[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lorde-bigshot-626x386_9454.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: [[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Feelin' good on a Wednesday...]]]]

[floatboxright:
Influences:
+ Music/JamesBlake, Music/LanaDelRey, Music/LouReed, Music/{{Burial}}, Music/BonIver, Music/{{Drake}}, Music/BillieHoliday, Music/SamCooke, Music/EttaJames, Music/OtisRedding, Music/{{Grimes}}, Music/SleighBells, Music/KanyeWest, Music/{{Radiohead}}, Music/{{Prince}}, Music/LaurieAnderson, Music/FleetwoodMac, Music/{{Yeasayer}}, Music/AnimalCollective, Music/JCole, Music/KatyPerry, James Woon, Cat Stevens, Music/NickiMinaj, Music/KendrickLamar, Music/TheWeeknd, Music/JustinTimberlake, Creator/KurtVonnegut, Raymond Carver, Wells Tower, Tobias Wolff, Claire Vaye Watkins, Creator/SylviaPlath, Creator/WaltWhitman, Creator/TSEliot
Influenced:
+ Music/{{Khalid}}, Music/OliviaRodrigo, Music/TroyeSivan, Music/TessaViolet
]

->''We live in cities you'll never see on-screen\\
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things\\
Livin' in ruins of a palace within my dreams\\
And you know, we're on each other's team\\
I'm kinda over gettin' told to throw my hands up in the air\\
So there\\
I'm kind of older than I was when I reveled without a care\\
So there''
-->-- '''"Team"'''

Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (born 7 November 1996), better known by her {{stage name|s}} Lorde[[note]]Derived from her fascination with "royals and aristocracy", with an "e" added after the name Lord to make what she considered a masculine word more feminine[[/note]], is an IndiePop singer from New Zealand. Beginning her professional career in 2009, and credited as the TropeMaker for the BedroomPop genre that would gain widespread prominence by the end of the [=2010s=], her music usually deals with the problems of adolescence paralleled with her own rise to fame.

Her debut release, ''The Love Club EP'', went #2 in her own country, and her songs "Royals" and "Tennis Court" went #1. In September 2013, she released her debut album ''Music/PureHeroine'' worldwide; it gained an UpdatedRerelease in December of that year, featuring the bonus track "No Better", songs from ''The Love Club EP'', and the "Tennis Court" B-side "[[Music/TheReplacements Swingin Party]]".

At the next year's E3 convention, it was revealed that Lorde's cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Music/TearsForFears was used in the cinematic trailer for Ubisoft's ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedUnity''. It was then revealed that she would be "[[http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/01/lorde-appointed-hunger-games-music-supervisor-mockingjay-part-1 curating]]" the soundtrack for ''Film/TheHungerGamesMockingjayPart1''.

Lorde released her sophomore album ''Melodrama'' in 2017. It features both a different lyrical focus, based off her experience of rising to international stardom, and [[NewSoundAlbum a new sound]]; while still classified within the same "alternative pop" realm as ''Pure Heroine'', it embraces influences from electronic pop and dance music, marking a departure from her previous album's more minimal sound. She also collaborated with British duo Music/{{Disclosure}}, producing the track "Magnets" for their second album. In the same year, she made multiple festival appearances for the first time since 2014, including Coachella and Governors Ball.

In June 2021, she released "Solar Power", the lead single off her third album of the same name. The album was originally meant to be released the previous year but was delayed extensively due to [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic COVID-19]] travel restrictions to New Zealand. She later revealed that the album would only be released digitally and on limited-edition vinyl due to environmental concerns.

Really, ''really'' should not be confused with Music/{{Lordi}} -- although she's [[http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2013-11-19/pronunciation-guide-haim-kodaline-lorde/ confirmed]] her stage name is pronounced as "Lord", not "Lord-ee".

She is also definitely not a [[WesternAnimation/SouthPark 45-year-old geologist from Colorado]].

