Lorde is now pop royalty

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Lorde may never be a royal, but these days, she’s living like one.

The 17-year-old singer, anointed to the lofty position of pop’s newest princess thanks to her astute hit song, “Royals,” is surrounded by the materialistic things she rails against in her No. 1 smash. She has drivers, she’s catered to and says she could get “crazy bottle service” if she so desired.

“The irony is not lost on me,” she said in a recent interview. Yet just because she’s surrounded by excess doesn’t mean she indulges — or is even interested in — it.

“Every time I go out, it’s with my mom and my band and my manager and all these adults who are looking over me pretty much, so it’s pretty tame to be honest,” she said.

“I definitely don’t feel like I’m living in a particularly extravagant sort of way — which I think is good because I think for me, personally, if I was thrown into that kind of thing, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it,” she said. “I think it’s good to kind of keep on keeping on — just do what you have normally done and sort things into a stride.”

It will be hard for Lorde, born Ella Yellich O’Connnor, to keep on living a normal life if her stratospheric trajectory stays on point. In just a few months, she’s gone from being a New Zealand teen with an EP and an impressive following on SoundCloud to a four-time Grammy nominee (including nominations for top categories record and song of the year) with commercial success and plenty of critical raves.

“Royals,” which has sold close to 4 million tracks, was at the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for nine weeks, and Rolling Stone named the song as the second best single of the year.

But Lorde is miles apart from the typical teen artist. With “Pure Heroine” she has fashioned a moody, lyrically rich album told in a far more mature way than most teens would ever describe.