http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9SfDzNAfAU

“It’s a bit weird,” she shrugs down the phone. “[New Zealanders are] quite self-deprecating people in general. I was on this…

Huh. I thought she was talking about Black Sabbath.

Yes. Perfect.

As was I, in a roundabout way! :-) Good critics should not be hung up about "authenticity", because all art is play, in a way. And "inauthentic" artists are more fun to write about.

Indeed, Lorde is fun to write about precisely because…

I wouldn’t go that far, but a lot of my favourite pop music is more interesting because there is something “inauthentic” about it- whether it’s Joe…

+1

depends if you want to call Crowded House an NZ act, but the OMC album has done around 2m to date (with a remastered version out next year).

Love the uniform.

Yes! We can be a roving band of ranting poptimists!

That album release is going to be pretty massive. What's the record number of album sales for a New Zealand artist?

Heh. Guess so.

I've written what I have to sayin the Friday Music post.

Jumped the shark, not worth dignifying with a response, right down there with Anders Brevik, you get the idea

Do not EVER borrow a Farmers catalogue from this man

That's the nutshell. Showing how NZers can do and do do great things. Seeing…

"Lorrrrrduh" as he calls her. :-)

it's already there, they're waiting to flick off as much as poss of what's out already. I'm doing what I can to help. I'm told it'll be some time next month.

found this at lunchtime – if you like widescreen country…

There's also a clip of 'Royals' from the same show. Which is hosted by the super-cool Antoine de Caunes!

http://www.canalplus.fr/c-divertissement/c-musique/pid5065-live-du-grand-journal.html

It looks like she's on basically the same European promo tour that Lane Del Rey died on last year.

Which reminds me Alan, I must send you that email. When's the next shipment of 7s coming?

I'll bring scones.

and a Monkees record.

Was totes about to make a "Whatevs, The Beatles weren't even that good" joke, but dude: Wrong room.

Yup, hope she breaks all the way to #1. It's not my kind of music at all, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize talent and hope for stardom for one of our children. I don't watch shotput on a daily basis either, but I'll…

Me too. It can, and has, hurt people. I just hate the fact it will be giving him unwarranted attention. Then again I very much doubt he noticed my silent protest of blocking him. But I felt better.

She's hardly been coy about acknowledging her producer:

She works with producer Joel Little whom she credits with turning her "pages and…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZCadqQY-Lw

Lorde, yeah nah.

Sweetman’s given it a go and wreaked his terrible taste in music on NZ for quite a while now. Time to hang up the keyboard.

Yes, you're probably right. But it actually made me angry.

This makes me think Sweetman's not seen any pop music by young women in the last, er, 40 years

Pathetic.

Can someone give me a list of musicians and performers who'd rather their talent were unrecognised?

A lot of miserable…

"Does he really want to hold her hand? Who is she anyway? I don't think she exists."

I have decided that music critics obsessed with "realness" and "authenticity" are going to be first against the fucking wall when the revolution comes.

and what's with the "she's not making music for NZ!" line?

whack job.

and really what is there to know, ultimately?

Somehow, I don't think he's channeling Zhuangzi here. I tried to read the rest, but I really couldn't. I guess I could print it out and show it to my students as an example of why if you're…

She made this music in her bedroom at home – alone, went the original lie.

Really? Who said that? As far as Im aware, the songs have always been acknowledged as a collaboration. It’s hardly like some evil…

Really exciting. Hard to ignore that sort of across-the-board dominance.

Sixteen-year-old New Zealander, and current Billboard magazine cover act, Lorde blasts 8-3 on the Hot 100 with her breakthrough U.S. single “Royals.” The track wins top Digital Gainer honors for a fourth time in five weeks, vaulting 8-2 on Digital Songs (225,000, up…

That's something I very much like about her songs. Even from mumble mumble years away the emotions and conflicts are genuine. I recognise them. I remember them. So how they must resonate with the teens now I can only guess.

But where…

Okay…

1. It's not Miley vs Lorde. They are two young female pop singers but they are not the only pop singers out there. It's even possible to like both Miley and Lorde. And there's a lot of really good non-Miley and non-Lorde pop out there. Pop…

Some stray observations about Lorde (forgive me for the fragmented nature of this post, I felt it would…

you may have to translate that for some of us

I only bothered because everyone was talking about it on Twitter, so I had to have…

oh, and how about that Miley eh?

Bit of a flight for me, I'm back in the Royal Swamp at the moment, but I've just discovered that my favourite local has just opened a second hand vinyl store on the top floor…

I hope so, because otherwise I'm unclear why she's demolishing walls in her knickers... and sometimes without. Can't she make overalls look sexy?

the 7 inch 45s or the vids? If the former, where do you shop at lunchtime as I want to get there by 11.30.

Do you have this? I am a little bit obsessed with it.

Don't do this to me Danielle.

I had a…

And they were…

found these 7s at lunchtime:

The Bermudas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hp38DbiLQw

and The Rag Dolls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXX9oW-S8iE

Do you have this? I am a little bit obsessed with it.

I've played this about a million times since I bought it a few months back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bpezye4xq0

Call me contrarian, but I am always rather suspicious of these sorts of statements. You know how for ages the accepted narrative was "pop music in the early 60s was bland and naff and then the Beatles came!", completely ignoring how great the girl groups were? Yeah.…

there are many things I don't need to know, see, or fret about and Miley's state of mind and career are two of them.

here you go...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8

if so, nice. if not, for shame Miley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qniQbTUAvhA

Three and half minutes of my life I'm never getting back. God it's dire.