!!Discography
* ''Music/TheLoveClub EP'' (2013)
* ''Music/PureHeroine'' (2013)
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc "Royals"]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Ymd-OCucs "Tennis Court"]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2JuxM-snGc "Team"]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2nezBfPW8k "No Better"]] [[note]]From the UpdatedRerelease. No official music video. Download only.[[/note]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEHHh8IBhpY "Glory and Gore"]] [[note]]No official music video. Only released to alternative radio[[/note]]
* ''Melodrama'' (2017)
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMK_npDG12Q "Green Light"]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtvJaNeELic "Liability"]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm4_f8804nU&t "Perfect Places"]]
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvgigkaSCZA&t "Sober"]]
* ''Solar Power'' (2021)
* Other singles: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PdILZ_1P74 "Yellow Flicker Beat"]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_KfnGBtVeA "Magnets"]] [[note]]''Disclosure featuring Lorde''[[/note]]
----
!!Tropes include:
* BadToTheBone: Her songs have seen ''a lot'' of use in movie trailers, commercials, and video game soundtracks within a year of her debut.
* BookEnds: "Tennis Court" opens with "Don't you think that it's boring how people talk?" Fast foward to the last song in ''Pure Heroine'''s tracklist, "A World Alone", which closes with "The people that talk, yeah, people that talk, let 'em talk."
* BreakupSong: "Green Light", "Writer in the Dark"
* BrokenRecord:
** ''send the call out send the call out send the call out send the call out send the call out''
** ''I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it. I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it. I'm waiting for it, that green light, I want it...''
* ConceptAlbum: ''Kinda'' with ''Melodrama'': The album screams "break up album", but [[WordOfGod Lorde herself]] stated it isn't, but about the concept of loneliness.
* ContemptibleCover: ''Solar Power'' has a picture of Lorde as she jumped over a friend, a picture she admitted to be "a little hardcore, but it was so joyful to me". Some markets censor her buttocks with a lens flare.
* CoverVersion: A cover of Music/TheReplacements song "Swingin' Party" appears as a b-side to "Tennis Court", as well as the last track on the extended version of ''Pure Heroine''.
** She made a cover of Music/TearsForFears' famous "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" for the ''Catching Fire'' soundtrack.
** She did a surprisingly faithful cover of "[[Music/{{Nirvana}} All Apologies]]" along with the two former members of Nirvana when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
** She covered Jeremih's "Don't Tell 'Em" in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.
** She's also covered James Blake's "Retrograde" live.
** At the 2016 Brit Awards, one month after Music/DavidBowie passed away from liver cancer, she performed "Life on Mars?" with Bowie's final touring band as a tribute to him.
* CutAndPasteSuburb: "400 Lux" is about driving through one of these with a [[TheDriver love interest]].
* DarkerAndEdgier[=/=]DeconstructorFleet: She does this to [[{{Pop}} teen pop]]. Rather than making party songs or more upbeat songs, they look at more of the dramatic and depressing side of being a teen.
** Her cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Music/TearsForFears is this in spades, and arguably fits the lyrics a lot better than the upbeat original.
* DeadpanSnarker: ''You been drinking like the world was about to end (It didn't)''
* {{Fanservice}}: An interesting example; "Royals" sounds like a song that would have lots of fanservice of women in its video, but instead, it has several shots of [[ShirtlessScene half-naked men]], who are usually half naked with [[HoYay each other]]. The one woman in the video is very modestly dressed (in fact, she's only seen from the shoulders up!).
** The cover of ''Solar Power'': An upward short of Lorde jumping with a ''very'' obvious shot of her bare bottom.
* FakeOutFadeOut: "Glory and Gore"
* FreeHandedPerformer: She has admitted to focus on her stage presence and songwriting. "I'm hyper-musical, but I don't really play anything."
* GenreMashup: Her music can be a bit hard to describe due to being both pop ''and'' alternative simultaneously. To break it down: DreamPop, Electronica, {{Synthpop}}, {{Minimalism}}, {{Ambient}}, IndiePop, Art Pop, DarkWave, Contemporary, and even a few traces of HipHop can be found in the beats.
* GratuitousPanning: Features heavily in both "Ribs" and "Still Sane", emphasizing the chaos and confusion running through her mind in both of these songs.
* GrowingUpSucks: The main theme of "Ribs".
* HatesSmallTalk: On "Tennis Court"
-->''Don't you think that it's boring how people talk?''
* IAmTheBand
* IcyBlueEyes: They come off as this sometimes, especially in the "Royals" video (pictured above).
