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Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (born 7 November 1996), better known by her stage name Lorde (pronounced "lord"), is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. Born in Takapuna and raised in Devonport, Auckland, she became interested in performing as a child. In her early teens, she signed with Universal Music Group and was later paired with the songwriter and record producer Joel Little, who has co-written and produced most of Lorde's works. Her first major release, The Love Club EP, was commercially released in March 2013. The EP reached number two on the national record charts of New Zealand and Australia.

Success

In mid-2013, Lorde released her debut single "Royals". It became an international crossover hit and made Lorde the youngest solo artist (and the only New Zealander) to achieve a US number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1987. In late 2013, she released her debut studio album, Pure Heroine. The record topped the charts of New Zealand and Australia and reached number three on the US Billboard 200. Its following singles include "Tennis Court", "Team", "No Better" and "Glory and Gore". In 2014, Lorde released "Yellow Flicker Beat" as a single from the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.

Lorde's music consists of subgenres such as dream pop and indietronica. She has earned two Grammy Awards, a Brit Award and ten New Zealand Music Awards. In 2013, she was named among Time's most influential teenagers in the world, and in the following year, she was in Forbes's "30 Under 30" list.

Life and career

1996–2008: Early life

Of Croatian and Irish descent, Ella Yelich-O'Connor was born in Takapuna to Vic O'Connor, a civil engineer, and Sonja Yelich (Croatian: Sonja Jelić), a poet, on 7 November 1996. She was raised in the nearby suburb of Devonport with her two sisters, Jerry and India, and her brother, Angelo.

At age five, she joined a drama group and developed public speaking skills. At that same time, Lorde was attending Vauxhall School and later Belmont Intermediate School. Her mother encouraged her to read a range of genres, which Lorde cited as a lyrical influence, "I guess my mum influenced my lyrical style by always buying me books. She'd give me a mixture of kid and adult books too, there weren't really any books I wasn't allowed to read. I remember reading Feed by M.T. Anderson when I was six, and her giving me Salinger and Carver at a young age, and Janet Frame really young too."

Lorde played netball at a young age alongside Vauxhall classmate Eliza McCartney, who later became an Olympic bronze medallist in the pole vault.

2009–11: Career beginnings

In November 2012, Lorde self-released the record, entitled The Love Club EP, through her SoundCloud account for free download. After being freely downloaded 60,000 times, UMG decided to commercially release the EP for sales in March 2013. The EP peaked at number two on the record charts of New Zealand and Australia. In June of that year, "Royals" was released as a single from the EP. The single became a crossover hit, peaking atop the US Billboard Hot 100 for nine consecutive weeks. Consequently, Lorde became the youngest solo artist to achieve a number-one single in the US with "Royals", since Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" (1987). The track eventually won the 2013 APRA Silver Scroll Award, and two Grammy Awards for Best Pop Solo Performance and Song of the Year at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

In September 2013, Lorde released her debut studio album, Pure Heroine. The album topped the charts of New Zealand and Australia and reached the top five of several national charts, including Canada, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom. In the U.S., Pure Heroine peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, and had sold 1.33 million copies by 2014. Worldwide, Pure Heroine had sold 1.5 million copies by the end of 2013. The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album.

The release of Pure Heroine was preceded by four singles: "Tennis Court" was released in June 2013, topping the New Zealand Singles Chart; the third single, "Team", became a top-ten hit worldwide; and "No Better", a song only included on the extended version of Pure Heroine, and "Glory and Gore" were released as the two final singles from the record, respectively. In September 2013, Lorde's cover version of the Tears for Fears single "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", produced by Michael A. Levine and Lucas Cantor, was included on The Hunger Games: Catching Fire film soundtrack.

In November 2013, Lorde signed a publishing deal with Songs Music Publishing, worth a reported US$2.5 million, after a bidding war between various companies, including Sony Music Entertainment and her label UMG. The agreement gives the publisher the right to license Lorde's music for films and advertising. Late that year, she started a relationship with photographer James Lowe.

In December 2013, Lorde announced that she had begun writing material for her second studio album. In June 2014, Lorde said that her second studio album was in its early stages and that, so far, it was "totally different" from her debut album. In the first half of 2014, Lorde headlined various festivals, including the Laneway Festival in Sydney, Australia, the three South American editions of Lollapalooza—Chile, Santiago; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and São Paulo, Brazil—and the Coachella Festival in California.

To promote The Love Club EP and Pure Heroine, Lorde embarked on an international tour, the first leg of which was held in North America in early 2014. She later announced the Australian leg, held in July, and the second North American leg, held in August. In April of that year, Lorde performed "All Apologies" with the surviving members of Nirvana during the band's induction ceremony at the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame.

On 1 August 2014, Lorde performed at Lollapalooza again in Grant Park, Chicago. Lorde's set was critically well received, with Billboard selecting it as the fifth-best performance of the festival, while Rolling Stone deemed it the best segment of the Chicago event.

On 29 September 2014, Lorde released "Yellow Flicker Beat" as the first single from the soundtrack album for the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1; Lorde oversaw the collation of the album's content, in addition to contributing vocals to several songs. By her 18th birthday in November 2014, it was estimated that Lorde was worth NZ$11 million. In 2015, Lorde was featured on "Magnets", a track on Disclosure's second studio album Caracal. At the 2016 Brit Awards, Lorde gave a performance of "Life on Mars" in tribute to the late English singer David Bowie.