10 Years of ‘Pure Heroine’: How Lorde Revolutionized Pop Music
As soon as the chorus of “Royals” first rang out across the world, it was abundantly clear that pop music would never be the same. Not only did the 16-year-old New Zealander Ella Yelich-O'Connor sound vastly different, but her gothic aesthetic also deviated from your average chart-topping pop star. In praise that now feels more than just a little misogynistic, she was applauded in almost every early write-up for “keeping her clothes on, unlike her peers”. At the same time that her young age made her seem more approachable, she also cloaked herself in mystery by not divulging her personal life. Her stage name, Lorde, became her persona, and the distance she kept from her audience only created more intrigue.
This year Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, turns ten: a record that would both catapult her into global pop stardom and change the trajectory of pop music.
Having been scouted at only twelve years old from her school’s talent show, Ella’s originality was undeniable. She spent the following four years honing her craft with the help of her record label and producer Joel Little (Taylor Swift, Sam Smith, Noah Kahan). The lyrics to her first single, “Royals”, were written in half an hour in 2012; a year later, it was officially released in June. Quickly climbing the charts, she became the youngest artist in 25 years to top the billboards in the United States.
A big reason for the success of the song was that it fitted both pop and alternative radio. She was often deemed too pop for alternative and too alternative for pop, but at the time, pop had become saturated and running on fumes. The biggest hits in 2013 were Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” – all carried by big, euphoric and dance-driven productions. Lorde’s debut was much needed, and couldn’t have come at a better time.
The relatable lyrics of “Royals” center around Lorde’s fascination with aristocracy, which also inspired her moniker and juxtaposes her friend group’s simple suburban lifestyle with that of wealthy celebrities. Among her influences at the time, Lorde mentions ASAP Rocky, Drake, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West and Jay-Z. The inspiration from them can be heard clearly in the hip-hop beat, created by looping drums and snapping fingers, that creates the core of the track. Contrasting this is Lorde’s meticulously dynamic contralto voice that travels from theatrical whispers to exclamations, and is later embellished with layers of her characteristic glittering vocal harmonies. The rhythm, the straightforward melody and the repeating of the chorus are what make it a pop song, with the other parts being sourced from electronic and alternative music. Collecting influences from such a wide range and blurring the lines in such a groundbreaking way was one of the clearest and earliest signs of the death of music genres.
The wordy lyrics are presented both with precise annunciation and introduce one of the earliest examples of cursive singing as we define it today. Lorde was undoubtedly one of the earliest adopters. Cursive singing reached its fever pitch with the launch of Billie Eilish in 2017 and has since been more ridiculed than used seriously. Even Lorde herself seems to have abandoned it on her later albums. On a more technical level, this means to emphasize diphthongs exaggeratedly; in other words, gliding between vowels or even adding vowels that shouldn’t be there. Sometimes, this is so extreme that the lyrics get completely mumbled. Often used as a cop-out to avoid having to hit harder notes, Lorde uses it to convey emotions in a conversational yet very effective way. This also means she can fit more unforgiving lines into the melody. “‘Royals”’ is a very clear example of this, not least in the chorus and the repeating of the title.
The album Pure Heroine was released three months later and would be dubbed the “best album of the year” by The New York Times. It also scored a Grammy nomination and led to David Bowie calling her "the future of music".
The record features a total of ten tracks, none of which are love songs. A remarkable fact mainly because of the genre. Where “Royals’ is the most obvious pop song, the others are far more stripped down, introspective and not nearly as predictable in their structure, but what propels them all forward are the catchy rhythms. The songs are dark, melancholic and somewhat somber, yet the spacious soundscapes make them also seem infinite and hopeful somehow. On “Tennis Court”, she grapples with her quick rise to fame, while also revealing she has never even been on a plane. In hindsight, her naive inexperience is a harsh contrast to her battle with fame that would later lead to her retreating to her homeland.
The lyrics are the pillars of the tracks, unapologetically chronicling the teenage angst of not having your place in the world but desperately wanting to find it. They read like glimpses of her diary, or rather snapshots from a camera roll. Through them, Lorde not only cements her skills as a lyrical storyteller but – as Hannah Horvath would say – her place as the voice of a generation. Mainstream pop had not been a place for the mundane, but she eulogized it and offered a perspective that was more relatable than a glossed-up and saccharine utopia.
In 2013, it was still unusual for pop stars to be writing their own lyrics. Instead, words were somewhat illogically generated by big teams of songwriters. Additionally, the lyrics were often not written to be meaningful tales, but rather phonetic puzzle pieces that would most effectively fit the melody. The teenaged perspective was missing in pop music, and when told, it was usually coming from a secondhand source. Grown men were tasked to narrate the young adult lives of Britney Spears and Katy Perry. The sexualization of female artists also often led to them being forced to appear older. Lorde’s strong, narrative voice filled a void that many didn’t even realize existed, least of all the record labels pre-packing artists before they were presented to the world. The teenage girl was no longer so easily dismissed.
Lorde’s decision to use pop as the vehicle for her message and refusing to refine it by slapping on more highly regarded genre labels was one she frequently had to defend. The same things that make pop so successful tend to be the reasons so many seem to hate it: the directness and calculated accessibility. In 2013, Lorde told Look Magazine, “People think pop is filthy and shameful. I love pop music! I don’t think it’s right to shit on a genre just because some stuff about it isn’t perfect. Pop is really powerful, and if I’m a popstar then I’ll be that to the best of my ability.” With these words, the status of pop was no longer that of a guilty pleasure. Whereas pop has often been deemed lesser because it was performed by and marketed to women, Lorde played a major part in turning that around. Listeners were proud to quickly fall in line, and the critics had no choice but to follow along.
In 2021, Lorde finished her train of thought on the YouTube series Hot Ones, saying it’s “more difficult to speak to a lot of people than it was to speak to a small amount. There’s something really special about that. And I love writing a pop melody, there’s nothing better. For it to be simple but secretly complex and to kind of trick the brain. [...] to make something that’s kind of highbrow but can be enjoyed in really simple ways.” It’s easier said than done, and few artists have managed to toe this line as successfully as Lorde.
Pure Heroine sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Not only did the album introduce a completely new sound and wider palette to the pop genre, but one could say it also made pop “cool” for the first time. Lorde transformed pop from a guilty pleasure to something you could proudly claim. In addition to that, she was one of the first artists to truly make women, and especially teenage girls, protagonists, rather than the objects of mainstream pop music. Her raspy and theatrical cursive singing has continued to influence trailblazers like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. Lorde didn’t ask for permission, and the industry had no choice but to follow suit. ♦