My dad is a civil engineer, and my mom is a stay-at-home mom. The fact that my parents weren't really involved in music was kind of good, because it meant that I had something that was private and personal.
Lorde
My advice to young people wanting to make music and to be in this industry is to really spend your time making music. Make so much music you have no friends. Make music. Figure out what it is you love, and... because if you're making cool art, then everything else will fall into line.
I get paralyzingly nervous a lot of times, so I tried bravado. The way I dress and carry myself, a lot of people find it intimidating. I think my whole career can be boiled down to the one word I always say in meetings: 'strength.'
I read a lot of short fiction, like Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver and Wells Tower.
Grace Jones was an influence, because I was like, 'These shoulders! These pants! Girls can wear pants and be awesome.' That's something I definitely embody.
I come from a big, loud family, and I'm the quieter one. Performing is something I have to switch on. I've heard I get real sassy onstage, which I'm not in real life! It's fun to be that person for an hour a night.
My name is Ella; that's who I am at school, hanging out with friends, while I'm doing homework. But when I'm up on stage, 'Lorde' is a character.
Coming from New Zealand, all the music I listen to is not made by New Zealanders. People never come to New Zealand to play a show because it's in the middle of nowhere.
I am really into how words sound out loud, so I was always the kid who would, like, read the page of the book to herself in her room over and over and over. And Raymond Carver is great for that. Tobias Wolff is an author who is really good for that as well.
With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that's made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.
I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there's a set of rules, and people will be like, 'Oh, this person isn't a true feminist because they don't embody this one thing,' and I don't know, often it can be a gray area, and it can be a hard thing to navigate.
I curate my life in a way. It's always playing on my mind, kind of a love-hate relationship. I'm not one of those people who's, like, 'I wish Facebook wasn't around,' because, you know, it is what it is.
I've always been fascinated with aristocracy. I'm really interested in the Ivy Leagues, the final clubs, all the really old-money families, the concept of old money.
When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine - ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not.
I love thrift shopping. You can get ten things because everything costs, like, three dollars.
I think it would be impossible not to be an Internet kid, coming from New Zealand, because culturally it's a little barren.
I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me.
I'm really interested in kind of weird social situations and cliques, watching girls vying for attention, watching how the popularity thing happens. I've always thought too hard about everything.
In a perfect world, I would never do any interviews, and probably there would be one photo out there of me, and that would be it.
People respond to something which intrigues them instead of something that gives them all the information - particularly in pop, which is, like, the genre for knowing way too much about everyone and everything.
I'm speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn't even be something that people find mildly surprising, it's just a part of being a girl in 2013.
I'm a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. And the way I write isn't about making things easy. It's a weird juxtaposition.
I went to my prom. I wore this olive green, floor-length backless dress. It was rad.
Obviously I've had this fascination with aristocracy my whole life. Like, the kings and queens of 500 years ago... they're like rock stars. If there was a 'TMZ' 500 years ago, it would be about, like, Henry VIII and Marie Antoinette and all those people.
I'm surrounded by the beach, so I love to fish and to dive and to swim. I walk a lot, and I bike around. I hang out at the beach, really, and muck around.
It must have been when I was 14 or 15 that I started tentatively writing songs and was able to convey an emotion and a lyric with what I wanted to say.
I actually love Twitter and Instagram. I do think it's so strange to think that 20 years ago, people would never have known personal stuff about musicians and actors, but I like it. As long as I don't obsessively overshare, it's OK. And when I do overshare, it's just, like, me saying, 'I've got $7 in my bank account!'
Taylor Swift is so flawless, and so unattainable, and I don't think it's breeding anything good in young girls.
I try to stay away from talking about boys all the time. You can go to Taylor Swift to hear that.
I'm a Kiwi. I'm from a beach suburb called Takapuna, which is on the north shore of Auckland in New Zealand.
Musicians like James Blake were a big influence on me. How he uses his vocals is amazing. And then Yeasayer and Animal Collective, who aren't pop bands exactly, but they do something that is so catchy and undeniable and so much fun.
I'm, like, the most terrible person to go to a party with in the world, because I just can't enjoy it. I'm just thinking all the time about what it means and what the implications are.
I tend to start with a full set of lyrics, and then my producer, Joel Little, and I work on the music collaboratively.
I'm very conscious of people having pretty short attention spans: I know, I'm guilty of it. I'm 17 now: what happens by the time I'm 21, am I a burn-out or something? Will they still listen to my record?
I started writing music when I was around twelve. My current record company saw a video of me performing at my school's talent show.
I don't think people look at how pop stars live and feel anything aspirational at all.
I've always listened to a lot of rap. It's all, 'Look at this car that cost me so much money, look at this Champagne.' It's super fun.
I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.
I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.
The phrase 'teen hottie' literally makes me want to throw up.
I think young people are the most creative and the coolest - people that we should be learning from. Even when I'm at a party, I'm analyzing it and thinking about it in the context of how I would write about it. That side of me never switches off.
If I'm going to dress up, I like things that are quite long and classic. I like feeling dressed up and like a lady.
We all have Tumblr, and we all have Instagram and everything. People care so much about it because, now, any random can be famous on the Internet if their world looks good on Tumblr. And so everyone at high school strives for this kind of aesthetic correctness.
Nobody asks me about what male musicians I think about; I only ever get asked about females.
I've been in some situations where people have treated me like a fascinating toy. You know, it's just like an interesting kind of fun thing to have a play with. It's very weird for me. I feel like a tiny baby.
I like simple clothes, but sometimes I'll go for a goth-witch vibe.
I've always hung out with people older than me, with my parents' friends, because I appreciated the conversation.
I love Top 40 pop, don't get me wrong; I just don't think that there's anyone in Top 40 pop that's 'real.'
