10 October 2013
Lorde here becomes the third act from Aotearoa – New Zealand to have a number one single in Ireland, and at the time of writing there’s only been one more since her. By contrast, 12 Irish acts so far have topped the NZ singles charts: The Bachelors, U2, Foster & Allen, Sinéad O’Connor, B*Witched, Boyzone, Westlife, Ronan Keating solo, Samantha Mumba, Niall Horan as part of One Direction, and Hozier. Yes, I said Foster & Allen.
This imbalance and under-representation hints at New Zealand’s proud tradition of pop and rock that’s agreeably off-kilter by mainstream standards: the late-’70s art-rock of Split Enz; the ’80s indie jangle of Flying Nun Records and the Dunedin Sound; the dreamy ’00s and ’10s alt-pop of Ladyhawke and Connan Mockasin. Neil Finn, popular genius of the whistleable radio-friendly tune, has only ever reached no. 19 in Ireland with Split Enz and Crowded House, on three separate occasions – maybe Irish punters baulked at the avant garde angularity of ‘Weather With You’. In its own way the first Aotearoa chart-topper here, OMC’s ‘How Bizarre’, was an ear-catching mixum-gatherum of styles, though the end result toppled into naffness. Perhaps extreme geographical isolation has instilled a mindset of experimentation, even in as homogenous a form as commercial pop music, by outward-facing acts gleefully mixing local experience with imported exotica in a way other similarly-sized anglophone island nations should envy. Ireland: always too damn near England for our own good.
‘Royals’ has its own agreeable idiosyncrasy, what with that sparse finger-clicking and hip hop beat. (The sparseness calls to mind the second NZ act to reach number one in Ireland: Kimbra, co-vocalist with Australia’s Gotye on the Sting-Lite male-angst soft-rock of ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’.) Lorde too adds some of the proto-Brat spiky attitude we can recognise from subsequent mentions of her in webloid celeb gossip. And that chorus hook is memorable. However, while Lorde’s smart, subdued vocal style takes the weight off lyrics that bemoan pop-cultural bling consumerism (albeit mostly the sort of bling associated with Black rap and R&B videos, unfortunately) it’s still a song about imagining no possessions, which is always a stale and shaky proposition for a pop-cultural commercial product. Truth be told, I was more interested in the second part of the chorus (“I could be your ruler / You can call me queen bee”) and how it plays off the title premise, but alas that isn’t the route this song explores. Not as naff as ‘How Bizarre’ but ultimately, to my taste, ‘Royals’ isn’t bizarre enough.
