The program of Zane Lowe In Apple Music it has become an international reference in issues of great artists interviewed, so I could not miss the opportunity to interview Lorde on the occasion of its recent quarter long duration, “Virgin”.
As we usually do, we reproduce the most outstanding parts of the interview, which you can also see on video of about forty -five minutes under these lines. Throughout the interview, Lorde talks with Lowe on different songs, from his adolescence to the creation of some of the album’s songs.
Lorde counts in Apple Music how his song “Hammer” emerged
(Lorde) It really was at the end of 2023. We wrote a version. I had just left the contraceptives and I couldn’t believe how I felt. Everything was pure possibility. I felt that type of energy source used and it was crazy. He was in New York, walking and was incredible. It was great. It was the spring of ’24 when we did, we left it aside, we did not think it was going to be on the album. Jimmy associated with Buddy Ross, who did a lot of different things. Jimmy made that version. He put it in Facetime and I thought: “Ham is back, he has returned to the album.” And from there I felt that it was a kind of very cool piece of the project … I tried to keep it as crude and pure as possible. Buddy’s sounds are so earthly and there is such purity in them that they are unmistakably machine made, but there is also something in that first sound of the theme “Hammer” seems to come from a very guttural place in a body. My sister said: “Sounds as if it came from your belly.”
Lorde counts in Apple Music how the song “Favorite Daughter” emerged
(Lorde) “Favorite Daughter” is interesting. I think that almost all the songs on this album, if they are aimed at a person, are a compendium of people and moments that have made me feel something. That song is about my relationship with my mother, which is the reason why I do everything I do, she is my model. But when I say: “All the medals I have managed to break my back to get your favorite daughter,” I feel that I am also singing to the public. There has been this dynamic during the last ten or twelve years and further back, to want to be loved and obtain that approval and be the favorite. And it was really moving for me how, even when I was singing that song about my most important idol and the person I think is the most incredible in the world, I was also singing about how crazy it is that it happened to me what happened to me at 16, suddenly getting on a plane and another from one show to another …
Lorde speaks in Apple Music about the crucial moment in which his career was rethink and felt about a breakdown
(Lorde) I think it was at some point around the late 2022, early 2023, all those different things converged, those things I had been building, suddenly felt my whole adult life. I had that deep moment of existential reevaluation of my role. I thought why am I on this role? What is the way I want to be good and healthy for me? “Because I tried that negative in “Solar Power”and something was missing. I felt that those songs touched my skin and did not hook my guts. I told myself: “This is not the best moment of your life you are in.”
I had had a heartbreaking problem with food and my body until 2022. There was a lot of that in “Solar Power”In fact. I was so hungry. I’m lucky that I was able to deal with that. But, I felt like a breakdown. I remember waking up one day and saying: “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t go to bed thinking about everything I ate during the day and wake up worried about all the shit I’m going to eat.”
(Zane Lowe) is a mental prison. It is the height of torture.
(Lorde) I completely stole all my vital strength and creativity. The most boring era of my life. And then, I felt that I was twenty -five years old and thought: “Wait. There has always been someone who was my God. I’ve always chosen someone. They were my parents.” As it happens to many people. And then, put a person, another person, another person, generally men, but not always. And that was what I did to protect me, look for someone who had the answers about what my life was destined to be. Actually, I had the feeling at the beginning of 2023 that I had to cut a lot of strings, be alone, see what I could grow in me to be able to be in my life in the way I need.
It was hard. I left my relationship and made great changes in general. I went to London to try to meet people to work with. I started working with Fabiana, working with a woman was really incredible and restorative. So I spent a year trying to find a more sustainable connection with the power in me …
Lorde speaks in Apple Music about how he became famous at an early age and how he sees his fame now
(Lorde) I think that for a long time I have tried to be very dual about it. When I am in the study or in the United States, I am an artist. When I return home, to New Zealand, I am not an artist and I turn off that part of me. Obviously, it is sometimes impossible. With “Solar Power” I tried to get to the end. I didn’t feel very good. Now I have realized that you have to find the purest version of yourself, and the purest version of me is famous in the world. It’s just that you are perhaps in a garden experiencing the death of the ego in the middle of the night with a dose of heroicity. All this makes sense, because the most complex part of this album is that I took very psychedelic paths until I got here and be able to get it.