Indiectronica - Lorde

I'm kinda over gettin' told to throw my hands up in the air
So there :p
I'm kinda older than I was when I rebelled without a care
So there.

Lorde's voice is a blend between a dainty Lilly Allen and a grungy Kurt Cobain.  The last time I heard a voice like that I curled up in a ball and threw a shoe at my stereo.

But she does it somehow. She keeps her breath support and stays calm when needed and pulls out a nice brassy sound when needed -and on top of it, she knows when she needs it.

You know what's great about her, though? Not just her musicality, but she writes about more then boys and toys.  She has the beats that'd make you think she's talking about these things -and she grabs onto those keywords found in songs about relationships, which may grab the attention of her peers. For example, in "Tennis Court" she speaks of class clowns, crying beauty queens, being happy and careless -which I guess is a new trend (probably in the typical reactionary pendulum of life from the emo kids who care too much).

Now, before we take a few stabs at this song, know the Lorde's parents were knowledgeable people and shared that with her and she took it in. She read a TON. People who read a ton, have a tendency to know a thing or two. It turns out that Lorde makes constant historical references in her music. Unfortunately as I'm not historically adept, I cannot speak on this too much. However, this website usually has great responses from people who are more historically inclined than myself.

But I don't think -I hope at least- that none of this is news. I feel like it's fairly obvious. The unique part of Lorde is her ability to string keywords from another song type (relational) into her historically rich content to help a common listener empathize to her music while maybe accidentally teaching a listener who researches her music a thing or two. This is called tangential learning in case someone reading this cares to know the terminology there. This has been more and more common in game design -it's great to see the music scene getting back to this and I hope to see it continue.