Serenading the cattle

Watch as farmer Derek Klingenberg calls his cattle in by playing Lorde’s Royals on his trombone.

I can’t tell if this is the perfect Monday video or the perfect Friday video. Maybe I’ll post it again on Friday and we’ll compare. (via the esteemed surgeon and writer @atul_gawande)

• Lorde
• music
• video

Tavi interviews Lorde

We may not have our jetpacks and hover cars, but our future-now has given us Tavi Gevinson interviewing Lorde and that’s just as good.

Tavi: On that note, you have a very unique way of looking at the suburb where you live, which I think you’ve called “the Bubble.” When did you realize the suburbs could be a source of inspiration?

Lorde: Well…this sounds so lame, but I grew up reading your blog, man! [Laughs]

Tavi: Oh no! “Ugh, that’s so LAME, shut up!”

Lorde: [Laughs] But no, I think there is something really cool about that whole Virgin Suicides vibe of making even the bad parts bearable. I hate high school so much, but there’s something kind of cool about walking around on the coldest day listening to “Lindisfarne” by James Blake or something and feeling like something has happened, even though it’s the worst thing ever. The album The Suburbs by Arcade Fire was influential to me in that as way well. I just think that record is really beautiful and nostalgic and so well-written. It’s a super-direct way of talking about what it’s like to grow up [in the suburbs], and I think that’s quite lovely.

You’re asking about stuff I’m not used to talking about in interviews, so I don’t have a stock way of driving the question.

Tavi: OK, then: “Do you feel 17?”

Lorde: AGHHHH! What do you even say to that, honestly?

Tavi: It’s kind of a trap, because if you say yes you’re shitting on their question by making it seem obvious, but if you say no you seem like you think you’re older and better.

Lorde: I always get these weird people being like, “Oh, she’s growing up way too fast, she looks 30.” Oh, god.

Tavi: People always say that. I remember — not to be all Mother Hen —

Lorde: No, go for it!

Tavi: I remember when people started paying attention to what I was doing, and it was like, “She should be getting knocked up like all the other kids her age!” It’s like, you complain when you think teenagers are stupid, and then when they try to do something, you’re all, “Oh, they’re growing up too fast, they don’t know what’s good for them.”

Lorde: It seems like a double standard to me. And there’s another part of it which I find really strange, which is that so many interviewers, even ones that I consider really intelligent and good writers, will do the, like, “Oh, you’re not taking your clothes off like Miley Cyrus and all these girls” thing, which to me is just the weirdest thing to say to someone. But then people will say, “She’s always talking about being bored, that’s petulant,” which I feel like is kind of taking the piss out of teenage emotions-just, like, making light of how teenagers feel. When people react that way about things that every teenager experiences, how can you expect to make anything good?

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• Lorde
• music
• Tavi Gevinson

How Lorde became Lorde

New Zealand journalist Duncan Greive caught onto Lorde early and has written the self-styled “definitive inside account of Ella Yelich-O’Conner’s rise to the top”.

For advertising, Maclachlan calls in Alistair Cain, Universal New Zealand’s head of marketing, and plays an early cut of the television commercial on his computer. Ella wants to keep the date rendered in Roman numerals. It looks crazy (XXVII.IX.MMXIII). She won’t be moved. After an hour, they’re done.

Afterwards, Cain says that in 20 years in the industry he’s never come across an artist so engaged with the minutiae of their presentation. He points up at a giant poster of Lana Del Rey. “With her, we could do whatever we liked,” he says.

Ella is frequently compared to Del Rey, though it infuriates her. Both are white women making pop music soaked in the rhythm and attitude of hip-hop. But Del Rey has a much more conventional narrative — she had an image makeover prior to her breakout Born To Die album, and co-writes her songs with some of the biggest producers and writers in the industry.

Ella’s songs, meanwhile, are very much her vision, and hers alone.

• Duncan Greive
• Lorde
• music