Pure Heroine Lorde

• 1Tennis Court03:20
• 2400 Lux03:54
• 3Royals03:10
• 4Ribs04:19
• 5Buzzcut Season04:07
• 6Team03:13
• 7Glory And Gore03:31
• 8Still Sane03:08
• 9White Teeth Teens03:36
• 10A World Alone04:55
• Total Runtime37:13

Info for Pure Heroine

2013 debut album from New Zealand singer/songwriter Ella Yelich-O'Connor AKA Lorde. It'd be easy to mistake Ella for a seasoned tunesmith from the American South, one who carries a heavy heart that's been ravaged by careless men over time. But in truth, Lorde recorded these songs as a 16-year old Kiwi championed by the likes of Perez Hilton and Grimes. She has a timeless knack for songcraft with a sophisticated pop savvy that most people over 30 can't find without collaboration. Lorde needs no collaborative hacks -- she writes and sings her own songs. Even when she sings in her higher vocal range about teenage politics, Lorde carries herself with the grace and poise of someone like Beth Orton.

The miraculous thing about Pure Heroine is that it actually does work. It’s everything to everyone, and yet it all comes together as a unified sound. In a recent piece for SPIN, US critic Chris Weingarten talks about how “stripping down” has suddenly become a “cool thing to do”. Weingarten was talking about this move towards minimalism in relation to Kanye West’s Yeezus – which SPIN anointed their album of the year – but it’s equally applicable to Pure Heroine, which is never really more than icy beats, synths and that voice (sometimes layered to the power of 1000).

Like Kanye and old mate Rick Rubin, Lorde and producer Joel Little understood that cutting through in 2013, meant stripping back. And it’s this clarity of message and production that delivered ‘Royals’ (and, by extension, Pure Heroine) to the top of whatever feed you were scrolling through while waiting for your sandwich/sitting on the toilet/taking the bus. It takes an almighty moment to penetrate through that clusterfuck – and Pure Heroine is just that. Its inability to be pigeonholed was arguably its greatest strength in a year in which being all things to everyone became a super important thing to do.

Ella Yelich-O'Connor (a.k.a Lorde), Gesang

Recorded at Golden Age, Auckland, New Zealand
Engineered and mixed by Joel Little
Mastered by Stuart Hawkes, of Metropolis Mastering
Produced by Joel Little

Ella Yelich-O'Connor
Lorde (born Ella Yelich-O’Connor in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand on November 7, 1996) is a pop singer. Employing a stylish mix of arty, confessional bedroom pop and club-ready electro-rock that has drawn comparisons to the likes of Grimes, Lana Del Rey, and Sky Ferreira, New Zealand singer/songwriter Ella Yelich-O'Connor, who goes by the stage name Lorde, became an Internet sensation at the age of 16 with the video for her debut single, "Royals," which garnered over 750,000 hits on YouTube. Her 2013 debut EP, The Love Club, hit the number one spot on both the New Zealand and Australian charts. The New Zealander continued her meteoric rise to fame in 2013 with a growing fan base and began sessions for her debut album, Pure Heroine, with producer Joel Little.

This album contains no booklet.