by Marc Shapiro
The word along the music industry grapevine at this point was that Ella was only one hit single away from being a superstar. Consequently Maclachlan was constantly being bombarded by agents and managers looking for a chance to get one of their songwriting clients in the door. One of the more persistent had been Ashley Page.
Page had heard Ella sing and so felt she had the ideal person to collaborate with. It had been a soft sell that had been off and on for two years. Finally, with seemingly no other songwriter on the horizon, Maclachlan agreed . . .
TO MEET JOEL LITTLE.
EVEN BEFORE
SHE MET JOEL FOR THE
FIRST TIME, ELLA KNEW
ALL ABOUT HIM.
Joel was a member of the New Zealand–based pop punk band Goodnight Nurse that had spent years on the high school and local club and concert circuit throughout New Zealand. Goodnight Nurse sold some albums, had a couple of minor hits but were one of those bands that, after nearly a decade, could not break out of New Zealand and disbanded.
Ella was less aware of his musical change of life. What she discovered was that Joel had gone through a very real midlife crisis of sorts. He had given up the endless road to seemingly nowhere and sporadic but ultimately unfulfilling success to learn about the production side of music and more modern sounds. Through hard work he had risen to some semblance of notoriety in the industry as the guiding light to such notable performers as Dane Rumble and The Peasants.
Maclachlan met with Joel and came away quite impressed as he explained in HitQuarters. ‘He’s a very laidback and generous producer. He doesn’t have a big ego and he did not come across as someone who would patronise Ella.’
Ella and Joel met for the first time in December 2011. That he had never heard her sing only added to the awkwardness of that first meeting as he recalled in an interview with The New Zealand Herald.
‘I just remember her coming in [to the studio] and us both probably feeling a bit odd,’ he said. ‘It’s quite a weird situation when you sit down with someone you’ve never met before and try to write a song.’
But he recalled in a 3rd Degree conversation that any doubts he had were erased the first time he heard the young girl sing. It immediately became clear to Joel that she was a natural and that it was meant to be. ‘I heard her voice and I was like “This is a ridiculously good voice.”’
The first few times they met it was a feeling-out process, discussing at length the type of music they liked, what kind of sound she liked as well as things that had nothing to do with music. And what they discovered was that their musical tastes, as it pertained to the edgier forms of pop, were similar and, perhaps most importantly, that there was an instant connection in terms of personality.
Joel was quickly made aware of the baggage that Ella had brought to the table. Her two years of attempting to write with other songwriters had not been pleasant and had, potentially, made dealing with Joel an even bigger challenge. But what he soon found out was that her previous experience had some positive points. ‘I remember early on she was like “I just want to write with people to figure out if I even want to do music”,’ reported NZ Musician.
Ella sensed that Joel was going to be a good match. ‘Joel is a lovely person,’ she would recall in conversation with 3rd Degree. ‘He was the type of person who could take what was already there and make it better.’
‘We started working on trying to figure out what she wanted to do, just playing with different sounds and different styles,’ Joel told The New Zealand Herald. ‘There was never any pressure to be anything in particular. It was just write some songs and see what happens.’
WHAT HAPPENED, INITIALLY,
WAS NOT MUCH.
Into 2012 and in the early stages of their collaboration, both were still attempting to feel each other out creatively. Joel admitted that when Ella brought in her lyrics, he had a hard time getting over his feeling that they might not work within the context of a song. He would change his mind when he heard the young girl sing them. Their first series of sessions would end in February when, true to her word, Ella had to put aside music and return to school. And, according to Joel, it did not end too well.
‘Our first few songs together were so shit,’ he told Louder/Faster.
It was not the most encouraging way to end their first round of work as Ella returned to school. Now in high school and temporarily removed from the pressures of a career that was seemingly going nowhere, the pressure was off to a degree. Ella was around old friends where she basked in the glow of being a bit of a schoolyard celebrity. She would often state that her friends at that point were ‘chill’ when it came to her growing celebrity and would only occasionally jokingly snap pictures of her with their cell phones.
For her part, Ella was more than willing to play at being the local celebrity by putting on occasional impromptu concerts for her classmates. Principal Simon Lamb recalled those moments when he told The New Zealand Herald, ‘She has an amazing voice, a lovely voice.’
On most nights she would be at home, doing the dishes and other odd chores. The prospect of stardom had not affected her. She was happy to be the normal kid at home, content and comfortable around her family. Ella also continued to excel academically and was being actively considered for the advanced International Baccalaureate Program, a sure step to any university of her choosing if she saw higher education in her future.
However, she was not neglecting her musical pursuits. She was constantly at work on songs and, to her own way of thinking, found that she was getting better at it. She could not wait until the April school holidays when she and Joel could meet up again.
Since they began working together, Joel and Lorde were never seemingly too far from the gentle hovering of her parents. Calls from home were sporadic, the simple parental concerns of how it was going and had she eaten. Sometimes Lorde would head those calls off at the pass by texting or calling on her own to make sure her parents knew what was going on and how the sessions were going.
