by Marc Shapiro
Hoping for a bit of rest and relaxation, Lorde quickly found that the next few weeks were wall-to-wall interview obligations, last-minute studio time to fine tune Pure Heroine in advance of its September 27 unveiling, and fulfilling a long-held promise to do her first live show in the UK.
The irony of that show, at London’s famed Madame Jojo’s, was that the club was an adults-only, eighteen and older venue and that Lorde was not yet old enough to buy a ticket. The UK is traditionally a tough market to crack but once on your side, these music lovers can be fanatic in their support. The sold-out show indicated how quickly Lorde had become a British fave and the singer, based on reviews of the show, rewarded the audience with a solid performance that showcased the ease in which Lorde’s vocals had meshed with the very sparse modern pop musical backing.
It would be the ideal set-up to her second, six-city assault on the US set to begin September 25 and to coincide with the September 27 release of Pure Heroine.
The Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles was an immediate step up from the cramped Echoplex show from her previous trip. And by this time, it was apparent that Lorde had been a quick study in how to please her fans in a live setting. Starting out moody in an under-lit stage, the performance turned lighthearted and fan-friendly as Lorde’s between-song audience-patter effectively showed her as quite human and, yes, still a young woman amid the sudden rush of stardom.
The show concluded with the stage once again going dark and the singer quite literally disappearing off stage, not to return despite a five-minute chorus of ‘encore’ from the audience. The sense among those in attendance was that she probably would have done the encore if, in a bit more than an hour set, she had not sung every song she knew. The Belasco show had been such an immediate sellout that Lorde readily agreed to do a second show the following day at the Fonda Theater, which would also sell out.
That these shows were selling out so quickly was not lost on the tour company and management. Lorde readily agreed to filling in the days off with additional shows at selected stops. The immediate sellout of the upcoming Webster Hall date in New York resulted in a second sold-out show in the same venue being added. And when that wasn’t enough to accommodate the mania for the singer, a third date was added the following day at the Warsaw in Brooklyn. The one Canadian show, the 700-seat Hoxton in Toronto, had sold out so quickly that the promoters immediately found a larger alternative in the 1427 seat Danforth Theater Hall, which would, likewise, be filled to capacity when Lorde hit the stage.
The Fillmore show in San Francisco on September 27 was memorable for a lot of reasons. Pure Heroine was being released that day so there was that sense of anticipation. The Fillmore had hosted countless legendary performers over the years and for Lorde to perform in those hallowed halls was something not lost on the sixteen-year-old. The show itself had evolved into a manageable hour-plus set with everything from The Love Club and selections from Pure Heroine to prime the pump. What the audience had not counted on was a surprise when Lorde unexpectedly broke into the as-yet unreleased song ‘Good Fights’. It was the definition of a haunting, moody modern pop performance that had the reviewer from the San Jose Mercury News making favourable comparisons with the likes of Tori Amos, Amy Winehouse and Adele.
The singer did yet another live studio performance of ‘Royals’ on that bastion of liberal leanings and creative attitudes, radio station KCRW. Although in a relative cocoon of promotion and performing, Lorde was still finding time to speak her mind and to be controversial.
Around the time of the Fillmore performance, comments she had recently made during a GQ Q blog were going viral thanks to the internet and outlets such as The Huffington Post and the San Jose Mercury News, in which she defended her normalcy by taking some shots at the pre-fab Disney-created performers.
‘The difference between those kids and me is that I grew up completely normal and went to parties and had that experience. I’m much less inclined to be like, “Look! I’m fucking mental!”’
Lorde’s participation in the Decibel Festival, a decade-long Seattle, Washington, tradition in which DJs and progressive musicians perform in various sized venues all across the city, brought out an assured and passionate performance, seemingly giving new life and edge to her songs each time she sang them. A bonus on this particular night was Lorde showing her admiration for Kanye West by surprising the packed Showbox Market Club with a raw rendition of West’s ‘Hold My Liquor’.
The added dates in New York allowed Lorde the time to stretch her legs a bit and, on one night, she was spotted hanging out at a local billiard bar with some friends. But the reality was that, like it or not, being sixteen and underage in a city like New York, she was never really alone as she candidly said in an interview with The Associated Press.
‘Every time I go out, it’s with my mum and my band and my manager,’ she said, sounding very much like the teen who was craving just a little bit of freedom. ‘I have all these adults looking over me so, honestly, it’s all pretty tame.’
Lorde’s final performance at the Davenport Theater Hall in Toronto, Canada, was, on the surface, a near carbon copy of the previous shows. She had grown as a live performer in a matter of days, owning the stage and pushing her lyrical and musical influences to the limit and beyond. But reportedly those who were at that last show on the tour saw that little something extra. The emotions, in her vocals and in her lyrics, seemed to have an extra coat of tension and emotion to them. She was not prowling the stage as an effect but rather with a true purpose. With this final stop on this mini-tour, Lorde had suddenly emerged from her on-the-job training as a pop star in waiting . . .
. . . AND WAS HEADING FOR
BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS.
