Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)

Not living it large, says teen singer

It’s pretty tame – Lorde

- NEKESA MUMBI MOODY

NEW YORK: Lorde may never be a royal, but these days, she’s living like one.

The 17-year-old singer, anointed to the lofty position of pop’s newest princess thanks to her astute hit song, Royals, is surrounded by the materialis­tic things she rails against in her No 1 smash. She has drivers, she’s catered for and says she could get “crazy bottle service” if she so desired.

“The irony is not lost on me,” she said in a recent interview.

Yet just because she’s surrounded by excess doesn’t mean she indulges – or is even interested in – it.

“Every time I go out, it’s with my mom and my band and my manager and all these adults who are looking over me pretty much, so it’s pretty tame to be honest.

“I definitely don’t feel like I’m living in a particular­ly extravagan­t sort of way – which I think is good because I think for me, personally, if I was thrown into that kind of thing, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it,” she said.

“I think it’s good to kind of keep on keeping on – just do what you have normally done and sort things into a stride.”

It will be hard for Lorde, born Ella Yellich O’Connnor, to keep on living a normal life if her stratosphe­ric trajectory stays on point.

In just a few months, she’s gone from being a New Zealand teen with an EP and an impressive fol-

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