2013Released
3:10

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Royals. By Songfacts®.

Ella Yelich-O'Connor is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. Inspired by her love for such royals as Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI of France, and the last Tsar, Nicholas II of Russia, she adopted the moniker of Lorde (The 'e' is pronounced silently). Yelich-O'Connor was discovered when her now manager, Scott Maclachlan, saw a video of her performing at a Belmont Intermediate School talent show when she was 12. In development with Universal Music NZ since she turned 13, the young singer signed to the US-based Lava Records three years later. This is her first single, which debuted at #1 on the New Zealand Top 40 on March 15, 2013 and stayed there for three weeks. Yelich-O'Connor was just 16-years-old at the time.

Yelich-O'Connor's management paired her with other local songwriters, none of whom worked out very well until she met Joel Little of the pop-punk group Goodnight Nurse. The teenage songstress told the New Zealand Herald that unlike the other would-collaborators, whom she felt didn't take her seriously because of her age and wanted to do all the work, she enjoys writing with Little because "he doesn't want to put his huge big signature on the music." They penned this underdog song with a similar regal theme to Yelich-O'Connor's stage name during her school holidays.

When "Royals" hit #1 on the Alternative Songs chart August 24, 2013, Lorde became the first female solo artist to top the tally since Tracy Bonham's "Mother Mother" in June 1996, five months before Lorde was even born. Why did it take so long? Tracy Bonham has some thoughts. "1996 was a year when there were a lot of female artists, a lot of bands with females fronting them," she said in a Songfacts interview. "Then in 1998, things started to change a little bit, and the year 2000 was really when, in my opinion, the door slammed shut. There was a major backlash. We had already enjoyed two big tours of Lilith Fair and women were everywhere. We felt unstoppable and we could scream. Even though we caught flak for it, mostly from the male-dominated music business, we still were enjoying this empowerment. Then the music business just took it back. It was almost like it couldn't handle all the female strength and empowerment, and the backlash happened seemingly overnight. In the year 2000 I remember listening to the radio and all I heard was Limp Bizkit, Korn, all the angry white dudes having their heyday. I knew that the winds had changed in a dramatic way, but what I didn't realize was how long it would take for another strong female solo artist to have a #1 hit on that chart."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Royals.
GKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
85BPM

Album

The album Royals is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Royals.
Universal Music New Zealand Limited
© 2013 Universal Music NZ Ltd.
℗ 2013 Universal Music NZ Ltd.

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