Now that I've listened to every track on the album a ton of times, I decided to go find my rankings of the songs immediately after the album came out and compare them to my current rankings.
Very First Rankings:
1. Glory And Gore
2. Ribs
3. Buzzcut Season
4. Team
5. Tennis Court
6. Royals
7. White Teeth Teens
8. 400 Lux
9. Still Sane
10. A World Alone
Current Rankings:
1. Glory And Gore (=)
2. Team (+2)
3. Ribs (-1)
4. Tennis Court (+1)
5. Buzzcut Season (-2)
6. Royals (=)
7. A World Alone (+3)
8. White Teeths Teens (-1)
9. 400 Lux (-1)
10. Still Sane (-1)
Looks like Team and A World Alone were huge growers for me.
Now that I've listened to every track on the album a ton of times, I decided to go find my rankings of the songs immediately after the album came out and compare them to my current rankings.
Very First Rankings:
1. Glory And Gore
2. Ribs
3. Buzzcut Season
4. Team
5. Tennis Court
6. Royals
7. White Teeth Teens
8. 400 Lux
9. Still Sane
10. A World Alone
Current Rankings:
1. Glory And Gore (=)
2. Team (+2)
3. Ribs (-1)
4. Tennis Court (+1)
5. Buzzcut Season (-2)
6. Royals (=)
7. A World Alone (+3)
8. White Teeths Teens (-1)
9. 400 Lux (-1)
10. Still Sane (-1)
Looks like Team and A World Alone were huge growers for me.
Your current ranking is quite close to mine. Mine would be:
1. Buzzcut season
2. Glory and Gore
3. Team
4. White teeth teens (her most inventive vocals)
5. Ribs
6. Tennis Courts
7. 400 Lux
8. Royals (I like this a lot, just been listening to it since April)
9.A World Alone
10. Still Sane (literally the only song i actually dislike....the first line is off-putting)
Anyway, here are my rankings:
1. A World Alone
2. Team
3. Ribs
4. White Teeth Teens
5. Buzzcut Season
6. Tennis Court
7. 400 Lux
8. Glory and Gore (it's good until that bridge and then it all just sort of falls apart)
9. Still Sane
10. Royals
"Royals" is the only bad song on the album, though I have no use for "Still Sane" either.
i don't get how people think royals is a bad song, let alone the worst on the album...like. no. just no.
Girl the lyrics are totally sanctimonious and undeservedly self-satisfied and the beat is anemic and anodyne. It's terrible. I don't know how anyone can think it's good.
Girl the lyrics are totally sanctimonious and undeservedly self-satisfied and the beat is anemic and anodyne. It's terrible. I don't know how anyone can think it's good.
girl, im supposed to take this comment seriously when this criticism reads like a jumbled thesaurus? Surely you must be self-parodying?
The song is great because it's a social commentary where she is unapologetically and yes, self-satisfyingly criticizes misplaced pursuits of happiness. You cant critique something without it being personal and indulgent, but even then, the reason its caught on is because people identify.
The vocal harmonizing is pretty, the melody is infectious, and the beat, while nothing ground-breaking, is familiarly pleasant.
people that hate royals and like the rest of the album are clearly trying too hard to different or disassociating from it because it's a #1 hit. i bet you loved it before radio ever played it.
girl, im supposed to take this comment seriously when this criticism reads like a jumbled thesaurus? Surely you must be self-parodying?
The song is great because it's a social commentary where she is unapologetically and yes, self-satisfyingly criticizes misplaced pursuits of happiness. You cant critique something without it being personal and indulgent, but even then, the reason its caught on is because people identify.
The vocal harmonizing is pretty, the melody is infectious, and the beat, while nothing ground-breaking, is familiarly pleasant.
Um. Are "undeservedly self-satisfied" and "anemic" too big of words for you?
It's not even "social commentary" so much as it is her using (outdated) rap tropes to complain about how materialistic popular music is (when it isn't, really), and essentially acting like she's above all of the materialism ("diamonds on a timepiece," "Grey Goose," so on) but really she's just bitter that she can't experience these things because she's poor. She's priding herself on opting out of a lavish lifestyle ("we aren't caught up in your love affair") that she had no choice to opt into and acting like she's better than all of the people who have opted in. And really that lavish lifestyle is no more of a "misplaced pursuit of happiness" (your words) than "driving a Cadillac in your dreams" and "being queen bee" (whatever that means, that part doesn't even go anywhere ).
And those fingersnaps are totally boring and repetitive and I've heard it in fifty other songs. That bassline (I think that's what it is?) that shows up every so often is sort of a nice touch but it's nowhere near prominent enough to redeem anything.
Quote:
people that hate royals and like the rest of the album are clearly trying too hard to different or disassociating from it because it's a #1 hit. i bet you loved it before radio ever played it.
Excuse me? What kind of a stupid thing is that to say? I've never liked it and I wasn't even going to listen to the album because I assumed the whole thing was going to be as terrible as that song. I only listened at Oprah's insistence.
"Call Me Maybe" was my favorite single of last year, so please sit down with those ridiculous hipster accusations.
he New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s first show in the U.S. was in August, at the small Greenwich Village night club (Le) Poisson Rouge. Yelich-O’Connor, who is sixteen, performs and records as Lorde, a name that she chose because, she told the Daily Beast, it felt “kind of masculine.” The show was packed, and the V.I.P. area was unusually full, especially with older men. I’d never seen such clamor or crowding at this venue. Dressed in a black vest over a sheer black floor-length dress, Lorde played with the drummer Ben Barter and the keyboardist James McDonald. Her voice is low, casual, and it sounded strong and effortless, neither dramatically loud nor tentative in pitch. She displayed no visible nervousness, and there was a sense of mutual testing, as if she were gathering information about us as much as we were about her. Halfway through the eleven-song set, a man with white hair, dressed in a silver suit, turned to a companion, pointed to the stage, and, implying a big payday in Lorde’s future, said, “Zeroes. Lots and lots of zeroes.”
Lorde’s début album, “Pure Heroine,” and her current No. 1 single, “Royals,” may prove him right. The exciting thing about Lorde is not merely that “Pure Heroine” is perfect (it is close), or that “Royals” is perfect (it is), but that a teen-ager from Auckland, with an unnatural gift, has entered the suit-infested ruins of the music business with the confidence of a veteran and the skills of a prodigy. She is less a flashy new mansion in the suburbs than an architectural gem in a tony neighborhood.
A little review of Pure Heroine in a (free) Belgian newspaper today
Bored but Addictive (4/5)
A promising debut, that is the least you could say about 'Pure Heroine'. The first album of the 16 year old singer-songwriter from New Zealand, is pop music with a serious edge. The mysterious voice of the young singer gives an intriguing touch to puberty-boredom. Lorde is both seductive and dark, and she clearly preserves that contrast. Some songs sound as good in a dark club as during a car ride at night. With her simple arrangements and slow rhythms, she is able to pull the listener into an addictive universe. A universe where you might here some echoes of Jessie Ware and Lykke Li, but where there is also room for humor and irony, besides teenage fears. The young singer aimed high with her first album and succeeded. We reccomend it.
I ****ing love this album so much. 400 Lux, Tennis Court, A World Alone, Team, Buzzcut Season are just EVERYTHING. This might be my favorite album of 2013. Brilliant.
400 Lux, Tennis Court, A World Alone, Team, Buzzcut Season are just EVERYTHING. 
