The first song Lorde ever wrote was inspired by Larry Clark’s ‘Kids’
It seems as if Ella Yelich O’Connor, more commonly known as Lorde, has been on the scene for a while now. Somewhat surprisingly, it’s been a decade since the singer first burst onto the scene in 2013 with the surprise smash-hit of ‘Royals’. The single catapulted Lorde to fame and made her debut album, Pure Heroine, a significant commercial and critical success. At the green age of 16, Lorde topped the charts and won two Grammys for the song, and since then, she’s never looked back.
As longtime fans of the New Zealander will know, the success of Pure Heroine was monumental for an artist of her age, let alone a newcomer, and it became one of the best-selling albums of 2014. As well as being a remarkably sharp exploration of the familiar teenage feelings of disillusionment and angst, Lorde went much deeper than expected and analysed fame, consumerism and broader popular culture. As it was the age of Tumblr, Lorde instantly became a cult hero, with the adolescents who championed her back then providing her fanbase with a solid foundation to this day.
As Pure Heroine made her a major name in contemporary popular culture, Lorde delivered on her early promise by releasing Melodrama in 2017 and then Solar Power in 2021. Underpinning this success is that she’s never been afraid to try something new, and across her oeuvre, she’s experimented with styles ranging from electro-pop to psychedelia.
As if it wasn’t clear from her recordings, Lorde’s taste is a varied one. As well as citing the likes of Etta James and Otis Redding as influences, classic rock acts such as Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac have helped her establish her style. Interestingly, during her formative days, Lorde also had a penchant for more hard-hitting acts such as Massive Attack, Fugazi, Bloc Party, At the Drive-In and PJ Harvey.
As shown at points in Pure Heroine, like most of us, Lorde possessed her fair share of angst as a teenager, and she even brought this point into full focus when she revealed to MTV News that the first song she wrote, ‘Dope Ghost’, was inspired by Larry Clark’s 1995 hard-hitting drama Kids. This was a startling admission, as no one at the age she was when she wrote it, 13, could be prepared for what it entails. In what is an incredibly tough watch, with HIV and sexual assault prominent themes, the Harmony Korine screenplay ultimately changed contemporary cinema as we know it.
“I’ve always written. I wrote short stories until I was about 13 and then messed around with songwriting until I got a bit better,” Lorde told MTV News, before revealing the scope of her angst. “[My first song] was called ‘Dope Ghost.’ I had just watched that Larry Clark movie Kids and I thought it was rad. I think it was poking fun at this girl in my year who was kind of going off the rails.”
