

This repetition is mirrored in the economical stanzas, which are used for both verse and chorus in a remarkably affecting way that belies Lordes relative inexperience. Whether these conversations are about Call Of Duty tactics, which member of One Direction they like best or something that adults would consider to have a little more substance it’s a constant loop of stress which hyper-accelerates their assimilation of the given subject matter and it’s this which explains how a mid-teen from New Zealand wrote a song as beautifully sad as “Ribs.” How she discovered Broken Social Scene, fell in love with one their most adult songs (“Lovers spit left on repeat”) and why at the tender age of 15 she’s scared of “getting old” and why she’s having the sort of exhausted existential crisis normally reserved for those who have had a bellyful of working the 9 to 5 grind. However that ubiquity comes at a price for maintaining their status on these virtual worlds is a 24/7 job that creates a pressure on these young minds unlike anything any other generation has seen before. They can never switch off, they have to be seen to be doing something, they have to take part in all the conversations with their peers, it’s expected practise and it never ends. Where from the glow of a smartphone they have access to an educator, entertainer and to groups of friends that can fill any lull in their real-world relationships. They’ve grown up in a world in which the Internet makes information and friends ubiquitous. Richer in sound and experience, the album found strength in different kinds of isolation: the temporary plight of the newly heartbroken and the lifelong fate of the writer.Westernised post-millennial teens have things as easy and tough at the same time. But Lorde’s feel for suburban adolescent disconnect catalyzed into precocious power moves-such as curating the soundtrack for the third Hunger Games movie-and an astute lens on the wider world on 2017’s Melodrama.

She captured the late-night trains home, clandestine kisses, and heavy symbolism of your first love remembering to buy your favorite juice-little of which, she seemed to know, lasts. Together, they wrote “Royals,” a song that not only defined her perspective-with its unimpressed, teenage dismissal of material obsessions-but also propelled her skeletal electro-pop debut, 2013’s Pure Heroine, to a Grammy nomination. After being spotted at a talent show and signing to Universal at age 12, she quickly chewed through a series of writing partners until she met Joel Little, a fellow Auckland native and former pop-punk frontman. Where previous generations of teenagers frequently had to endure middle-aged marketing managers’ ideas of what entertainment should look like, millennial teens were #blessed with one of pop culture’s greatest young laureates: New Zealand’s Ella Yelich-O’Connor, a.k.a.
