Lorde celebrates 10-year anniversary of debut album Pure Heroine in special email update

Lorde has marked the 10-year anniversary of her debut album Pure Heroine with a special email to fans. Photo / Getty Images

Mere weeks after sharing a heartbreaking update, Lorde is back - this time to celebrate a much happier occasion.

Earlier this week, the 26-year-old, whose real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor, released a special edition of her online newsletter to pay tribute to her debut album, Pure Heroine.

Marking 10 years since the release of the album that not only put her on the map with the hit single Royals but also won her two Grammy awards at the young age of 17, the singer announced new merchandise to celebrate its double-figure birthday as well as sharing some insight into how the album first came about.

Noting that “a lot of stuff isn’t good after ten years”, as she referenced a “leather collar” and her blonde hair, she said “I am still totally touched by this sweet record,” and including a series of photos from when she began writing the album as a teenager.

Telling fans how at 14 years old her her greatest “work of art” was her bedroom, “A very cool, very classic teenage bedroom, Andie’s and Duckie’s from Pretty in Pink meets the Virgin Suicides,” she added, “I’d sit up there and vibe out, taking a lot of selfies. Creating a small-scale work of art using the self, and then examining the product from every angle, was the best method I had to express myself and exercise creatively at that time, and now I see it as an important PH incubation phase.”

“Ten years goes really fast. One minute you’re wearing a leather collar with a giant crystal hanging off it to a Chanel party, and the next you’re blonde. A lot of stuff isn’t good after ten years. But I am still totally touched by this sweet record.”

— Lorde via e-mail. pic.twitter.com/GNVhSqd8wG

— Lorde Updates (@LordeUpdatesBR) September 27, 2023

Going on to discuss her decision to start using cannabis, she explained to her fans how the drug was a huge help in her creative process. She said it “gave me a deeper understanding of sensory pleasure, and allowed me to start to see my world as a possible work of art.

Explaining how it aided in her ability to see things differently, she said, “I’d go on long walks around the neighbourhood, and began to mythologise the stuff around me (big empty floodlit rugby fields/bus rides/dark/streets/boredom/isolation) into the motifs that would become Pure Heroine.”

The singer’s lengthy email also included praise for Joel Little - from Goodnight Nurse - who worked as a producer on the chart-topping album. Lorde shared a 25-page transcript of a phone conversation between the pair as they spoke about the inspiration of the album.

One part of the transcript reveals what the Ribs singer felt when she decided she wanted to pursue life as a singer-songwriter, “To be having that realisation, like, holy sh**, this is what I want to do with my life. It was a very strong feeling. Like falling in love,” she said.

The Auckland-born artist continued to praise Little, noting he treated her “like we were peers, in the most sensitive and age-appropriate way”.

"Experiences exist only in you; you are sitting on a gold mine that no one can rob. Whatever that means to you, whatever that statement you were born to make is, I invite you to take a big breath and make it."

- Lorde via e-mail. pic.twitter.com/6K230f1vvk

— Lorde Updates (@LordeUpdatesBR) September 27, 2023

In true Lorde fashion, she signed off the email inspirationally, encouraging fans to chase their own dreams.

“Pure Heroine exists because I had the tiniest inkling of what I’ve now come to see as one of my guiding principles: that each of us have a handful of songs inside us that are ours, and only ours, to sing,” the singer wrote.

“Your specific interests and upbringing and physiology and experiences exist only in you; you are sitting on a gold mine that no one can rob. Whatever that means to you, whatever that statement you were born to make is, I invite you to take a big breath and make it.”