Lorde Your Heroine Read online

  First published in 2014

  Copyright © Marc Shapiro 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act

  Crows Nest, an imprint of Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  First published by Riverdale Avenue Books, New York, USA

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76011 186 1

  eISBN 978 1 74343 829 9

  Cover photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images

  Cover and text design by Ruth Grüner

  Typeset by Ruth Grüner

  Acknowledgements

  Nancy Shapiro, my wife and love, forever and always.

  My daughter, Rachael.

  My granddaughter Lily.

  My agent, Lori Perkins.

  Riverdale Avenue Books, which continues to fight the good fight.

  Mike, Brady, Fitch.

  The great authors. The great musicians. The great artists.

  And finally to Lorde. True uncompromising intelligence does not come along too often.

  We should fully embrace it when it does.

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Lorde can read

  INTRODUCTION

  Do you know her?

  ONE

  The city by the sea

  TWO

  Special child

  THREE

  Educating E

  FOUR

  Behind her back

  FIVE

  Work in progress

  SIX

  Magic

  SEVEN

  I’ll show you

  EIGHT

  ‘Royals’ flush

  NINE

  Tennis anyone?

  TEN

  Coming to America

  ELEVEN

  Heroine becomes pure

  TWELVE

  Meet the boyfriend

  THIRTEEN

  Come September

  FOURTEEN

  Under pressure

  FIFTEEN

  The prom on ’roids

  SIXTEEN

  Silly season

  SEVENTEEN

  Surprise

  EIGHTEEN

  Art . . . what it is

  EPILOGUE

  March madness

  DISCOGRAPHY

  AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

  A LITTLE ABOUT JOEL

  STOP THE PRESSES!

  MOST OF THE REIGNING

  POP MUSIC IDOLS IN RECENT

  MEMORY WOULD HAVE TROUBLE

  SPELLING POP.

  Trust me, I’m not quick on the trigger when it comes to slamming easy targets. But after penning two books on Justin Bieber and following the exploits of a bunch of people named Katy, Selena and some blokes named One Direction, I think it is safe to say that these people are not rocket scientists, and that their level of talent and charisma makes them ideally suited for the teen idol circuit.

  BUT CANDIDATES FOR MENSA?

  I DON’T THINK SO.

  Don’t get me wrong. These pop stars are very good at taking orders. Hand them a pre-fab song and, to a person, they’ll sing it, no problem. Put them on tour and they’ll respond by entertaining the masses in a high tech, polished, superficial way. Give them some sanitised talking points to toss out to the press and they’re all over it. But an original thought, opinion or even an ounce of enticing creativity? Don’t bet the farm on that one. Puppets on a string? The perceptive Eight Ball says yes. But this is the generation that is perceived as having a short attention span and being blandly superficial. So who’s to argue with the easy way out?

  All of which brings me to the fact that writing a book about Lorde is such a joy. Because Lorde, quite simply, is smart. Book smart as opposed to street smart. Yes, I realise the former is a dying skill set and the latter is the order of the day. Lorde is decidedly the exception.

  There are no easy answers when it comes to this seventeen-year-old wunderkind. Her worldview does not allow for anything less than inquiring and persisting. Lorde may not have all the answers but she puts up a fairly convincing argument that she does.

  For openers she read books. Books without pictures. Real adult books. Books your parents most likely read. In fact, she reportedly had read over a thousand of them, by authors such as Raymond Carver, Sylvia Plath and J.D. Salinger, all by the time she was twelve. Lorde can talk philosophical and sociological issues until the cows come home.

  Her much publicised take on feminism is quick and easy and, most of all, makes sense. And at the end it will make cold, logical sense. If you want to know what real feminism is all about in 2014, forget Gloria Steinem. Just ask Lorde.

  This seventeen-year-old is wise beyond her years when it comes to that decades old philosophy. And when she was administered IQ tests at the ripe old age of six, the consensus was that she was six going on twenty-one. She was writing short stories long before she could chronologically qualify as a teen.

  Lorde was looking at the world in an honest, intellectual way before she was a teen. You’ve got to love it.

  And so it is more than a little surprising to discover that at a time when she could easily qualify for a master’s program at any major university, she has chosen to put that future aside, in favor of becoming the biggest pop star on the planet.

  AND YES, READERS.

  SHE CAN SPELL POP.

  Lorde writes lyrics the way she thinks. She could easily write boy-meets-girl radio-friendly product but has chosen her own way, an often contemplative, borderline high-brow way of looking at teen angst and day-to-day life of those who traditionally appear rootless. It is a style that is deep, very inward-looking but one that, when combined with melodies and choruses, is very familiar to the modern/progressive/fringe music movement.

  Lorde waves her flag of independence high. She revels in the fact that she writes her own songs, controls what goes on behind the scenes on the business side of the music business, and regularly does verbal battle with people twice her age, and still comes out smelling like a rose.

