Have you already noticed the small letters on the header of issue one’s layout? “Baby be the class clown, I’ll be the beauty queen in tears,” it says. Have you ever thought about these words? I have. So, what does it mean to you? It reminds me of a scene from a Disney movie, just that in my memory it looks a lot darker than it probably actually was. A school’s gymnasium, empty, the lights off, the windows open. The banners to support the previously playing football team are still there, lying on the tribune, fluttering in the wind. The walls are coming down, a teenager’s life without all the glamour. Or would you rather be the beauty queen in tears?
It’s a line from a brand new song called “Tennis Court” by young New Zealand artist Lorde. I found it as I was watching dance videos, went through Kate Jablonski’s videos (amazing American choreographer who’s so different than many others in the American competitive dance world but absolutely rocks and even came to visit Europe a few weeks ago) when I came across a rehearsal video of Kate’s Beyond Words Dance Company. The company is amazing but so is the song, Royals, another song by the same artist, they chose to be in the background of their youtube video.
So who is the girl with that dark voice? Ella Yelich-O’Connor was born on 7th November in 1996 and her mother was writing poems and handing the passion for words on to her. At the age of twelve she participated in a talent competition her school arranged for and after Universal Music saw a video of her singing, the very first step was made. She signed a contract with them, but it wasn’t until 2012 that she rose to fame internationally.
Her first EP, entitled “The Love Club”, could be found on the internet and bought for free. Although there were only five songs, they were listened to more than 20 000 times, making her well known not only in her Native country but all around the world. In early 2013 the EP could eventually also be bought officially via iTunes and reached second place on the New Zealand album charts. After the success of her first single “Royals”, a second single called “Tennis Court” followed with the same success. Currently, she’s touring Australia with her tour that has the same name as her first album – “Pure Heroine”.
What’s so special about her songs? Let’s take a look at the song that first made her famous: Royals starts out scary with something like a flipping in the background before then Lorde’s voice begins to sing the words, dark and mysterious. While in the first half of the music video the young woman is nowhere to be seen, there’s a man about her age, boxing and shaving his head. There’s something sad about the situation that the boy’s occasional smiles can’t make up for. He seems lost without knowing why, the world looks too big to have a place for hin, but at the same time he’s playing adult, Lorde’s playing royals like they had found what they had craved.
Maybe that moment, the bright smile of a boy with bloody gums, isn’t even the most mysterious thing about the single: While the most awesome thing about the video is probably her hair, those brown, incredibly wavy curls, the lyrics are the kind of thing a teenage girl might want to write above her bed. Taking a look at them, the song is you would sing when you’re a teen, no longer playing with dolls but not yet doing anything excitedly, sitting around, waiting for something to happen and playing the guitar. In a way it’s about finding a meaning in everyday life or maybe even exactly about not finding it.
And what was next? The second most awesome song on this album might be Tennis Court. By the way, there’s a reason why I chose to show you this music video of all the videos that are out there. You can expect most lyric videos to have a picture of the artist in the background and the text written above it, but in this one video Lorde who’s portrayed next to the text with her hair in a complicated knot, her eyes with almost no make-up and her lips dark purple is actually moving, which to be honest crept me out at first.
Lorde provokingly asks the listener to be the class clown while she will be the beauty queen – a cliché for everyone who’s ever seen a Disney movie. The tennis court sounds like hanging out, “you can watch from your window” is as provoking as it could be. “You can see what I’m doing, but you won’t be part of this world” seems to be what she’s trying to whisper, maybe even to an adult. There’s the border between the grown-ups whose world seems so perfect and excited and still she draws them to the other side of the border – the teen side. There’s a thrill, no matter how often she says that she’s bored, but she is the one who causes this thrill, a young woman excited for the world while she’s promising herself she won’t let them own her. There’s so much teenager in her voice, maybe not the happy, glamorous kind, but rather someone dark, someone who not yet knows what will follow.
Are her songs so sad? No, they don’t. They aren’t sad and she isn’t complaining about the way teenagers are living today. Instead she’s showing that they have their own world, what she calls “a new art form”, but again and again she makes it clear that you won’t be a part of it and that’s what makes this message so strong. It makes you long to belong but not to the glamorous groups most teenagers would want to belong to. It’s about mystery, not glamour.
One of her best known live videos that can be found on youtube is probably her singing Royals. The comments below it show clearly that not everybody liked it, but, please, don’t tell me it wasn’t live, because this version is at some points so much different than the album version. But, first of all, props to you for actually listening to the song as the image of her at first left me staring at her hair, wondering what conditioner she’s using.
On the stage, she’s almost unimposing, covered in a long, black dress with her brows and her hair almost just as full and dark and black boots. The comments go from “a real artist can express feelings via facial expresses” to “she might be on heroine”, but that provoking face fits so well to the message we can’t not look at her. It’s about young ones doing their thing, without listening to the grown-ups and still longing for a world as meaningful as the adults pretend theirs was.
The magical thing about this young woman might be that she’s saying so much without ever becoming offensive. At no point, she actually gets mad, but she knows how to twist the words, so that they will show the good side and still a mysterious side. She doesn’t fit in a line with the Hollywood stars that let you know everything about their life, she’s a mysterious and if you love her music, you will know it’s so mysterious you will want to keep her a mystery, too.
