After a single static shot of Lorde, we see footage of her real-life Auckland friends lazing about an apartment, sparring in living rooms, and riding the train. The original video for the song reveals the milieu. Lorde’s voice is calm we don’t know her age, her location, or her plan. The familiarity with privation implied here is a long way from the usual version of pop that climbs the charts. I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies.” That’s a hell of a way to say hello. The song’s first words are “I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh. The production often represents a mixture of recent British styles without hewing to any of them here, it bears traces of dubstep, as handed down through artists such as James Blake. Few Lorde tracks go for the big or the fast or the showy. It begins with a layer of reverb over a muted, boxy kick drum and finger snaps. It is worth close attention not just because it is so good but because it crystallizes so much of Lorde’s skill and her outlook. “Royals,” which anchors both “The Love Club” and “Pure Heroine,” is simultaneously a pop song, a diary entry, a manifesto, a rejection of privilege, a defiant redefinition of wealth, and a wish list. Though Lorde had listened to Del Rey when she was younger, she said she’d recently been listening more to hip-hop, including Kanye West and Drake. Initially, like many low-voiced female singers, Lorde was lumped in with Lana Del Rey. Early this year, the EP, called “The Love Club,” was released in the U.S. After working with several collaborators suggested by Universal, she chose Joel Little as her songwriting partner. Soon, Universal Records approached her, and before her fourteenth birthday she was negotiating to release an EP on the label. At a school talent show, in 2009, she performed the British pop singer Duffy’s “Warwick Street,” and a video of the performance circulated. Lorde’s origin myth is a bit like that of Justin Bieber and other young artists. She is less a flashy new mansion in the suburbs than an architectural gem in a tony neighborhood. The exciting thing about Lorde is not merely that “Pure Heroine” is perfect (it is close), or that “Royals” is perfect (it is), but that a teen-ager from Auckland, with an unnatural gift, has entered the suit-infested ruins of the music business with the confidence of a veteran and the skills of a prodigy. Lorde’s début album, “Pure Heroine,” and her current No. Lorde’s hit, “Royals,” combines fast-lane references with directness about privation. Halfway through the eleven-song set, a man with white hair, dressed in a silver suit, turned to a companion, pointed to the stage, and, implying a big payday in Lorde’s future, said, “Zeroes. She displayed no visible nervousness, and there was a sense of mutual testing, as if she were gathering information about us as much as we were about her. Her voice is low, casual, and it sounded strong and effortless, neither dramatically loud nor tentative in pitch. Dressed in a black vest over a sheer black floor-length dress, Lorde played with the drummer Ben Barter and the keyboardist James McDonald. I’d never seen such clamor or crowding at this venue. area was unusually full, especially with older men. Yelich-O’Connor, who is sixteen, performs and records as Lorde, a name that she chose because, she told the Daily Beast, it felt “kind of masculine.” The show was packed, and the V.I.P. was in August, at the small Greenwich Village night club (Le) Poisson Rouge. The New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s first show in the U.S.
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