Royals by Lorde

About

Royals is the lead single off Lorde’s 2012 breakout EP The Love Club. It debuted at #1 in New Zealand, and eventually topped the Billboard Hot 100, outranking Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball”. The song has been praised for its minimalistic beat and mature lyrics, which detail the New Zealand native’s complicated relationship to media, fame, and decadent lifestyles. Lorde described the song as a lighthearted critique of hip-hop culture and fashion – a stance that prompted some critical backlash. She explained in a 2013 interview: I definitely wrote “Royals” with a lightness in mind….I was definitely poking fun at a lot of things that people take to be normal. I was listening to a lot of hip-hop and I kind of started to realize that to be cool in hip-hop, you have to have that sort of car and drink that sort of vodka and have that sort of watch, and I was like, “I’ve literally never seen one of those watches in my entire life.”