In an interview that was heralded back in October, Lorde has sat down with Tavi Gevinson of Rookie. (Probably making The Observer’s dreams come true.)
Ranging over songwriting, Beyoncé's new album, style social media, and Lorde's fans, they talk about the way everyone dismisses teenagers.
It seems like a double standard to me. And there’s another part of it which I find really strange, which is that so many interviewers, even ones that I consider really intelligent and good writers, will do the, like, “Oh, you’re not taking your clothes off like Miley Cyrus and all these girls,” which to me is just the weirdest thing to say to someone. But then people will say, “She’s always talking about being bored, that’s petulant,” which I feel like is kind of taking the piss out of teenage emotions – just, like, making light of how teenagers feel. When people react that way about things that every teenager experiences, how can you expect to make anything good?
Lorde also talks about meeting David Bowie.
Oh, I mean, it’s OK. It was super cute, though – for some reason we were holding hands and just staring into each other’s eyes and talking, and I was like, This is David Bowie’s hand, what am I doing? It was insane. A beautiful moment.
And she responds to the suggestion that Royals is racist.
I have grown up in a time when rap music is pop music, and I do think people were maybe a little bit selective about the parts of that song they used to make those arguments, because a lot of it is examples of rock excess, or just standard pop culture “rich kids of Instagram”-type excess. But I’m glad that people are having discussions about it and informing me about it. Also, I wrote that song a few months into being 15, and now I’m a 17-year-old looking back on that, and I didn’t know then what I know now, so I kind of am not too hard on myself.
