Excerpts from Lorde's interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, on newsstands now.
Quote:
A lamp or a bowl? Ella Yelich-O'Connor wants to buy a Christmas present for her manager, which is why she's standing, with a puzzled look, in a chic design store in Herne Bay, an Auckland, New Zealand, suburb that smells like affluence and the ocean. They're both great gifts, but Ella is determined to figure out which one is better. The choices: a hand-shaped brass bowl with a glowing gold wash, or a minimalist globe table lamp with no base.
"Taylor's supergood at this stuff," says Ella, who's wearing light-gray trousers and a slightly-less-gray shirt. "She's decorated her own houses for ages." So why not text photos of both gifts to her? "That's a great idea." Her friend Taylor Swift is in London, where it's almost midnight, and doesn't reply immediately, so after more furrowed deliberation, Ella chooses the bowl.
Outside, at a cafe on Jervois Road, we're interrupted approximately every six minutes bu autograph and photo requests from polite New Zealanders enjoying the summer weather. A bus of school kids in red blazers pauses at a stoplight, and when the kids spot Ella, they wave in unison delight.
In "Royals," her worldwide smash, Ella mocks the fatuousness of pop stars who brag about driving Maybachs and drinking Cristal, and she also brazenly offers to replace the idiots who dominate Top 40: "You can call me Queen Bee, and baby, I'll rule," she sings. Big talk for a teenage nobody from nowhere.
"I've always been into the idea of confidence. Like, I called my record Pure Heroine." She laughs. "Even my stage name is kind of cocky or grandiose." She mentions a lyric from Kanye West's "Dark Fantasy" ("Me found bravery in my bravado"), which gave her courage to announce her ambition in "Royals." "I get paralyzingly nervous a lot of times, so I tried bravado. The way I dress and carry myself, a lot of people find it strange or intimidating. I think my whole career can be boiled down to the one word I always say in my meetings: strength."
Now, at 17, she is the Queen Bee, with four Grammy nominations and well-deserved acclaim for her smart and unique album. On the day in October when "Royals" went to Number One - displacing Miley Cyrus, symbolism that's hard to miss - Ella had a photo shoot in New York. "The photographer kept saying, 'Pop your hip out. Try to look cute. Big smiles, now.' And I was like, 'I'm Number One in this country not because I flirt and wink and all that ****, but because I've done exactly what I want to do.' So, no, he did not get smiles." And then she smiles.
Her phone dings. It's a reply from Swift. "Oh, ****. She wrote, 'I love the lamp.' Noooooo!"
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When Ella was young, she stuttered. Physiologists hypothesized that her mouth couldn't move as fast as her brain. The stuttering has past, but now she has frequent insomnia. Her mom describes it best: "Ella's head is always on fire."
Fortunately, she's found a slightly older peer she can turn to for advice: Taylor Swift. When "Royals" went to Number One and Ella arrived home from America, Swift sent her a bunch of roses: "I was floored." Ella had recently told a New Zealand reporter that Swift's success wasn't "breeding anything good in young girls," because the singer was "so flawless and so unattainable." On the heels of her dig at Selena Gomez's song, the quote quickly turned into blog headlines ("Lorde slams Taylor Swift"), and Ella apologized on her tumblr, clarifying that she disliked the "importance placed on physical perfection in this industry," and not Swift personally.
Swift didn't know about any of this until Ella thanked her for the roses and mentioned what she'd said. "She was like, 'It's fine. If all you've done is call someone perfect, it's not that bad.'" On her way home to New Zealand from the Grammy-nominations concert in L.A. last month, Ella stopped in Australia, and joined Swift for her 24th Birthday party. Their reconciliation, like their original conflict, took place in public.
It makes sense that they're friends - both are smart and driven, command their own careers, and perform with what Ella calls "real teenage voices." "There are very few of us," she continues, "There's Tavi and the Rookie group, King Krule and, to an extent, Jake Bugg. The other teenagers sing other people's songs, which is fine, but it's not an authentic teenage experience."
"The photographer kept saying, 'Pop your hip out. Try to look cute. Big smiles, now.' And I was like, 'I'm Number One in this country not because I flirt and wink and all that ****, but because I've done exactly what I want to do.'
I know it's true what she says but she's starting to sound a bit pretentious.
everytime
