30 Royals

LORDE 2011

“I’ve always been fascinated with aristocracy,” Lorde told Rolling Stone around the time “Royals” took the Number One spot on the U.S. charts. Written “in like half an hour” by the then-15-year-old New Zealander, who took influence from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s diamond-encrusted Watch the Throne, as well as the muted electronic work of artists like James Blake, “Royals” was maximal minimalism, a mumbled thunderbolt of playful resistance against rap and pop’s obsession with wealth and status. As Lorde said later, “I was definitely poking fun at a lot of things that people take to be normal.”