Lorde remembers David Bowie in beautiful note

Lorde is one of many artists who posted remembrances of David Bowie after his death, and in a note on Facebook, the Australian musician wrote about meeting Bowie for the first time, in 2013, and his influence on her music and style.

Lorde was performing at a benefit honoring Tilda Swinton, who co-starred in Bowie’s music video for “The Stars (Are Out Tonight).” She wrote, “I was not quite [17], America was very new to me, and I was distinctly uneasy and distrustful toward everything happening in my life that was putting me in these flat-voiced, narrow-eyed, champagneish rooms. I played my three songs, thrashing and twitching in platform boots.”

Lorde wrote that after her performance, Bowie wanted to meet her. “I’ve never met a hero of mine and liked it,” Lorde noted. “It just sucks, the pressure is too huge, you can’t enjoy it. David was different. I’ll never forget the caressing of our hands as we spoke, or the light in his eyes. That night something changed in me – i felt a calmness grow, a sureness.”

Bowie was often depicted as the patron saint of weirdos, an idol to otherness, which is an idea Lorde has spoken about often in messages to her fans.

“I think in those brief moments, he heralded me into my next new life, an old rock and roll alien angel in a perfect grey suit,” she says. “I realized everything I’d ever done, or would do from then on, would be done like maybe he was watching. I realized I was proud of my spiky strangeness because he had been proud of his.”

Read her full note below.