Trivia / Lorde

• Approval of God: She thought South Park's parody of her (where she turns out to be Randy Marsh in drag) was pretty funny, and even recorded a clip of herself going "ya ya ya ya, I'm Lorde" just like Marsh does.
• Banned in China: For one week in 2014, two radio stations in San Francisco banned all airplay of "Royals", as the city's baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, was playing the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. One Kansas City radio station, on the other hand, went out of its way to play "Royals" on the hour, every hour, during that same time frame as its way of rooting for the home team.
• Breakthrough Hit: "Royals" made her one of the biggest stars overnight, while Pure Heroine established her presence as an album act.
• Colbert Bump:
  • "Glory and Gore" gained popularity after it was featured on the trailers for the second season of Vikings. In fact, the popularity "Glory and Gore" gained after the advertisement was the reason why the song was eventually released as a single. It found success, selling over 300,000 (legal) digital downloads in the US just a month after its release, undoubtedly owing a good portion of those sales to the Vikings advertisement. Which is definitely good, especially when you consider the below.
  • Her cover of Tears for Fears' song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" also increased in popularity after being featured on the trailers for Assassin's Creed: Unity and Dracula Untold nearly a week apart from each other, and for being on the Catching Fire soundtrack the year prior.
• Creator Backlash: Lorde is quick to disown her breakout single "Royals". In a 2014 interview with The Daily Record, she said it sounded "horrible" and "none of the meoldies are good," comparing it to a ringtone from a Nokia cell phone in 2006.
• Dye Hard: Bleached her hair blonde in 2022, as seen during her 2022 set at the Glastonbury festival.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Lorde refused to issue Solar Power on CD out of environmental concerns (nevermind it still got a vinyl version, which is not exactly that 'green'). To compensate, there was an eco-friendly discless box set with handwritten notes, exclusive photographs, and a download card.
• Release Date Change: Her third album was supposed to be released in 2020 but got delayed due to COVID-19. While her homeland of New Zealand managed to get a hold on the virus very quickly and managed to keep it out afterwards, the latter was from very strict travel restrictions which made it hard for her team outside NZ to travel there. In June 2021, it was finally announced with the name Solar Power and an accompanying lead single of the same name.
• Screwed by the Network: After "Glory and Gore" got an unexpected boost in popularity due to the Vikings trailers, the song replaced "Tennis Court" as the third US single off of Pure Heroine. While "Glory and Gore" was released to alternative radio, the scheduled release to contemporary pop radio was cancelled for reasons unknown. This essentially killed the song's chance of being a big follow-up to "Royals" and "Team". While "Glory and Gore" did manage to crack the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking at #68), it did so through practically nothing but digital download sales carrying it there. That, and what little alternative radio airplay contributes to placement on the pop charts. It's a shame, as the song has become very popular with her ever-growing fanbase, many agree that it would have been a massive hit if it were released to contemporary pop stations. What Could Have Been indeed.
• A very minor detail: Because the vinyl release of Melodrama has the song "Hard Feelings / Loveless" split so that "Hard Feelings" ends Side A and "Loveless" starts Side B of the record, both versions of "Sober" and "Liability" have the same track number on each side: "Sober" is Side A track 2, "Sober II (Melodrama)" is Side B track 2; "Liability" is Side A track 5, "Liability (Reprise)" is Side B track 5.

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