AUGUST 12, 2013.
THIS TWEET FROM JOEL LITTLE
PRETTY MUCH SAID IT ALL.
‘ALBUM’S ALL DONE.
AM AWAY NEXT WEEK.’
Although the official unveiling would not be until September 27, 2013, Pure Heroine was officially in the can at that point. Of course there were those months leading up to Joel’s tweet to consider.
Which included the question of whether Lorde would be allowed to take what amounted to three months off from her normal life and, particularly, school to do the album. She admitted to The Music that there were some anxious moments in that regard.
‘It was pretty much down to my parents because, obviously, I would have to take three months out of school. They came home from a meeting with my manager and said, ‘We’re going to let you make the record.’ I was like, “Yeah, this is going to be awesome!”’
And in typical Lorde fashion, a task so simple as naming the album took some long and lingering thought. Lorde knew that with the title Pure Heroine she would be setting herself up for all sorts of drug implications and that the title was ripe for double entendre. But as she was quick to point out in an interview with 3rd Degree, it was much more simple than that.
‘I’ve always had this thing about liking how words looked on the page as well as how they sounded. That’s basically how I chose the title. I’ve never been one to think in terms of double entendre.’
Shortly after the completion of The Love Club EP, Lorde was already making plans for her first full-length album. And although she would occasionally express the desire to someday work with other producers, it was a foregone conclusion that the chemistry developed between Lorde and Joel was a bond that would not, or could not, be broken.
The singer jokingly said as much in conversation with Discus. ‘Joel is the official producer (of the album). We often don’t see eye to eye, but I always get what I want at the end of the day.’
Lorde had rounded into a very prolific songwriter in the preceding months and so, not surprisingly, there were quite a few songs available for the album. In fact, at final count, there were seventeen songs, all quite album-worthy about the time Lorde and Joel entered his studio to begin the recording process. But it was determined, with no small sug
gestion from Maclachlan, that ten songs were considered the industry standard for an album. It was also determined that, despite the fact that two of those songs were already worldwide hits, that two of the songs on the album should be ‘Royals’ and ‘Tennis Court.’ What remained for Lorde were eight songs that would be determined by a rapidly evolving palette of sounds and emotions.
Musically Lorde was insistent that Pure Heroine would revolve around some already established elements. It would be her voice, in that haunting, brooding and observational way that would carry the load. Lyrically her takes on the life of teens she knew and how she perceived it would continue to anchor the proceedings. In that way she has of explaining things, Lorde told Discus how she saw Pure Heroine as more of the same but different.
‘The goal for me was to make a body of work that was cohesive,’ she said. ‘If I can make something that feels like that and feels right and true and good then I will have succeeded.’
Lorde’s approach to Pure Heroine translated into an even more progressive sound in the studio, which meant that Lorde and Joel would be burning the midnight oil and that experimentation would be the order of the day.
The mercurial singer would later admit that, despite having a solid basis in what she wanted the album to sound like, she really did not have anything specific in mind. Lorde had been listening to a lot of hip-hop and electronic music of late and had been channelling James Blake and Lana Del Rey for a specific kind of vibe. But at the end of the day, it all boiled down to Lorde and Joel amid the confines of Golden Age Studios.
As with The Love Club and Tennis Court EP’s, the Pure Heroine sessions were conspicuous by their minimalism. A literal skeleton crew of musicians was on hand to supplement and explore Joel’s electronic beats, loops and all manner of trickery. Joel was quickly becoming the master of the form and the result on Pure Heroine was a sound that was even more dark and shadowy than Lorde’s previous music.
That the singer’s voice was more than a one trick gimmick was born out in the way Lorde’s vocal range moved freely and often in a highly progressive manner throughout the songs. Her voice as an instrument of contemplation in several forms was much in evidence on the song ‘Ribs’ before turning light and airy on ‘Buzzcut Season.’ For Lorde, Pure Heroine was an exercise in earthiness and constraint but she is fully capable of darting all over the vocal highway in an often surreal manner.
Lyrically her songwriting continued to evolve. The themes of exploring teen angst, love and just being sixteen and getting through the day was, if anything, more sharp and focused. In the best possible sense, Lorde had adopted a take-no-prisoners attitude in her songwriting that continued to make valid thought-provoking and existential points. Lorde was definitely flexing intellectual muscles and the result was a giant step forward.
On the same day Joel made his Twitter announcement, Lorde followed up with one of her own, likewise announcing that the album was done and would be released September 27.
Rather than jubilation at the reality that her debut album was about to meet the masses, Lorde suddenly and unexpectedly found herself in a state of depression. She explained the mental and emotional collapse to Rookie Magazine.
‘It was terrifying,’ she recalled. ‘In the months leading up to putting the album out, I was sleeping really badly, maybe three or four hours a night. I was a mess. I asked myself why I was having these problems and what was wrong with me? And I finally realised that I was terrified about giving this part of myself to other people.’
Lorde would get over this fear as only Lorde could, by logically coming to the conclusion that, once she went through the process of creating the songs and putting them out there, they were no longer hers.
