10 Years after ‘Pure Heroine’ Lorde Still Reigns Supreme

A decade ago, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Carly Rae Jepsen were the female singers that dominated the charts as artists whose discographies were catchy radio earworms filled with loud imagery, suggestive lyrics, and raucous celebrations. It was the kind of music that was fitting for 2012, soundtracking the farewell party of a generation amidst conspiracies that the world was going to end.

The success of Lorde’s “Royals” may not have made sense at the time, but in retrospect, it’s almost poetic. Released in 2013 as the lead single off “Pure Heroine,” it would turn out to be the thesis of the album, one tapped into the nihilistic teenage ennui of the time. For a world that had been denied its apocalypse, Lorde emerged, guns blazing and voice reverently hushed, expressing her disdain for materialism. “Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece / Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash,” she croons. “We don’t care / We aren’t caught up in your love affair.”

To understand Lorde would be to delve into the contradictions that she represents. Born Ella Yelich-O’Connor in the quiet New Zealand suburbs, she took inspiration from aristocracy in picking her stage name “Lorde.” “I wanted a name that was really strong and had a grandeur to it,” she said in an interview with ABC News.

It was an apt choice. Regal imagery comes up again and again in “Pure Heroine.” It goes without saying that it manifests most clearly in “Royals,” the smash hit that hurtled her into the stratosphere of mainstream pop. “Royals” is a scathing critique of the decadent lifestyles and opulence that Lorde found in mainstream media, a world away from her teenage reality in Auckland. Her lyrics are ironic, and yet they are true precisely because of their irony.

“Let me be your ruler,” she sings in Royals’s now ubiquitous chorus. Instead of being a demand, there’s an aching awareness in how Lorde adapts the language of nobility to sing about her own desires as a teenager in the suburbs dreaming of being more and yet wrestling with the overwhelming struggle of growing up.

Inadvertently or not, “Pure Heroine” also threw down a gauntlet to the music culture at large. How could it not, when the album succeeded in the very sphere of mainstream consumerist culture that it criticized? Lorde proved that commercial success could be had without the ingredients typical of the singers that came before her: One didn’t need insane vocal runs, or explicit lyrics, to succeed. She paved the way for “whisperpop” and confessional lyricism, an intimate form of pop that feels more like a conversation than party music. Today’s “sad girl indie,” a genre in which female songwriters chronicle intensely personal narratives, arguably found its beginnings with Lorde.

In “Pure Heroine,” Lorde champions the ordinary, painting the suburban teenage life with glitz and glamor. “Ribs” takes the pains of teenage adolescence and turns it into an adventure: “This dream isn’t feeling sweet / We’re reeling through the midnight streets / And I’ve never felt more alone / It feels so scary, getting old.”

“Pure Heroine” exaggerates and satirizes, but it ultimately is a celebration of the everyday teenager. In a music industry that, at the time, seemed to churn out song after song about wild partying, whirlwind romances and opulent materialism, Lorde tapped into a psyche of the mundane. In Lorde’s music, the humdrum of the ordinary becomes epic. The teenage hangout becomes an examination of the studied detachment of youth in “Tennis Court”: “It’s a new art form / Showing people how little we care,” she sings.

It works because it’s true: For the teenager preoccupied with growing pains, every small issue feels world-ending. The gravitas that Lorde gives to teenage angst in “Pure Heroine” is validation for her listeners. Olivia Rodrigo, in an interview with The Rolling Stone, cited Lorde as one of her biggest inspirations growing up: “I remember hearing ‘Royals’ on the radio on the radio,” she said. “I was like, ‘Wow, you can make a song about anything you’re feeling.’ It doesn’t have to be this breakup song. She wrote an album about what it was like to be 15 in the suburbs and feeling lost.” It’s thus no surprise that Rodrigo’s albums vibrate with a Lorde-like cynicism and anger about the teenage experience. In fact, Rodrigo in many ways is to today’s teenage girls what Lorde was back in the 2010s: a teenage girl trying to figure it all out, writing songs that are both cynical and confessional at the same time.

The influence of “Pure Heroine” isn’t just seen in Rodrigo’s albums. Introspective lyrics and intimate storytelling are scattered throughout mainstream pop today, from Phoebe Bridgers and Hozier to Taylor Swift. Sabrina Carpenter, Conan Gray and Troye Sivan are part of a new generation of young artists that cite Lorde as one of their musical inspirations.

But perhaps the thing that sets Lorde apart from the rest is that she practices what she preaches. For Lorde, music isn’t her life: It’s a vacation. “I come back and perform these duties because I believe in the album,” she said in an interview with The New York Times, referring to her promoting and touring her third album, “Solar Power.” She took four years after “Pure Heroine” to release her sophomore album “Melodrama,” and four years after that to release “Solar Power.” These are long breaks in the context of the music industry, which is infamous for its frighteningly short memory.

It would be disingenuous to say that Lorde shuns the spotlight, but she definitely doesn’t bask in it: She is as careful of the harm that celebrity brings as her music, and lyrics, suggest. In the years between releasing albums and going on tour, she spent her time living in New Zealand, going to the beach, and simply existing. Perhaps that is why “Pure Heroine” withstands the test of time. It rings as true today as it did a decade ago, in part because it crystallized the universal teenage experience that every generation goes through, but also because its creator is so grounded and confident in who she is.

A decade later, the world has come down from the high of “Pure Heroine.” Lorde has, likewise, faded from superstardom, despite having released two albums since. “Melodrama” didn’t perform as well as “Pure Heroine” did, but that was to be expected; “Pure Heroine” was a moonshot, an album that became a phenomenon. Still, “Melodrama” held its own, earning widespread acclaim and legions of passionate fans.

Instead, the best way to understand Lorde’s attitude towards music-making is her response when The New York Times asked her about third album, “Solar Power,” in an interview right before its release. “There’s definitely not a smash,” she responded with a cackle. To ask what happened to Lorde would be to assume that she was chasing commercial success. But the singer-songwriter has always been one to chart her own path.

—Staff writer Angelina X. Ng can be reached at angelina.ng@thecrimson.com.