The charming honesty about her lack of worldliness combined with simple, sparse production resonated, with the album going triple platinum by 2016 and earning Lorde two GRAMMYS, including Song of the Year for 'Royals.'Īs the title implies, Melodrama isn't quite as jubilant. Early singles like 'Tennis Court'' and 'Royals' emphasize Lorde's humble upbringing, noting how she'd never seen a diamond or even been on a plane.Įven on tracks without such direct acknowledgements of her youth, Pure Heroine found Lorde wide-eyed and eager to explore the world opening up to her, with its Joel Little production matching the starstruck, humble demeanor of the lyrics. In 2013, Lorde was not that far removed from just being Ella Yelich-O'Connor, a kid from a suburban New Zealand town of less than 10,000. The Lorde of Melodrama is very different from the Lorde of Pure Heroine, not only in sound but in demeanor. Melodrama - released five years ago today, on June 16th, 2017 - not only cemented Lorde's legacy as a defining voice of pop's new generation, but altered pop around the sound Antonoff and Lorde created together.

As detailed in a 2017 New York Times profile, Antonoff's innate balance 'between the intimate and the outsize' was a perfect fit for the musical world Lorde was looking to create with Melodrama - and the result was massive. But until Melodrama, Antonoff had yet to take on a lead producer role for another artist.Īntonoff and Lorde shared a friend in Swift, and after hitting it off at a GRAMMY party in 2014, they tried out their chemistry in the studio. (Antonoff has credited Swift for getting his production career off the ground he has two Album Of The Year GRAMMYs thanks to his work on 2014's 19's folklore ). guitarist/drummer and Bleachers frontman to producing songs for major pop players like Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swift. 'Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record - well, this one is about what comes next,' she wrote in a Facebook post, as she left her teenage years behind.Īt the same time, Jack Antonoff had gone from fun. 6, 2016, the eve of her 20th birthday, when she revealed that her sophomore album did in fact exist.

Aside from the 2013-2014 Pure Heroine Tour, Lorde spent much of the intervening four years living a mostly secluded life - until Nov. The New Zealand singer/songwriter first made a name for herself at just 16 with her GRAMMY-nominated debut album, 2013's Pure Heroine. As 2017 began, one pop star's name served as a mainstay on lists of the year's most-anticipated albums : Lorde.

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