I listened to an interview a few weeks…

The song is dull, but the new Miley music video is better than either of Lorde's videos.

Symphony orchestra. Just listening to the EP now you could easily make that work, and the sound would be intense, and it would cross over age and style like a monster.

Royals doesn't have much of…

Oh, I don't know. She has a sledgehammer and wears Doc Martens. How can anyone compete with that?

Is Lorde our saviour? :)

Kind of big ask, but music is interesting in that there can be huge swings in style from relatively small triggers. We can but hope.

True. And that's how it looked.

But performing in your first few big gigs is going to be emotionally exhausting in a way that doesn't reflect what it will be…

Splendour was actually a much easier gig. The crowd was probably about the same size, but it was a far smaller stage and a shorter set…

If you want perfection, get the studio recording. Live performance has the excitement of real-time risk. Electrifying…

I don't think anything went "wrong". From what I've seen and read it was a good concert. She had high moments and a couple of slips but it didn't seem like anything went wrong. I think though that some folks wanted perfection and instead they…

I can. We buy music too, and I'm sure the ability to send positive vibe endorsements to 10,000 plus of your closest friends through twitter (not…

Yes, I can't imagine that having your mum and dad's friends as fans is what teen pop stars are looking for in terms of endorsement.

Voice, character, presence, and songwriting skill!

Oh, you meant by teen pop star that she targets teens, not that she is a teen? But it’s her age that does actually make her interesting, not her target audience.

ETA: Well, and of course, that she's talented.…

Lana Del Ray was the last one the dads got excited over. She's not a teen, but was playing to the same audience.

BTW, the Selena Gomez cover posted previously…

So long as you see regional content featured on the iheartradio.com homepage (TRN stations like Hauraki, ZM, Flava), that's the intended experience.

We promote iheartradio.co.nz for a number of reasons, it is purposefully set to redirect to iheartradio.com

You only have an issue if you are seeing American…

"Elle is pretty awesome but she is and always will be a fringe singer with a boutique audience. Nothing wrong with being successful in alternative music, it's just you have to realize that is what she…

Same here. But clicking on the Lorde photos link takes me to http://www.iheartradio.net.nz/photos/lorde-live-concert-photos/. So it looks intentional to me.

There are also ways to isolate and separate parts of a song via hardware and software too, a very inexact method – which is very common in the dance world where getting the "parts"…

Ok stupid noob question – How do folks take a song from Lorde and put a new music score/arrangement underneath? What are "stems"?

Some of the remixes have been really amazing but surely unless you have the original vocal tracks as they…

That's been really smart, the remix thing. It's clearly not hard to get…

– as…

She doesn't record with a band so why add one now?

The story we have been told is that she wanted to remain hidden ... at least until her music had spoken first.

I'm an old fuddy duddy – you have a problem with that?

Sigh.

what I puzzle over though is that the label has played hide and seek with her for a fair while yet are launching her without having assembled a band.…

I suspect that her use of the internet is just obvious and natural to her. From what I've read she is embedded in a very different culture of connectedness and sharing than the world I grew up in.

And I too will buy the…

And the original stream was geoblocked.

Still disappointing — and it's quite odd seeing that the takedown request came from IFPI rather than any of the labels. Same deal with the the leaked Miley track a couple of weeks ago.

Yup.

This. Her music is enough different that I don't feel I've heard it before, I can understamd the lyrics and for once it's…

Far from it for me. I just enjoy the music and being able to hear a good interesting voice with clearly enunciated words that have some story to tell. No it isn't a wall of sound nor a complex sophisticated orchestral piece. But it isn't some bloke shouting…

Grown-ups are being so painfully serious about the whole Lorde thing. Under the minimalist beats and bitchy resting face she's still a teen pop star.

Its a very exciting time for local 'pop' music I reckon...

being a fan makes us all silly

Can we agree that Selina Gomez is completely unsuited to the song?

I rather like YouTube-gal Anna Burden’s sweetly low-tech version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1NyGepSTlA

Satellite did the feed, Mitchell Hawkes directed and DJ Stipsen DOP'd. They…

So was that first run for the new solution you're using? Which product is it? And who directed the…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ekoJRpp15c

I disagree – ask any teen.

That was our first real test streaming to mobiles, about time huh? All Herald streams (Silver Scrolls, Film Awards, Critics Choice Prize etc) will stream to mobiles…

I don’t think it’s out of the question that she’ll achieve a similar stature in her time, though. But she’s a different artist, for sure – certainly much…

I got goosebumps when she started belting that out. Win.

Would be a shame if Lorde had nothing left to aspire to! :-)

Just hold your horses there. "Royals" is good but it ain't no "Wuthering Heights". And Kate Bush is still around, still creating.

Indeed. She’s been on stage in one way or another for…

Oh dude! It's " shoot from the hip"!
But I love that you had such a happy dancey time. :-)

Interesting that concert organisers and their crews have to think about not just the audience in the room, but those…

So much this. So much great material, all at once. I expected Royals , Tennis Court , and Love Club to carry…

(feel free to share this, er, collage humour)

Who was that masked man? Watching from the audience, he didn't miss a beat, and those beats are such a big part of the Lorde sound. I guess band introductions will come later, like when she gets a band.

This tiny, composed, bewilderingly talented teenager is, by…