But occasionally the pair would get so caught up in making music that they quite literally lost all track of time. And, as Joel related in 3rd Degree, he would occasionally have to deal with the wrath of Sonja. ‘We’ve had times when it’s been midnight and I’ve just really forgotten to say “Do you need to call your parents or anything like that?” Then I’ll get a text from her mum, saying “Where the hell is my daughter?” And I’m like “Oh shit, that’s right.”’
Sure enough, Joel noticed an immediate maturity and catchiness in Ella’s songs, the best of the bunch being ‘Million Dollar Bills’, a musical moveable feast chronicling the age old battle of emotion, independence and what would be Ella’s favourite targets, conspicuous consumption. And like all of her songs, the lyrics reflected her reality.
‘I’m not thinking when I’m writing,’ she explained to New Zealand Listener. ‘But with my lyrics, everything is personal. Everything has happened to me and all the things tend to build up this kind of fabric that people can, hopefully, relate to.’
Joel immediately set to creating the musical backbone for ‘Million Dollar Bills’, adding just the right amount of fringe elements to the pop gloss and making the centrepiece a clever technology-driven sampling of Ella’s voice. For Joel, working with Ella became a crash course in doing things differently.
‘I basically had to re-adjust my approach to make the music suit what she was saying, to capture, through the music and the melody, the essence of what the lyric was,’ he explained to NZ Musician.
Ella spent the next few months in school but found herself easily distracted by the progress that was being made with Joel. It seemed that every waking moment was spent at her laptop, writing and refining lyrics and song structure. Joel had already blocked out four days of studio time in July to work with Ella who was sensing a turning point in the odyssey to getting her songs out into the world. And so she wanted to provide him with the best she could create.
Two songs, ‘Bravado’ and ‘Biting
Down’, turned out to be very emotional creations. Lyrically they were spot on, the imagery was ripe with observational and confessional opportunities. And Ella was rounding into shape in terms of thinking with both her already potent voice as well as the musical backbone that Joel would most certainly contribute.
Finally there was a song that Ella was feeling emotionally attached to on a number of levels.
. . . ‘ROYALS’ . . .
Originally the idea of ‘Royals’ had been as more of a minor song, a semi-mocking look at the modern aristocracy and their conspicuous wealth. A few preliminary lines had seemed promising but what finally kicked the notion of ‘Royals’ was a chance look through an issue of National Geographic.
‘I had this image from National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs,’ (actually a member of the Kansas City Royals major league baseball team), she recalled in an interview with VH-1. ‘He was a baseball player and his shirt said ‘Royals’. I was taken by the image and that word. It was all just really cool.’
That the lyrics to ‘Royals’ also take dead aim at the modern aristocracy of celebrity and pop culture figures also figured into Ella’s influence for the song and was part and parcel of her long held interest in history and historical figures. ‘Obviously I’ve had a fascination with aristocracy my whole life,’ she added in her VH-1 conversation. ‘Like the kings and queens of 500 years ago, they were like the rock stars of today.’
Ella’s infatuation with hip-hop and rap music was also playing a part in the way she wrote the lyrics. What had been an afterthought was now evolving into a major songwriting effort with far-reaching potential.
When Ella and Joel got together again in July, her collaborator was happily amazed at the songs Ella had brought in. They immediately set to work creating melodies and beats to fill out the songs. It was a magical, mystical week for the pair. Quick trips to a nearby restaurant were only out of necessity, after which they would literally race back to the studio. By the end of the week ‘Royals’, ‘Biting Down’ and ‘Bravado’ were, for all intents and purposes, in their completed form.
And while experience had taught him to be cautious, Joel acknowledged to 3rd Degree that he got a good buzz off ‘Royals’. ‘When we finished up and I listened back for the first time, I sensed there was something about this song. I wasn’t thinking that it would go as crazy as it did but I knew that there was something magical about this track.’
But ultimately it would be Maclachlan whose opinion would matter the most. He came in at the end of the week and, after some small talk, sat silently as Ella and Joel played him ‘Bravado’ and ‘Royals’. Ella recalled to Faster/Louder what happened next.
‘Scott came in and listened. I remember him swearing a lot. He was pretty happy.’
The consensus was that they had done good work. With Ella’s haunting vocals and different take on the pop music landscape and Joel’s pristine, often haunting and ultramodern production, there was a definite ‘cool’ factor in what they had created. But nobody saw a worldwide hit in those early songs.
The reason being that while they were, as songs, outstanding, Maclachlan sensed that they were just too different to conform to what the music business considered hit worthy. Of course, this was something he kept to himself.
It was in this moment of total euphoria that it was determined that while Ella was nice, she would need a dynamic stage name to put her musical persona over the top. Ella had not been real keen on the idea of branding and a lot of the ins and outs of the pop music business. But she had readily agreed to the stage name idea, looking to her literary and historical interests for inspiration and eventually finding something that seemed to work.
Ella had always been a royalty buff from a very young age. She was completely fascinated by those who had been born to rule and what the concept of what true royalty was all about. She knew a lot about royalty. Now it seemed she was about to become royalty.
