rikki Morris, and Olympic gold medal-winner in boardsailing Tom Ashley.
It is in the suburb of Devonport that Lorde’s parents, Victor O’Connor and Sonja Yelich, laid down roots. Theirs was a loving and traditional courtship born of equally traditional values and upbringings as well as some liberal leanings that lay just below the surface.
They came into their relationship full of hopes and dreams but with some harsh memories. Both had grown up in strident, closed-in emotional times. It had been that way for their parents and their parents before them. Consequently, Victor and Sonja had very little choice in the matter.
Victor, the youngest of eight children born and raised in Central North Ireland, was the by-product of a very strict Catholic upbringing. He was raised in a household of no-nonsense values and ethics and not a whole lot of warmth. However, he learned much from the former notions and, in years to come, would use them to rise through university, the engineering ranks and finally to become a major player in one of New Zealand’s top consulting firms.
Sonja had things equally challenging. Her father, a first generation Serbian immigrant, was a hard worker who never took a day off. Sadly her mother suffered the pains of isolation and was plagued with emotional and mental issues throughout her life. To a large extent, Sonja was left on her own a lot growing up.
She recalled in an extensive article in Faster/Louder that, ‘As a kid, I would often let myself out at night and just walk the streets. I loved the world at night.’
That distinct lack of warmth and family softness would follow them into adulthood and, by the time Sonja was pregnant with their first child, a daughter named Jerry, they had promised themselves that any children they had would not suffer the same consequences.
Victor and Sonja had always had designs on a big family and, so, within two years after the birth of their first child (all of their children would be born at home), Sonja was once again pregnant. The months passed quickly as Victor and Sonja, already happily adjusted to the idea of a toddler underfoot, were preparing for their latest addition.
They were not concerned about whether their second was a boy or a girl. Healthy would suffice.
Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor was born on November 7, 1996 . . .
INTO A WORLD THAT
WAS EVERYTHING THAT HER
PARENTS’ HAD NOT BEEN.
AND TRUE TO THEIR WORD,
FROM THE MOMENT ELLA
OPENED HER EYES ON THE
WORLD, SHE FOUND A FAMILY
THAT WAS WARM, WELCOMING
AND GIVING.
Absent from the family atmosphere was the rigidness that had clouded her parents’ respective childhoods. Children were not only allowed to be seen and heard in the O’Connor household, but they were readily entitled to an opinion and allowed to experience life on a totally free plane. It would be a child-rearing template that would continue in later years with the birth of Ella’s younger sister, India, and younger brother, Angelo.
Ella’s earliest memories were of a house filled to overflowing with books and music. It was the rare moment that music was not wafting through the O’Connor household. And as befitting a couple who had grown up in the sixties, the music that was regularly heard was classic.
‘My dad’s always listened to Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac and lots of soul music like Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald,’ she recalled to Spotify. ‘As a young kid, I remembered that my parents seemed to have eight to ten albums in constant rotation.’
Being the second of what would ultimately be four children was the classic exercise for getting along. Her older sister and she would have the expected spats and arguments over toys and clothes. But there was a more cerebral rather than contentious vibe to their interactions. Problems were usually solved by talking them out.
Bedtime was a special time for the young children. Victor would sing to his youngsters in soft, soothing tones while Sonja, who was slowly coming into her own as a poet of some passion, would read as her daughters sat transfixed.
It was in those earliest years that Lorde, in an NPR interview, would recall how her mother would instil the importance of books in her life. ‘I think the way that my mum indirectly influenced me is that she always made sure that we were reading in the house and that there were always books around. And we would discuss whatever it was that I was reading.’
As she grew older, Ella would recall in Faster/Louder that the dinner table would regularly be the centre of passionate conversation and family debate on just about any subject. It was during such sit downs that Ella had her first brush with interaction with adults. She instinctively knew when she had something of substance to contribute and those around her would often acknowledge that even as a very young child, she had a knack of taking over a conversation in a mature, for her age, fashion.
‘We were super loud and aggressive,’ she laughingly told an interviewer in a piece for Faster/Louder.
However, allowing for the expected childhood acting out, Victor and Sonja’s blueprint for child rearing seemed to be working. Even as a newborn and a toddler Ella and her older sister, and the two additional siblings to come, were conspicuous by their ease and comfort in this free-flowing family situation that allowed each member, no matter their age, to thrive.
‘I come from a big, loud family. My family keeps me grounded. If I don’t do something my dad asks, he’s like, ‘You’re not going out tonight.’ It’s easy to forget that you’re not a big deal to anyone
you know.’
In particular Ella seemed entranced by her mother’s reading sessions. How taken she was with the written word would become evident in 1998. In the middle of the night, Sonja was awakened from a sound sleep by a light going on in Ella’s room. Sonja shook Victor awake with the fear that somebody had just gone into Ella’s room. Victor got up, made his way to Ella’s room and opened the door . . .
. . . TO FIND HIS THEN
EIGHTEEN - MONTH - OLD
DAUGHTER SITTING AMID
A PILE OF BOOKS AT THREE
IN THE MORNING,
STUDIOUSLY READING.
Victor and Sonja were amazed that a child so young could actually be reading. And although they had always been adverse to any child being tagged with the ‘gifted’ label, they had to admit that there was something quite different and, perhaps, special about their daughter.
And, as they would soon discover, Ella could be quite headstrong as well.
It was not long after the book-reading incident that Ella was dropped off at a mall day care centre while her mother did some last-minute Christmas shopping. To occupy the time, the day care supervisors had the children doing a very simple art project. But while the rest of the group followed instructions, the then two-year-old Ella went her own way, dabbing paint on a bit of newspaper. This diversion from the program caught the attention of one of the supervisors who went over to Ella and told her she was doing it wrong.