* IdenticalStranger: She and fellow pop singer Music/CharliXCX bear a strong resemblance to each other, enough that Charli [[http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/fashion-beauty/charli-xcx-people-mistook-me-for-lorde-30456576.html gets mistaken for Lorde by fans in public]] when she wears curly hair. That they both have strong foreign accents just adds to it.
* IndiePop: Has quickly become a TropeCodifier for it.
* TheInvisibleBand: Subverted in the "Royals" music video. It seems like the video would just be about the teenage boys and their dull lives, but Lorde finally pops in two minutes in. The US version expands her presence.
* KidHero / ImprobableAge: Became one of the biggest music artists in the world at only 16.
* LighterAndSofter: ''Solar Power'' seems to be going in this direction, if the title track gives indication: While it features the usual blunt Lorde lyrical themes, the music is much gentler and the music video gave off a much more lively and fun vibe than the bleak atmosphere of ''Melodrama'' or even the deconstructive nature of ''Pure Heroine''.
* LyricalColdOpen: "Tennis Court", "Royals", "Team"
* MinimalisticCoverArt: ''Pure Heroine''. Nothing but the names of the artist and the album.
* {{Minimalis|m}}t [[GenreMashup Indie Pop]]: Her main style, mixed with a [[{{Ambient}} few]] [[DarkWave other]] [[SynthPop genres]].
* MoneySong: "Royals" is an attack on this type of music, criticizing it for promoting a lifestyle that 99% of people can only experience from their television screens. It's Creator/CharlieBrooker's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59OJ17raqWw "aspirational TV" rant]] as a song.
* MotorcycleJousting: In the video for "Team", Lorde heads up a secret society as two guys participate in motorcycle jousting as part of the initiation process.
* MyspeldRokband: Her name is a feminized version of "Lord". She chose it because she thought an aristocratic name sounded cool, but "Lord" on its own is too masculine to pass as a name for her.
* NonAppearingTitle: "400 Lux"
* OddFriendship: She's quickly become one of the best friends of Music/TaylorSwift.
** Back in her primary school days, the musically-inclined Lorde was school friends with the athletically-inclined [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_McCartney Eliza [=McCartney=]]], who went on to win the women's pole vault bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics.
* OdeToYouth: Arguably the primary theme of ''Pure Heroine''.
* TheOner: Her music video for "Tennis Court", which is just one shot of the lights flashing and her lip-syncing "yeah" every so often.
* OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent: During her 2013 rise to fame, she was just an ordinary Year 12 student at Auckland's Takapuna Grammar School when she was not in the studio or on tour. She decided not to return for her final year in 2014.
* OrdinaryPeoplesMusicVideo: "Royals" features the singer's real-life friends, with the music video following the day in the lives of four teenage boys as they stare out of a window, eat some cereal, lay on the couch, box in a living room, buzz cut hair, tread water alone in a swimming room, and wait listlessly for the train. [[RealIsBrown Even the lighting is gloomy and drab.]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFasFq4GJYM In the video's YouTube description,]] Lorde explains that the video pushes back against how {{Teen Drama}}s such as ''Series/{{Skins}}'' depict [[TVTeen teenage life as glamorous]], when in her view, "half the time we aren't doing anything cooler than playing with lighters, or waiting at some shitty stop."
* PlasterCastDoodling: She once broke her arm before the Met Gala and went to the event with a cast on it. Music/TaylorSwift, Music/KanyeWest, Creator/LilyCollins, and Creator/AnselElgort all signed her cast, and [[https://www.eonline.com/news/761899/someone-drew-a-penis-on-lorde-s-cast-at-the-2016-met-gala-and-wrote-met-balls- some celebrity went ahead and wrote "Met Balls" with a drawing of a dick]].
* PrecisionFStrike: And she was only ''sixteen years old'' when ''Pure Heroine'' came out.
** Her song "Tennis Court" includes the first f-bomb in her music, causing the biggest controversy over a female swearing since [[Film/KickAss Hit-Girl]].
** "Still Sane" has a couple instances of "shit".
** From "Perfect Places"
--->''All these nights spent off our faces, trying to find these perfect places. What the fuck are perfect places, anyway?''
** "Sober" has a pretty strong one:
--->''Jack and Jill got fucked up and possessive when they get dark''
** On being asked what she thinks of a collaboration with Music/DavidGuetta, she says quite simply [[http://www.pedestrian.tv/news/music/lorde-says-thanks-but-no-thanks-to-david-guetta-co/a79b7fcf-bd25-4e4a-9194-3bfdce687cc8.htm 'Fuck no. He's so gross.']]
* PrefersGoingBarefoot: Going along with the summery, earthy vibe of her album "Solar Power", she is barefoot in all of the album's music videos and frequently in live TV performances promoting it.
* {{Pride}}:
** She has confessed that she finds herself arrogant, and on "Royals" she asks you to call her "Queen Bee".[[note]]A.K.A. the leader of a clique in high school.[[/note]]
** Played with on "Still Sane"
--->''If only bad people live to see their likeness set in stone, what does that make me?''
* PunBasedTitle: ''Pure Heroine''. Drugs and self-bragging. Well done, miss.
