Lorde New Zealander Singer Born 1996 in Takapuna

Early life

Lorde, whose birth name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, was born on 7 November 1996 in Takapuna, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. Her mother is the poet Sonja Yelich, and Lorde has named her mother's poetry and reading habits as a main influence on her lyrics. She grew up on Auckland's North Shore and joined a drama group at the age of five.

She attended Vauxhall School and then Belmont Intermediate School. At Vauxhall she placed in the North Shore primary schools speech competition in 2006 and 2007. With her Belmont team she was runner-up at the 2009 Kids' Lit Quiz World Finals. Later she went to Takapuna Grammar School from 2010 to 2013, finishing Year 12 and choosing not to return for Year 13.

Career

Her music career began in 2009, when she and a friend, Louis McDonald, won the Belmont Intermediate talent show as a duo. After they performed covers on Radio New Zealand, McDonald's father sent recordings to Universal Music Group, where the A&R executive Scott Maclachlan signed her for development. For the next two years she took singing lessons and played covers around Auckland. In December 2011 Maclachlan paired her with the producer Joel Little, and the two recorded five songs in about three weeks at his studio.

The result was The Love Club EP, which she released free online in November 2012. After it had been downloaded about 60,000 times, Universal released it commercially in March 2013. Its lead single, "Royals", reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which made her, at 16, the youngest artist with a US number one single since 1987. Her debut album, Pure Heroine, followed in September 2013, with singles including "Tennis Court" and "Team". In 2014 she curated the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and recorded four tracks for it, among them "Yellow Flicker Beat".

Her second album, Melodrama, was released on 16 June 2017, produced mainly by Lorde and Jack Antonoff. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and also topped the charts in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. "Green Light" led the project, with "Perfect Places" and a remix of "Homemade Dynamite" as further singles. She toured with the album through 2017 and 2018.

In 2020 she published Going South, a book documenting her January 2019 trip to Antarctica, with photographs by Harriet Were. Her third album, Solar Power, came out on 20 August 2021 with an acoustic, folk-influenced sound and reached number one in Australia and New Zealand. A companion release, Te Ao Marama, was sung entirely in Te Reo Maori and issued on 9 September 2021, with proceeds going to two New Zealand charities.

In 2024 she signed with Universal Music Publishing Group and worked on a remix of Charli XCX's "Girl, So Confusing". Her fourth album, Virgin, was released in June 2025, co-produced with Jim-E Stack and led by the single "What Was That". It reached number one in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom and number two on the Billboard 200. On release day she played the whole album in a surprise set at Glastonbury Festival. The Ultrasound World Tour followed. Her contract with Universal ended in December 2025.

Recognition

Lorde has won two Grammy Awards for "Royals", for Best Pop Solo Performance and Song of the Year, and has received two Brit Awards and a nomination for a Golden Globe for "Yellow Flicker Beat". Pure Heroine won the Taite Music Prize in 2014. She has won numerous Aotearoa (New Zealand) Music Awards, including Best Solo Artist, and at the 2026 ceremony Virgin earned her Best Pop Artist and International Achievement. Billboard included her in its 21 Under 21 list, and Forbes placed her on its 2014 30 Under 30 list, as the youngest person featured.

Public roles

She became a patron of MusicHelps, a New Zealand charity, in November 2018. Her charitable activity includes a NZ$20,000 donation to the lunch program Fuel the Need in 2016 and participation in the 2015 charity single "Team Ball Player Thing", whose sales funded research into Batten disease.