Every royal needs an heir…
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[4.78]
Brad Shoup: “What this palace wants is release” could’ve come from any of a hundred postgrad indie acts. So I’m not sure Lorde’s been taking all her cues from pop. Yeah, she’s a grouch about some stuff that probably trickled down from hip-hop, if not Rich Kids of Instagram. But everything is not for everyone, especially smart-ass 16-year-olds with a thing for acne scars. Still, the contrasting vision proffered isn’t fun. Lorde and her aurora australis synths move as in a dream, while the Run-DMC drum programming tries shaking them awake. It could be that the hour isn’t right; it’s sunny, and like most of Pure Heroine, this seems like late-night listening.
[5]
Anthony Easton: I love how bored this is: the line “I am kind of tired of being told to throw up my hands on the air,” or this idea of urbanity as a contest, while urbanity is a goal against others. And it’s louche, delightfully louche, a loucheness that can only be put on like “finery” but the right kind of bored-of-it-all 16 year old, a loucheness that becomes a luxury of a youth who knows nothing but thinks they know it all.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: Lorde could pull this off on “Royals,” but she’s just reheating the same exact ideas introduced on that single for “Team.” She doesn’t like the message of modern pop music, she comes from a place nobody seemingly cares about (poor New Zealand) and she’s different from the rest. Lorde’s career is still hyper young, but this we-are-so-different schtick is already sounding grounded out by the third single. “Team” and its sleepwalking beat, despite a decent chorus, doesn’t do anything to make her claims ring true.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: I get it: Auckland might have its Hannah Horvaths, but they’ll never have a timeslot on HBO. Nor will Louis CK ever need to set a show in Auckland to find international success. But “Team” doesn’t do much to fill in the details of those “cities you’ll never see on screen”: fewer dream palaces and more minutiae might go toward making this something stronger than a whinge. “I’m kind of over gettin’ told to throw my hands up in the air; so there” is a start; an adolescent pout more vivid than all the rest put together.
[5]
Iain Mew: I live in one of the cities in the world most likely to appear in the media and am still put out by America-as-default sometimes, so I can get with “We live in cities you’ll never see on screen.” Lorde makes only the startling minimal intro anything like as compelling as that line though, mostly content to rehash “Royals” from less specific sentiment on in.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: Just as there’s no such thing as a “voice of a generation”, there’s no such thing as consensus, and if you’re looking for a third unqualified statement, there’s also no such thing as culture, only subculture, big and small. Cannily though, the imagined subcultures Lorde appeals to here belong to a group that’s big: the invisible majority of teenagers not growing up in telegenic environs. Presumably not all of them — the disaffection feels more the stuff of bourgeois construct, and the sound doesn’t seem like something likely to play from phones in Burnley, Barnsley, or Billingham — but clearly enough. It’s not exactly a subtle call to arms, but it acts like it is, and clearly that’s enough too. Real with a capital R, a stylised version of the everyday — a celebration of the illusion of disillusionment. And it’s got a nice tune.
[7]
Will Adams: By the third single, I would have expected her to say something else. But no, she’s still bemoaning her quiet town life, throwing barbs at pop music while completely ignoring the fact that her anti-pop sentiments are exactly the type of outsider art the pop machine loves. She’s tired of being told to put her hands in the air, while I’m tired of being told that what she’s doing is something special.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Some combination of Lorde’s label grooming and Billboard’s rule tweaks got her to No. 1, which apparently now means she’s saving pop. Our savior, it turns out is Leona Lewis without the voice (for someone so disillusioned with what every song’s like, this sure sounds a lot like “Bleeding Love”), Ellie Goulding without the spray of stars on her tracks, maybe some post-Internet Michelle Branch without the ebullience: a rebel without a pulse.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The followup to “Royals” constructs more castles in the sky, this one in a city “you’ll never see on screen” where girls in affectless high registers can get petulant about throwing their hands in the air. It’s a reclamation of space, a flight from conventionality — a teenage gesture. But this conventionality exists in Lorde’s head, a fiction. This conventionality, as it happens, knows from beats and rhythm: two elements “Team” acknowledges without knowing a damn thing about how to use them. She’s not the cure — she’s part of the disease, which is why “Royals” parked itself in the top three.
[3]