How old was Lorde when she wrote Royals? Kiwi singer opens up on protecting her image from social media

Lorde, or Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, is one of the few celebrities known for her reclusive nature. She appeared on the cover of Vogue's March 2022 issue and reiterated her choice to stay away from social media and similar public platforms.

The magazine quoted her as saying that she felt protective of her development. She said:

“Your own sense of image and self is developing, and I felt very protective of that and I didn’t want other people’s weird sh*t to get cooked into that."

To make sure she stays off social media, the Royals fame recruited a coder friend to block sites from her devices. In a previous issue of Vogue, the Kiwi singer and songwriter noted that she is highly sensitive and not built for the life of a pop star.

She told Vogue in October 2021.

"I’m great at my job, but I’m not sure I’m the man for the job. I’m a highly sensitive person. I’m not built for pop star life. To have a public-facing existence is something I find really intense and is something I’m not good at. That natural charisma is not what I have. I have the brain in the jar."

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Lorde wrote 'Royals' in just half an hour

The Royals singer started her musical journey while she was still in school. A&R representative Scott MacLachlan of Universal Music Group (UMG) discovered Lorde when she was 12 years old after seeing a video of her performing at a school talent show.

She started writing songs at the age of 13. She worked alongside Joel Little, a former singer and pop-punk band guitarist, who composed songs with musical structures based on her lyrics.

Royals was recorded during Lorde’s school holidays at Little’s Golden Age Studios in Auckland, NZ when she was 15 years old. She self-released Royals for free download in conjunction with The Love Club EP on SoundCloud on November 22, 2012. Lorde told Billboard:

"I wrote it in like half an hour - the lyrics, anyway. I wrote all the lyrics and took them to the studio and my producer was like, ‘Yeah, this is cool.’ We worked on that and on two other songs on the EP in a week."

In 2013, UMG commercially released the pair's debut collaboration, an extended play (EP) named The Love Club. Lorde gained popularity and appeared on Time's list of the most influential teenagers in 2013 and 2014, and also appeared in Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2014.

Royals won awards for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2014 Grammy Awards and the APRA Silver Scroll Award.

That same year, her debut studio album Pure Heroine was released to critical and financial success. Lorde also created music for the 2014 film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and recorded many tunes, including the single Yellow Flicker Beat.

Her second studio album, Melodrama (2017), gained worldwide critical praise and debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200, while her most recent work, Solar Power (2021), charted in multiple countries.

Lorde released her new song, Solar Power, back in June 2021. The track was released in line with a solar eclipse happening in the Northern Hemisphere. The song's music video touches upon the untamed beauties of nature, including the sun, the sky, and the sea.

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Still from Lorde's Solar Power which was released in 2021 (Image via YouTube)

Currently, the 25-year-old singer is on tour to promote Solar Power. Her tour started in February in her native New Zealand, followed by Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth in March. The tour will continue in America, Canada, Britain, and Europe, leading up to her final show in Berlin on June 23.