10 popular Lorde songs you can't miss

Lorde is once again making headlines, but this time, it's not for her music; it's for her life. In a revealing interview with Document Journal, published on May 1, the award-winning artist opened up about the intensely personal struggles she's endured when it comes to food, body image, and the emotional turmoil that informed her upcoming album, Virgin.

Far from the groomed, glamorous image that one usually imagines pop stardom to entail, she offered an uncensored view of the challenges she's faced over the last few years. This journey of self-discovery and learning, she concedes, was difficult and filled with vulnerable moments, which eventually impacted the unvarnished honesty listeners will discover in her new music.

In expressing these experiences honestly, Lorde is reminding us that even icons of pop music are human and that their musicianship often has its roots in the deepest, most challenging aspects of their existences.

Lorde, the New Zealand-born singer-songwriter who first mesmerized the world with her 2013 debut album as a teenager, aged 16, has again roused attention for her new output. With sultry, musing style and poetic lyrics, Lorde has established herself as a force in contemporary music.

Her songs, frequently an unflinching and contemplative interpretation of life as a teen, resonate universally with young and old listeners seeking to navigate growing up. Whether capturing the happiness of carefree youth or the agony of learning about relationships, her songs continue to raise nostalgia and introspection.

Her fourth album, Virgin, comes out on June 27, but first, let's take a moment to appreciate the songs that defined Lorde's ascension. With her lyric honesty and unique voice, her first three albums encapsulate the raw emotion and teenage angst of young life better than most bands. So let's go down memory lane and revisit some of her greatest hits.

Here are some popular songs by Lorde

Lorde's music has always been marked by its introspective lyrics, ambient production, and capacity for transient emotions to strike with crystal clarity. Her songs go from eerie ballads to lively pop anthems and probe the preoccupations of youth, celebrity, identity, and emotional openness.

With a voice that is both otherworldly and earthed, she has cultivated a distinct niche in pop that appeals to listeners seeking both sonic nuance and lyrical complexity. Each record unveils another facet of her artistic growth, rendering her discography timeless as well as intimate.

Disclaimer: This article contains the writer's opinion. The reader's discretion is advised.

1) Liability

Lorde's "Liability" is a startling departure from pop production's excess, instead resorting to stripped-back, piano-driven composition, exposing her internal life. She eschews covering emotion behind metaphor or style, embracing fragility, letting simplicity become strength.

The song disentangles what it is like to be too intense, too emotional, or too complicated for people to deal with, and she turns that awkwardness into something quietly powerful.

It's not only about heartbreak, but about the cost of being truly seen. In stripping away the layers of her facade, Lorde meets the pain of misunderstanding head-on and encourages listeners to do the same with their own messiness. The song, a highlight of Melodrama, isn't interested in providing solutions but builds a space for genuine introspection that lingers long after the last note.

2) Ribs

With its frenzied production and unflinching, unadulterated truth, "Ribs" squeezes the strangeness and confused emotional rollercoaster of youth. Lorde doesn't describe adolescence; she pulls us down into its emotional undertows, an elaborate knot of desiring, confusion, surges of temporary joy, and the creeping fear of knowing that time is seeping away.

The melancholic, gathering force of the song reflects the increasing tension of understanding that innocence is lost as childhood gives way to responsibility. Although "Ribs" is the product of a real party Lorde threw sometime in her life, its deeper meaning lies in its exhibition of vulnerability. It touches on the bittersweet feeling of maturity and the inner conflict felt in letting go of heedless youth.

As a result, the song has become an implicit anthem for all those fighting the in-between phase of life, where the desire to grow up conflicts with the mourning for what must be left behind. It expresses the shared experience of wanting to hold on to the past and unwillingly move into the future.

3) Royals

When "Royals" was released, it was a pop music landmark moment not only because of its minimalist production but because of the sweeping message behind it. Lorde was 16 when she used her top single to go against the common stories of wealth, fame, and decadence rampant in mainstream pop.

Rather than reveling in the tawdry, frequently unachievable lifestyle so lauded in so much of popular culture, she presented a gloriously sincere, no-holds-barred vision, appealing in plain terms to a generation tired of the celebrity fantasy spectacle.

The plain, minimalist rhythm of the song, paired with its repetitive beat, was the ideal vehicle for Lorde's acid critique of consumerism and social conformity. This new pop vision wasn't merely the key to success for the "Royals." It ignited a quiet revolution that redefined what we mean when we say "pop."

With this one song, Lorde emerged as a voice for losers and misfits, speaking in her music in a voice that spoke to those who were screaming for something true and real amidst a sea of unattainable ideals.

It was a hit single, yes, but it was also a cultural moment that heralded something and spoke to a multitude of people, summing Lorde up into an artist who would change the sound and definition of pop music.

4) 400 Lux

In "400 Lux," Lorde builds an unassuming yet emotionally charged portrait of youth, where quiet routines and subtle moments are freighted with unexpected power. Instead of focusing on great statements or narratives, the song leans on the soft closeness of ordinary life, morning alarms, shared neighborhoods, and the easy rhythms of youthful camaraderie.

60th Annual GRAMMY Awards - MusiCares Person Of The Year Honoring Fleetwood Mac - Inside (Image via Getty)

It's not a tale of fiery passion, but one of familiarity and understanding, presented with her characteristic restraint and poetic subtlety. As part of Pure Heroine, the song doesn't seek the limelight like some of her more familiar hits, but captures a particular, lived-in feeling that cuts deeply.