‘When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought Lord was really rad but very masculine,’ she said to Vulture and endless other outlets. ‘Ever since I was a little kid, I have really been into royals and aristocracy, so to make Lord really feminine I just put an E on the end.’
AND SO LORDE WAS BORN.
ENCOURAGED BY THOSE
EARLY STUDIO SUCCESSES,
JOEL AND THE NOW NEWLY
CHRISTENED LORDE CONTINUED
TO CHURN OUT SOLID SONGS
AT A STEADY PACE.
Before they knew it ‘Bravado’, ‘Royals’, ‘Million Dollar Bills’ and ‘Biting Down’ were joined by a reworked version of The Replacements’ ‘Swingin’ Party’ and ‘The Love Club’, as well as a handful of other songs and remixes waiting in the wings.
Given the success they had in Joel’s studio creating the music, it seemed almost a given that the completed songs would be recorded, in a very sparse instrumental setting, in the same studio.
‘It took three weeks,’ Joel related in NZ Musician. ‘Most of the songs came together in a couple of days. But we were doing proper studio twelve-hour days, which is a lot for somebody not used to that. But she took to it.’
The chemistry Joel and Lorde had established was mirrored in the recording sessions. As the de facto producer, Joel continued the patient, encouraging influence. When things needed a slight tweak or he felt another take was necessary, he knew exactly how to broach it to Lorde. For her part, Lorde’s trust in Joel was now complete. There were those moments when the pair agreed to disagree and, in those cases, the young singer usually got her way. But the feeling at the end of the sessions was that they had enough really solid material for a first rate introductory EP.
And that ‘Royals’ seemed the perfect, albeit unorthodox, first single.
Maclachlan took ‘Royals’ to the Universal Music Group promotion department for their opinion. He would not like what they told him.
‘They said that radio would never play the song,’ recalled the exasperated Maclachlan in a Rolling Stone feature. ‘And if you don’t have radio support, you’re fucked. So we either had to go on bended knees and try to convince them or, fuck it, we had to put it out for free.’
That Maclachlan was so quick to toss aside his staunch by-the-books music business attitude and even consider such a risky move was surprising. He had not been with Universal Music Group that long and was not inclined to ruffle any corporate feathers. And to give something away for nothing, despite the minimal investment of corporate money to that point, would definitely rub the bean counters the wrong way. But it appeared that a bit of Lorde’s determination had rubbed off on him and Maclachlan was all in.
And, as he recalled in HitQuarters, money be damned. ‘We felt it was a very strong piece of music and thought “let’s just put it out now and worry about the money later.”’
Like most people her age Lorde/Ella already had a pretty good working knowledge of the internet. ‘I have always been internationally minded with how I consumed music and art,’ she explained to Billboard. ‘Everyone has the internet now, so it doesn’t feel like as much of an impediment. I grew up listening to people who made music in their bedrooms and put it up on SoundCloud. So I kind of thought that the opportunities were limitless.’
Lorde quickly created a Facebook, a Twitter, a Tumblr and a SoundCloud account and went live with all the accounts on her own Facebook profile. Then Lorde could do nothing except sit back, wait and hope.
The singer would look back on this decision to give her music away sometime later in an interview with Spin.
‘It was one of those choices where the record company was saying, “Uh, okay, you shouldn’t do this.” But I felt really strongly about it. I was fifteen years old when I put that music out. I didn’t want it to be about how much money I could make off it. I just wanted people to hear it and to like it. It felt right for me.’
LORDE WOULD OFTEN
ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SHE HAD LOW
EXPECTATIONS FOR THIS GIVEAWAY
/> AND ASSUMED IT WOULD WIND UP
BEING A FREEBIE FOR HER FRIENDS
AND NOTHING MORE.
For his part, Maclachlan was working behind the scenes to keep an air of mystery behind the release. No photo or bio of Lorde was made available and there was never any mention of the singer’s age. He was determined to let the music speak for itself.
The response to her free musical offering was not long in coming. Within a few hours of its posting, Lorde discovered that 300 people had decided to give The Love Club a listen. She reasoned that since she did not have 300 friends, she might be onto something. Something was not long in coming as the number of downloads rose to 10,000 in the first few days.
‘I wasn’t expecting The Love Club EP to do what it was doing, not by a long shot,’ she related in Sunday Magazine. ‘I tweeted Joel about it and I used the word ‘booyah’. Look at us now.’
The approach to getting Lorde out there worked. Within six weeks, Maclachlan had reportedly received calls from just about every record company in America. But it went without saying that with his long-standing development deal with Universal Music Group in place, he was not going to jump ship.
While the initial response to her music was a surprise to everyone concerned, it was still quite early in the game to declare that a star was suddenly born. However, Lorde would recall in The Observer that there seemed to be an inevitability about what was suddenly happening around her.
‘I wasn’t necessarily saying that I would be famous. But there were requests from labels and people were pulling overseas. There was a sense of a huge change approaching.’
THE GIVE AWAY CONTINUED TO