  Let’s face it, to wear a Cramps T-shirt for a Rolling Stone cover shoot is the height of independence. No, Lorde is not a perfect creation. But then what would you expect from a seventeen-year-old? She has been known to be spontaneous to the point where independence blurs over into asinine behaviour. But she is smart enough to realise that being very young and being an ass just comes with the territory . . . Before she moves on and makes up for it with something insightful and smart.

  Lorde is anti-pop in the best possible way. She speaks her mind rather than mouthing public relations platitudes and is not afraid to air those opinions and convictions. And if somebody gets hit by her intellectual fallout, well that’s too bad.

  This young woman is just too smart and honest for words. She is not afraid to take shots at her pop music peers and has done so with regularity. Occasionally she has backtracked on such attacks but has even couched those ‘missteps’ in a coat o
f logic and reality that would have most people think she was actually right the first time.

  Her life and approach is minimalist, from her Goth/Thrift Store chic she wears both on and offstage to the hypnotic way she moves in concert. It’s all so inventive and free-thinking. It almost seems too good to be true.

  Lorde still lives at home. She actually likes her parents. She’s extremely smart with her money and you’ve never seen her in The National Enquirer or on TMZ.

  Almost as an afterthought is the fact that, at the ripe old age of seventeen, she has accomplished pop music world domination while diligently achieving at the local public school and hanging out with life-long friends from back in the day.

  Yes, you’ve seen her at the high-end parties of late. But she’s never been anything but polite, considerate and respectful. Her parents have taught her well.

  So there you have it. Lorde: Your Heroine is a look at how the singer and the person got to be that way. Obviously there is a lot more to come because it would be a downright shame for somebody who has it this together to fall by the wayside.

  Forget the cheerleaders and the student body members. You can have your prom queens. If there had been a Lorde back when I was seventeen . . .

  . . . I WOULD HAVE BEEN IN LOVE.

  MARC SHAPIRO 2014

  IT ALL SEEMED TO

  BE HAPPENING SO FAST.

  BUT THEN THIS IS POP

  MUSIC IN THE TWENTY - FIRST

  CENTURY, SO IT SHOULDN’T

  COME AS MUCH OF A SURPRISE.

  Less than a year, three albums (two EPs True Love Club, The Tennis Court and her debut full length album, Pure Heroine) and a handful of smash singles (that included her breakout song ‘Royals’, ‘The Tennis Court’, ‘Team’ and ‘No Better’) removed from obscurity, Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor was about to embark on her first full-scale North American tour. She celebrated her seventeenth birthday with the best possible present, a US$2.5 million song publishing deal. She had even managed to get a song on the soundtrack of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, one of the biggest movies of the year.

  If it were possible for a seventeen-year-old to sell her soul to the devil in exchange for immediate success and celebrity, Ella would have to be considered a prime suspect.

  No one was more surprised at Ella’s overnight success than her father, Victor O’Connor. In a radio interview with Newstalk ZB, he commented, ‘It’s an incredible ride, it’s surreal. We always knew she would do well but we never thought that she would do this well.’

  Her given name is a mouthful. Her stage name is an exercise in attitude, independence with a side of pop feminism and teen angst done up in a whole new, smarter way that has quickly left her teen idol contemporaries in the dust.

  THIS IS THE WORLDVIEW

  ACCORDING TO LORDE.

  ‘I would absolutely take my clothes off if I wanted to,’ the doe-eyed seventeen-year-old with the exploding mane of curly hair and quietly expressive mouth told The Telegraph late in 2013. ‘That would be my choice and it would be my own choice for empowerment purposes.’

  Yes, feminism as practised by Lorde is a big part of the story. Not the whole story by any means, but a substantial enough part that most interviewers can barely go a handful of questions before the F word comes into play.

  So bottom line, Lorde is a new breed of feminist, her attitudes are driven by her youth and upbringing. She has not burned her bra. If she has not shaved her armpits it was by choice rather than a symbol of protest. Most of her friends growing up were guys, but she does have a boyfriend and has not held back when she says that all men are not shit.

  But she has also proven to be an equal opportunity practitioner of feminist knowledge. She can barely get through an interview without taking aim at other female pop stars she considers an enemy of any feminist movement. In Metro, she called Taylor Swift out for being ‘flawless, unattainable and somebody who I don’t think is breeding anything good in young girls’. And she immediately turned a whole faction of teen followers to staring internet daggers when she made no bones about the fact that Selena Gomez’s music was sending the wrong message to young girls.

  And when not casting stones at pop stars, she has warmed to the challenge of interpreting a decades old movement for today’s women.

