The Lorde song that almost made her sick
There’s a secret weapon that New Zealand pop star Lorde uses to judge her music: synesthesia. The ability to translate music or words into different colours helped the singer define the music that she crafted for her debut, 2013’s Pure Heroine. When it came to the song ‘Tennis Court’, Lorde pulled from childhood imagery and experiences that illuminated the track.
“I’ve always been really fascinated by the visual concept of the tennis court,” she told MTV News. “Then also there’s a tennis court in my hometown where me and my friends would hang out when we were kids, right up until we were teenagers, and that was just a symbol that felt kind of nostalgic to me.”
However, ‘Tennis Court’ almost didn’t make the cut because of Lorde’s colourful reaction to the track. “If a song’s colours are too oppressive or ugly, sometimes I won’t want to work on it,” Lorde revealed on her Tumblr page.
Adding: “When we first started ‘Tennis Court’, we just had that pad playing the chords, and it was the worst textured tan colour, like really dated, and it made me feel sick, and then we figured out that pre-chorus and I started the lyric, and the song changed to all these incredible greens overnight!”
Producer Joel Little shed some light on the process of bringing ‘Tennis Court’ to life. “Up until that point, she would bring lyrics, and we would take inspiration from there as to where to go with the music,” Little told Billboard. “But this was one where I started putting the music together, and we came up with melodies over the top, and she wrote to the melody. As she was developing in songwriting, that became more of an option.”
“That song was one where we had everything except the chorus,” Little continued. “She was sitting in the back of the room while I was working on the music, and she was saying, ‘I think I’ve got a chorus idea.’ I asked, ‘Can I hear it?’ and she said, ‘No, no, no.’ She wouldn’t sing it to me, and then once she had it, she basically sang the entire chorus as you hear it now. I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is seriously good.'”
Adding: “This was the first time she had this fully formed, amazing idea for a chorus. This is, I don’t know how long into the process, but it was when I was like, ‘This girl is going to be an amazing songwriter or has turned into one in a really short amount of time.’ Then I just added the ‘yeahs’, and we tweaked a couple things here and there.”
Revisit the song below.
