Lorde works in mysterious ways

Pop culture success isn’t necessary testament to abundant talent. We all know that.

Such assessments are famously subjective and sifting through all the offerings to find what we individually regard as the good stuff can itself be fatiguing because there’s a big ol’ industry grinding out prefabricated entertainments and vesting the favoured ones with massive exposure. All of which means many of us tend to be nothing if not swift in making an initial and emphatic assessment about whether to turn away. Life’s too short to dither on such matters, right?

Even so, there comes a point where it’s a tad wilful to decline to show a skerrick of interest in the face of a success that has none of the trappings of the formulaic or the perilously fashionable.

Such a performer is New Zealand’s Lorde. Her second album Melodrama is a worldwide hit, most conspicuously topping the Billboard chart in the United States, As a live performer she has lately triumphed at England’s massive Glastonbury festival.

She’s a 2014 Grammy winner whose admirers go beyond her emergent-teen peers; drawing a telling benediction from the outgoing David Bowie (throughout his own career, one of the most prescient of the baby boomers) and lately attracting music industry reviews that could have been written by her mother.

Critics certainly haven’t found her easy to peg; most commonly trying to connect at least two traits: ‘‘songs operating on both personal and universal levels . . . full of grief and hedonism . . . heartbreak and ecstasy . . . delivered with subtle dynamism and dizzying imagination . . . between rage and elation . . a party record disguised as a breakup album or a breakup album disguised as a party record . . . ‘‘

Make what you will of her music yourselves.

But we should collectively acknowledge this is a young woman who is increasingly seen, from a range of different directions, as a figure of artistic invention, insight and integrity extraordinary in one so young.

Just now, New Zealand is for good reason feeling pretty exultant about sporting successes, in yachting and a so-far-so-good Lions rugby tour. Lest we get too terribly skitey, cautionary voices are reminding us that there are limits to how much the rest of the world really cares about such things.

Fair enough. But on a cultural level, we have a lot going on too. Especially Lorde. Those who see things in terms of our country’s international profile must conclude that she is becoming a very big deal indeed among a really important demographic.

More than that, though; there’s ample evidence that it’s happening for good reason.