* RapIsCrap: Downplayed on "Royals". The reference points she uses in the chorus (expensive liquor brands, fancy cars, gold teeth) are drawn mostly from 2000s GlamRap, but she wrote the song mainly as a critique of contemporary ''pop'' music in general.
* RecordProducer: Joel Little for both ''The Love Club'' and ''Pure Heroine'', then [[{{Music/Fun}} Jack Antonoff]] for the vast majority of ''Melodrama'' (only not working on "Homemade Dynamite") and the entirety of ''Solar Power''.
* RoseTintedNarrative:
** "Supercut" is a {{Deconstruction}} of this, with the titular supercut being a metaphor for Lorde's positive memories of a failed relationship. She can dwell on all the times it made her happy, but they're still just ''memories'', and it ultimately makes her yearn for a relationship that she knows was already doomed.
** "Mood Ring" similarly deconstructs it, with the practices taken by the ladies in the music video and lyrics being framed as largely empty ways for people to ''feel'' like they're feeling positive without getting anything meaningful out of it.
* SelfBackingVocalist: She does this constantly. In fact, it's very hard to find any instrumentation besides some synth and percussion, a good portion of her music is almost entirely voice.
** Most obvious either at the start of "Team" (which is just her singing, getting gradually pitched down and then the actual instruments kick in), or at the beginning and end of "Yellow Flicker Beat", which is just her humming.
* SelfDeprecation: There is video of her singing [[WesternAnimation/SouthPark Randy Marsh's]] version of one of her songs.
* SexyPackaging: The cover of "Solar Power".
* ShrinkingViolet: Her song "Bravado" is about an introvert struggling in an extroverted family.
* SingingVoiceDissonance: Being as she's a UsefulNotes/{{New Zealand}}er who sings in a "neutral" accent, yeah.
* ShoutOut:
** "All Work And No Play Doesn't Make Me Lose It" is a reference to ''Film/TheShining'' and "we gladiate but I guess we're really fighting ourselves" refers to ''Film/FightClub'' in Glory and Gore.
** Inspiration for the title "Royals" and the iconic line "And we'll never be Royals" came from a photo Lorde saw of Kansas City Royals icon George Brett getting swamped for autographs.
* StepfordSmiler: "Tennis Court" contains the lyric "We're so happy, even when we're smiling out of fear."
* StepfordSuburbia: Buzzcut Season sounds like it may be about one of these.
--> ''Explosions on TV, and all the girls with heads inside a dream, so now we live beside the pool, where everything is good.''
* TheBeautifulElite: White Teeth Teens.
* TheStoic: Always comes off as cold and indifferent in both her music and videos.
* TakeThat:
** "Royals" is all about how modern music is about things that most people never get to experience, like colossal wealth and pop-star/rap-star lives.
** "Team" has a TakeThat towards the dance music boom of [[TheNewTens the early tens.]]
--->I'm kinda over getting told to throw my hands up in the air, ''so there''
** "Mood Ring" from the ''Solar Power'' album takes a shot at empty new age-ist practices sought out by people who desperately want to feel peace in a turbulent world, while also sympathizing with them.
** She's also said a few choice words about her peers. Mostly against passive/opulent contemporary's of hers. She said that Lana Del Rey was irrelevant and unrelatable to teenagers.
** There's an entire [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlxOt61L7WQ laundry list]] of people she's dissed. [[SelfDeprecation Including herself.]]
** When producer/rapper Diplo made fun of her friend Music/TaylorSwift on Twitter, saying someone should "get [her] a booty", she replied that [[TeenyWeenie someone should get him a larger penis first.]]
** She also called out Teen Vogue for photoshopping a cover photo of her to make her skin look flawless and posted the original, untouched picture to prove it.
* TitleDrop: Not from ''Pure Heroine'' but from ''Melodrama'', on "Sober II (Melodrama)":
--> ''the '''fucking''' melodrama..''
--> ''this was melodrama...''
* TheVamp: She's one in the "Magnets" video, aggressively seducing an older man away from his wife. [[spoiler:Of course it's all an act; she's a ProfessionalKiller hired by the wife to kill him because she had enough of his abuse.]]
* WhamLine: From "White Teeth Teens:"
-->''I'll let you in on something big, [[spoiler: I am not a white teeth teen.]]''
* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: [[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11548443 Some have noted]] that all the time she spent abroad in the United States has clearly Americanized her New Zealand accent.
* WiseBeyondTheirYears
* WomanScorned: "Green Light". She is very clear that she is ''not'' happy how things end.
-->''Those great whites, they have big teeth''
-->''Hope they bite you''
* YoungerThanSheLooks: Zig-zagged. When she's in full makeup an photographed from the right angle, many people have a hard time taking her for 17. On the other hand, any type of paparazzi photos that show her in private averts this trope. [[http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2013-12-04/lorde-bikini-photos/ See here for example.]]
----
-->''And we'll never be royals.''