The effect is a soft, atmospheric exploration of what it is to grow up with someone, even in silence.

5) The Louvre

One of the highlights of Lorde's Melodrama album is "The Louvre," which lyrically and sonically focuses on the thrill of new romance. Lorde, along with prime producers Flume and Jack Antonoff, penned the song that plunges headfirst into the beginning of a romance when the feelings are at record levels and everything feels like something out of an epic cinematic epic.

Lorde's references to higher art place her emotions on an altar, and the new infatuation is consummated as though some unreplaceable art is on a gallery wall, referencing her love and love of the encounter.

Lorde at the 2017 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival - Weekend 1 - Day 3 (Image via Getty)

The thudding beat and elegant construction of the song are like being swept up by a whirlwind, blurring the senses to ugliness and confusion. Instead of telling a conventional story, "The Louvre" places listeners in the center of the transitory, charged wave of emotion. It asks them to dance out into the storm of passion and uncertainty.

The song, its sonics rich and textured, its lyrics contemplative, places the listener amid an enveloping passion, feeling its fragility and strength.

6) Tennis Court

"Tennis Court" is a wry, self-aware observation of the dreamlike quality of instant fame, in which Lorde adopts a detached, cool tone to critique the world she was about to enter so quickly. Against a minimalist but atmospheric electronic backdrop, the song matches its sleek, shiny beats with Lorde's ironic and reflective lyrics.

Her tone is intentionally subdued and even a little detached, as she considers the emotional distance and the feeling of artificiality that often characterizes celebrity culture. Rather than celebrating fame, Lorde employs a muted tension and deadpan delivery to examine the hollowness that can go with the limelight, quietly challenging the values of a world fixated on image and surface achievement.

Instead of a celebratory anthem, the song is an acerbic, reflective observation by a young artist struggling to make sense of overnight fame. It offers a distant but perceptive critique of the glitzy spectacle that covers up the true nature behind it.

With Tennis Court, she not only makes a pop single but also an insightful, self-deprecating commentary on the discrepancy between fame's public image and its expense.

7) Green Light

Dropped in 2017 as the initial segment of her second album, Melodrama, "Green Light" was a breakaway change of direction for Lorde. Combining bright dance-pop vitality with affective undertones, the song was an attention-grabbing comeback following her initial run.

Though its catchy pace and chorused anthemism lend to easy accessibility, the tune had a prolonged development process that took over a year to complete.

Written with co-writers such as Frank Dukes and Jack Antonoff, its textured production and cinematic piano hits mirror Lorde's maturing artistry. She has named Florence and the Machine as an influence, which contributes to the song's sweeping, theatrical sound, exposing a raw, cathartic aspect of heartbreak encased in a defiant pop package.

8) Buzzcut Season

Lorde's "Buzzcut Season" distills the raw emotional intensity of youth in its traversing from innocence to experience. Understated electropop production in the song has it stuck between melancholy and nostalgia, and her dreamy singing offers relief from reflections on adulthood.

The song reverses the crash between freedom of youth and the shadow of adulthood, and offers a tone of nostalgic yearning. In its introspective verses, "Buzzcut Season" is a desperate call to escape the norms of society, manifesting the will to learn examples of freedom before losing them.

Buzzcut Season by Lorde (YouTube/@Lorde)

With all this combination of vulnerability and resilience, this is a hopeful hymn for everyone trapped in the struggle between youthful innocence and cynicism with the world.

9) Glory and Gore

"Glory and Gore" is Lorde's most introspective song, capturing the tacky undertone of fame and celebrity's fixation with status. Out in 2014, the song combines hip-hop, EDM, and chillwave for an offbeat sound that surrounds listeners in its haunted atmosphere.

Its syncopated beats and percussive drums are grounded at its center by Lorde's expressive vocals, with a message that deconstructs the vacuity of celebrity culture.

The acid-stained, unsentimental words immortalize the brutal struggle for perfection and notice, laying bare the cold reality behind the trashy shine of celebrity. The dull, obscure atmosphere of the song is a strong condemnation of the stressfulness of contemporary life.

10) A World Alone

Lorde's ballad "A World Alone" is a bitter lamentation of loneliness and affective isolation that can totally define life today. The ballad captures the suffocating sense of being surrounded by distractions yet utterly alone. With her ethereal voice, she pleads for true connection in a world where relationships are superficial and validation and attention are ubiquitous temptations.

Lorde at the 2014 iHeartRadio Music Festival - Night 2 - Show (Image via Getty)

As the title song for her 2013 album Pure Heroine, "A World Alone" solidified her status as a great lyricist, clinically describing betrayal, isolation, and survival in the growing fragmentation of society. Anthem and diatribe both, the song uses melodic hooks and surges of ambient background conversation reflecting distraction, competing for our attention daily.

Both Joel Little and Lorde wrote the song, "A World Alone," from the album's first single, "Tennis Court," and last recorded words, "let 'em talk," a defiant declaration of independence from the things of the world.

Lorde's career has been nothing short of phenomenal, from wide-eyed 16-year-old with spartan anthem form to low, rumbling drawl that keeps redefining pop. With every album, she has cemented herself as an artist who refuses to play by the rules, mixing introspective lyrics with innovative production to produce songs that touch.

Even as she evolves and develops yet further, her music will continue to serve as a testament to her unconcerned artist's eye and the honesty that has constructed her as one of the faces of contemporary music. With every release, Lorde demonstrates that her musical voice will continue to inspire and engage, cementing her place as one of the most compelling and resilient talents in modern music.