Ella Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde, says she’s not resting on the laurels of one hit album. Photo / Phil Knott
Ella Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde, says she’s not resting on the laurels of one hit album. Photo / Phil Knott
She's the pop phenomenon of 2013, scoring four Grammy nominations, the top spot on record charts around the world and hanging out with A-list stars. Ella Yelich-O'Connor talks to Alan Perrot about the biggest year of her life and her Kiwi Christmas
All teens suspect someone somewhere is watching them, possibly even judging them.
It's the vulnerability and narcissism of youth and Lorde's probably no different when you get down to it, except for one minor detail. She knows with absolute certainty she's being watched. And that it's constant.
Total strangers in places she's never heard of know both of her names, her face, her art, her fashion choices, the age of her boyfriend and that she supposedly feuds with her fellow pop stars.
You'd need godlike levels of self-confidence to dip into her world.
Sure, there are oodles of adulating fans to listen to should she wish, but we're talking the internet here and that means at least as many people are professing to care neither one way or the other while going to huge lengths to explain just how unimpressed they are.
The rest are horribly vile.
Can you imagine being the subject of the repellent clip that US blogsite TMZ posted on YouTube last week of them discussing paparazzi photographs of Lorde swimming at an Auckland beach with her photographer boyfriend James Lowe, and their eight-year age gap?
To think she'd been looking forward to returning home because we'd be "relaxed, chilled, positive and supportive, and I can be terrifyingly normal".
But then hers is a level of fame we struggle to get our heads around. We've never had one of our own become this big this fast. Especially when, only a few months ago, we didn't know she existed.
Remember how we celebrated Pauly Fuemana when How Bizarre became a radio hit in America? That song has since been Kiwiana'd. And how we celebrated John Rowles when If I Only Had Time got to No3 in the UK? Who couldn't sing along to Cheryl Moana Marie?
Or when we debated ownership of Crowded House with Australia when they began charting everywhere?
Photo / Phil Knott
So, how should we respond to Lorde?
Mostly we've gone for slack-jawed amazement. Well, that or cynical disbelief that someone so young could do so well without some shadowy majordomo whispering lines into her ear.
But then it really is rather dizzying when you look at the crazy numbers. Her first single, Royals, spent nine weeks enjoying the view from the top of the US Billboard chart, with around eight million sales (going platinum in mid-October) and who knows how many who stop to listen whenever it comes on the radio.
It was also No1 in Australia, Britain, Belgium, Canada, Ireland and, naturally, here.
It also topped the iTunes chart in 45 countries ranging from Laos to Paraguay and on into Latvia and Qatar.
Her album, Pure Heroine, also was a hit, kicking off at No1 here, then becoming the highest debut for a Kiwi album in the US and reaching four in the UK.
Lumped together, she has sold more music this year than New Zealanders have bought.
Then there were the clips of Lorde vamping her way through the US talk shows, singing for and then (swoon) meeting Bowie and Tilda Swinton, hanging out in Central Park with Taylor Swift, and swapping texts with Cher. Between there were accusations of racism and the occasional spat with starlets like Cyrus, Swift and Gomez.
"I totally walked into it, though," she says. "I mean I'm a normal human being and I was being asked for my opinion, so I say something completely innocently, honestly and from the heart, then I get screwed."
If you're worried her new frenemies will be cold shouldering her from now on, though:
"No, not at all, they know the game."
On the other hand, such exchanges show she's now part of a VIP section most can't get access to, and she's got in on her own terms, fully clothed and without a vocoder in sight.
Yes, that minx Miley Cyrus eventually ended Lorde's hopes of extending her stint as US No1 into double weekly figures, but the disappointment was surely eased when the release of Lorde's Team video broke a fairly reliable part of the internet.
Then, as a kicker, she joined an all-star cast of performers for the announcement of the Grammy nominations, a live telecast with an audience of about 25 million. Who knows what'll happen if and when she wins a Grammy? (She's nominated for four: song of the year, record of the year, best pop solo performance and best pop vocal album.)
When you put all this together the assumption is that real life Ella Yelich-O'Connor and her producer Joel Little are now totally loaded (there's a rumour that her team have taken to calling Royals "Royalties".) Loaded to the extent that if they looked after their money carefully they may never need to work another day in their lives.
"That's just mental, isn't it? It's the craziest thing to think about, the possibilities ... I'm just so lucky that I now have a platform to do whatever I want to do, and it feels good.