Lorde names her favourite songs of the 1960s
Lorde is one of the few artists who could really claim to have stopped the clock the minute she broke through. Pop music had already been going in one direction in the 2010s, but the minute that ‘Royals’ took over the charts, it had become something entirely different as she ushered in a new era of people not concerned with material wealth. If you look at what Lorde had been listening to up until then, some of her favourite 1960s songs were already a dead giveaway of her more stripped-back approach.
Although there was probably no better time for Lorde to break out than in the endless stream of pop cliches of the 2010s, her style was more centred towards when it came to the classics. When talking about her favourite songs from the golden age of rock and roll, one of her first picks included ‘For What It’s Worth’ by Buffalo Springfield.
Despite being known more for its impact on the Woodstock generation, the tune is actually a lot more universal than a lot of people realise. The entire mentality behind some of Lorde’s greatest songs could easily just be an interpolation of the chorus of “Everybody, look what’s going down,” as if she’s trying to hold a mirror up to society and let them know what’s really going on.
Then again, does anyone really want to make their living off of only writing songs about stirring people up? It’s one thing to be able to preach from a pulpit, but people also need to see your humanity, and a song like ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’ by The Mamas and the Papas is the perfect alternative side of that coin.
As much as Lorde talks about the greater issues with the world on her first album, this one song could have served as a great inspiration for her work on Melodrama. While not necessarily in sound, the lyrics about singing the praises of one’s significant other was about taking this folk-rock and repackaging them as a radio-friendly group, so it’s not necessarily that far of a stretch, either.
Whereas Lorde could get sentimental when she wanted to, she was never going to make pop tunes based on what other people wanted. Her material had to be from the heart, and even if people weren’t as receptive to it, that was their problem rather than something that she had to change about herself.
If anything, the fact that Lorde sheds some light on Nancy Sinatra’s ‘My Baby Shot Me’ might say the most about what her music stands for. A lot of people of this generation probably know the song for its inclusion on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, but hearing Sinatra’s anguished voice as she sings about an old flame leaving her after years together is what Lorde’s sound was all about. It’s wrapped in a pop-flavoured package, but if you scratch even a little bit beneath the surface, you start to really just how many raw wounds are still there.