Needless to say, Universal Music Group knew that the album had the potential to be a worldwide smash and so threw a massive amount of money and marketing acumen into promoting the eminent arrival of Pure Heroine, much of which borrowed from the DIY magic that Lorde had worked on The Love Club. The song ‘Ribs’ was given away free on iTunes a week before the release of the album to prime the pump. The first single from the album, ‘Team’, was made available worldwide on September 13.
Upon release, Pure Heroine proved an across-the-board critical smash. Billboard acknowledged the album as ‘immaculate, and Lorde the most vocally striking and lyrically thought-provoking artist in recent times.’ 3 News said the album ‘lives up to the hype and exceeds expectations.’ The Dominion Post was one of the few naysayers, saying ‘the album was not groundbreaking and did not offer any surprises’, but conceded that ‘it was gold and a strong debut.’
‘Team’ would prove a worthy follow-up to Lorde’s singles’ hit parade, debuting at No. 3 on the New Zealand Singles Charts and climbing to No. 8 on the all-important Billboard Singles Charts and marking Lorde’s third top-ten position on the Billboard listings.
Likewise Pure Heroine crashed the charts in a hurry. The album would debut at No. 1 on the New Zealand Album Charts and would be certified platinum in record time. Pure Heroine would have a bit of a rougher go on the Billboard Top 200 Album Charts. After debuting at No. 3 with 129,000 copies sold that first week, Pure Heroine would drop over the next two weeks to No. 7 before rebounding to No. 5. The album would be certified gold in the US by Christmas.
Amid the critical praise and Lorde’s continuing attitude of not holding back in interviews, it would eventually be revealed that the singer had a mystery collaborator, as she explained in an extensive interview with The Cut.
At one point she took the lyrics to her boyfriend, photographer James Lowe, and showed them to him. She explained that sharing things with her boyfriend encouraged much of the album’s writing and ultimately inspired and drove her to write the majority of the album.
So it was finally revealed that Lorde had a boyfriend. Now the question remained . . .
. . . WHO WAS JAMES LOWE?
JAMES LOWE IS A
TWENTY - FOUR - YEAR - OLD
PHOTOGRAPHER WHO
HAILS FROM DEVONPORT
IN AUCKLAND.
He is tall, lanky, wears glasses and projects a boyish, somewhat geeky look. He was a friend of Lorde’s when she was still Ella. He was a friend of Ella’s before fate and talent stepped in to make her a star.
Today James Lowe is the true love of Lorde’s life.
By the time Lorde turned seventeen late in 2013, word had pretty much got out that Lorde was involved with a much older man. Her parents had been cautious at the idea of their daughter dating somebody seven years her senior but when they met him, they came away feeling that he was a nice boy and a good intellectual match for their daughter. Lorde’s very first relationship, some years prior to getting involved with James, was with a boy four years older than her. That Lorde was mature beyond her years almost made it inevitable that she would be attracted to older men.
It’s interesting to note that, in her choice of men, Lorde, like her music, has run contrary to the prevailing notion of hooking up with one’s own peers in the industry. And rather than sharing the spotlight with another ego-driven performer and having their every moment chronicled in the tabloids, Lorde has gone the other way when it comes to romance.
James is truly creative but, perhaps because he’s a photographer, has willingly been supportive yet behind the scenes. He has been amazingly attentive to her needs, has the same interests in art, culture and music, and travelled in the same circles. Those who had witnessed the growing relationship between the pair most likely approved. Because James was quite simply too good to be true. James was there for all of her shows and important events. And he is a true romantic. In a recent People article, snippets from James’ website offered true evidence of his feelings toward Lorde:
‘STILL NO WORDS . . . SO PROUD.’
‘I’M HAPPY TODAY . . .
SHE’S AMAZING.’
Given her admittedly introverted nature it is nothing short of a miracle that the pair got together, as she explained in a Daily Ente
rtainment News article. ‘I’m quite solitary by nature. I don’t have heaps and heaps of friends. Often I can appreciate a place regardless of the people I’m sharing it with.’
James had turned out to be the ideal sharing companion, especially in the quiet contemplative moments that Lorde craved. She explained to Daily Entertainment News what James’ companionship has meant to her creative life.
‘James and I spent a lot of time driving around all over our city and that for me was enlightening,’ she recalled, ‘because, for once, the company that I was keeping was affecting how I was feeling about those places and in a positive way. I think that was kind of what drove me to write a lot of the stuff on Pure Heroine. I really thought about where I was in conjunction with who I was with.’
Although their relationship had been kept fairly low profile for some time, pictures of the pair frolicking in swimsuits at a beach came to light in October 2013 on an international celebrity gossip site that finally brought their relationship fully to the public eye. Lorde and James thought nothing of it. But other people did.
David Grr, a Facebook and Instagram operator, had gathered a respectable 26,000 followers. When he happened upon those initial photos, he thought nothing of reposting one of them. But Grr recalled in a Herald on Sunday conversation, ‘things just kind of got out of hand.’