Lorde celebrates her 20th birthday last night with, among others, Taylor Swift, left. Photo / via Instagram
Lorde celebrates her 20th birthday last night with, among others, Taylor Swift, left. Photo / via Instagram
Lorde has told fans her new album won't be coming "tomorrow, or even next month" - but she says it will be "soon".
The Kiwi pop star used her 20th birthday to update fans on her highly anticipated second album, the follow-up to her chart-topping debut Pure Heroine, which came out in 2013.
A NOTE FROM THE DESK OF A NEWBORN ADULT
Tomorrow I turn 20, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for days. I walk...
In a post she titled, "A note from the desk of a newborn adult," Lorde said the album was nearly finished and it contained the best lyrics she'd ever written, and couldn't wait to unveil it.
"I want nothing more than to spill my guts RIGHT NOW about the whole thing - I want you to see the album cover, pore over the lyrics (the best I've written in my life), touch the merch, experience the live show," she wrote.
"I can hardly stop myself from typing out the name."
But Lorde, real name Ella Yelich-O'Connor also admitted she needed to "keep working a while longer to make it as good as it can be".
"You'll have to hold on. The big day is not tomorrow, or even next month realistically, but soon. I know you understand," she said.
Pure Heroine's producer Joel Little recently told the Herald he was no longer working on the album, despite holding initial songwriting sessions with Lorde.
"We wrote together, but I'm not producing the record ... This time I'm coming at it more as a fan than being super involved. I'm excited to see what she's working on," he said.
In the same post, Lorde wrote about her "colossal year" that followed the release of her hit single Royals and Pure Heroine, in which she toured the world, headlined festivals like Lollapalooza, and made friends with big name pop stars like Taylor Swift - who made a hand-decorated card and posted a heartfelt message to social media in honour of Lorde's birthday (below).
Lorde also partied with Swift and other celeb friends overnight to mark her 20th.
"I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover," she wrote.
"My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both. I started to discover in a profound, scary, blood-aching way who I was when I was alone, what I did when I did things only for myself. I was reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender.
"I threw sprawling parties and sat in restaurants until the early hours, learning what it's like to be an adult, even talking like one sometimes, until I caught myself. All I wanted to do was dance. I whispered into ears and let my eyes blaze on high and for the first time I felt this intimate, empire-sized inner power."
She ended the note with a final promise about the new record: "The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world."
Lorde last gave fans an update on the album in August in a now deleted Instagram comment, shen she responded to a fan who had asked her why it was taking so long.
"I write a record when I have enough special stories to tell, and it's all me, every melody every lyric, not some team who just start the machine up every eighteen months like clockwork," she wrote.
