Lorde keeps living up to the hype. Following her No. 3 Billboard chart debut “Royals,” the 16-year-old New Zealand singer drops “Team,” a tribute to her friends and country. “I’m kinda older than I was when rebelled without a care, so there,” she almost whispers above the clap-along beat.
“In that song, there are a few lines which are kind of me being the ‘realistic’ pop star: ‘We live in cities you’ll never see onscreen,’ which is like, no one comes to New Zealand, no one knows anything about New Zealand, and here I am, trying to grow up and become a person,” she recently told Billboard. “I’ve been countering that with going to New York and seeing this place that’s in every movie and every TV show. Part of me wanted to go back to writing for me and for my friends, and write something that I felt related to us a little bit.”
Realness is a big issue for Lorde, a.k.a. Ella Yelich-O’Connor. In a recent interview with SPIN, she spoke about how the big stars of today rarely write about anything that’s true. “Is there anyone in pop doing that at the moment? In Top 40 pop?” she asked. “I love Top 40 pop, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t think that there’s anyone in Top 40 pop that’s ‘real.'”
Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, is due out September 27 on Universal.
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