LORDE STEPS INTO THE LIGHT
Lorde is apologising. She is a full 60 seconds late to our Zoom call and, as she appears on screen, she fixes a delicate gold knot onto her remaining bare ear. “I’m just putting my earrings in for you,” she says with mock seriousness in her distinct, but not thick, New Zealand accent. Unlike a friend lazily logging on to a video call, the small acts of courtesy are disarming, not least because they are coming from a multi-Grammy award-winning pop star.
She’s just returned home to Auckland from North America to “get all the rest and sun that I can”, before her 2022 global tour kicks off in April. Bare-faced, long brown hair raked back, wearing a tobacco-brown spaghetti-strap dress with curb-chain necklace, a summer breeze is rippling a hedge beyond the white French doors behind her. She’s just finished up New Zealand’s then two-part quarantine which, “was kind of wild. It’s seven days [in a hotel]. And then three at home.”
It’s a typical coming-down-to-land for Lorde, or Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, which comes four months after the release of her third album last August. She’s heeding her famous homing instincts that call her back to New Zealand between album duties. It’s a trait that sets her apart from other famous Antipodeans who often leave to lead lives on the other side of the world, possibly because it could all get so totally discombobulating. “It’s a very strange code switching. I mean, I got[US] [video] and I think it was my first time being on a set again. There were all these people there to attend to me, to put a microphone on me, to smooth my hair down. And I felt crazy. I was like, ‘What? Everyone’s here for me?’ Genuinely, I had true culture shock from it.”