  ‘I think that I’m speaking for a lot of girls when I say that the idea of feminism is completely natural and shouldn’t be something that’s defensive or anti-men,’ she explained in Rookie. ‘I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that there’s often a set of rules and people will be like “Oh this person isn’t a true feminist because they don’t embody this one thing”.’

  But if you stop here, you’re missing the boat because there is more to Lorde beyond whether or not to take off some clothes or to charge into the feminist philosophical battlefield like a modern-day Gloria Steinem.

  Unlike many performers who ditch formal education at the first sniff of success, Lorde has made it a personal goal, as well as an acknowledgement to her intellect-first upbringing, to complete her formal secondary school education while balancing it with a rapid rise up the charts.

  And while far from being stage parents, Lorde’s father and mother are definitely in the picture. Even at this late date, Lorde offered in New Musical Express that her mother still makes her lunches and will take her to the studio. The singer conceded in the same article that ‘I show my parents the stuff I’m doing.’ And while she does take their opinions into consideration, when it comes to career decisions, her parents know when to step back and leave her alone.

  Admittedly there have been some compromises along the way. The recording of her debut album Pure Heroine required a three-month break from school with the okay from her parents. She would also make the most of regularly scheduled school holidays. But Lorde has been diligent in hitting the books.

  And in case she forgets to do her homework, the young singer is never far from that ‘look’ from her mum. As her notoriety has grown, so has the necessity for Lorde to be away from home. Consequently, when she made her earliest promotional trips to New York, Canada and Australia last year, it was a given that her mother or older sister would be along as chaperone. However, even that bit of business came with an agreement of sorts. Mum could only act as mum. Anything beyond that was strictly forbidden.

  Lorde has responded to the question of her comparison to other, paper-thin female pop stars like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry, especially when she made headlines by refusing the offer to open Perry’s recent world tour. It was a controversial decision, one that, doubtless, cost her a lot of money and exposure. But for Lorde, as explained in an interview with 3rd Degree, it was a very easy decision to make.

  ‘I turn down a lot of things. I’m a bit picky about what I do and don’t do. I think she’s really talented. I just don’t think it was quite right for me. I have a pretty good gut instinct for stuff and if something feels right I’ll do it.’

  It’s a difference that she readily compares and contrasts and not always in the most positive terms. Her admirers are not fellow teen stars but rather a more worldly and divergent crowd that has the likes of Kanye West firmly and supportively in her corner.

  To her way of thinking it all goes beyond mere comparison but relates totally to her dedication to doing things her way. And it was an indication that while the world was flocking to her in the same way they did to Justin Bieber and other instant pop star flavors of the moment, Lorde was quite adamant in going her own way.

  ‘It’s not so much that I just arbitrarily say no to everything,’ she explained to radio host Ralphie on New York’s 95.5 WPLJ. ‘It’s just that I care so much about what I do and I’m concerned about keeping what I do pure.’

  And one of the first to notice her rugged individuality was Lava Records president Jason Flom. He signed Lorde to his label on the strength of an EP that was literally being given away on the internet. He explained to Pollstar that he was blown away b
y her music but, perhaps more importantly, he sensed a kind of star quality that does not come along every day.

  ‘Stars to me are, when they walk into a room they take up all the oxygen. She’s the opposite of many of today’s pop stars. There’s something about her that she’s not like other people.’

  She is not fond of doing interviews, and initially avoided them like the plague before she became more accommodating and press savvy. Nor is she a big fan of Facebook and the other offshoots of social media that have been the bread and butter of Bieber and company. It is only with her ascendance in the pop sky that she has reluctantly become more agreeable to doing press. Even with that, she recently told Billboard, ‘If it were up to me there would only be one picture of myself out there.’

  In a way, she is the modern incarnation of the ’30s movie star Greta Garbo: someone who prefers to be in the shadows, a mystery but someone who occasionally pokes her head out to make great music. But with the reality of fame has come the necessity of being a public commodity. She has conceded that to a certain degree but, as she explained in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, she is making a spirited defence of being just like everybody else.

  ‘Fame is such a weird fucking thing,’ she asserted. ‘I try real hard to keep it all a bit real. That’s why I insist on taking public transit. I’m not anyone different just because a couple of people have seen my video on YouTube.’

  Lorde often finds other ways of keeping it real. Like most teens she has what would be called a ‘mouth’ on her. If something rubs her the wrong way, she will tell you it does and why. And in her first year in the public eye, she has not been shy.

  In her vlog, The World According to Lorde, she acknowledged that reggae is not her favourite form of music. ‘I hate reggae. Reggae makes me feel like I’m late for something.’ And while she has had a lot of fun in Los Angeles and thinks the fans have been great, she told The Sun in no uncertain terms that she could not see herself living there. ‘I don’t think I could ever live in Los Angeles. It does something to your soul. The place really infects people. If I stay there too long, I start being a freak.’