Lorde has shared a heartbreaking update with fans. Photo / Getty Images
Lorde has shared a heartbreaking update with fans. Photo / Getty Images
Lorde has given her fans a bittersweet new update in her latest newsletter.
The Kiwi pop star, 26, has spent her fair share of time in the spotlight since releasing her career-launching song Royals in 2012, and it seems to be taking its toll on her.
Addressing the months of speculation that she is releasing new music – something that fans believed was confirmed when her website went down this week – the star has released a lengthy heartfelt newsletter revealing she is “living with heartbreak again”.
Lorde – real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor – tells her millions of loyal fans that she is living in London and while “things feel clear here”, she said she is mostly alone with her thoughts and is “starting to miss my friends and family, like a vitamin I’m deficient in”.
Lorde, who has been out of New Zealand since May, also addresses her current relationship status, appearing to confirm her split from longtime music executive boyfriend Justin Warren, 42.
The two, who were last seen together in May, have been linked since 2015 when they attended the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards together. There were rumours this year that they were engaged however neither party confirmed the speculation.
Explaining her heartbreak, Lorde writes: “It’s different but the same. I ache all the time, I forget why and then remember. I’m not trying to hide from the pain, I understand now that pain isn’t something to hide from, that there’s actually great beauty in moving with it. But sometimes I’m sick of being with myself.”
She adds that she has tried to ease the pain and “manipulate the endorphins” by eating chocolate, however it appears to have had the opposite effect as the Grammy winner says “my body is really inflamed”.
“My gut isn’t working properly, my skin is worse than ever, I’ve gotten sick half a dozen times. I realised earlier this year that listening to my body is hard for me, it’s something I never really learned how to do.” The star goes on to say she has stopped taking the “little yellow pill” that she has taken each morning since she was 15. While she doesn’t confirm what she is referring to, it may be a reference to a prescription antidepressant.
Lorde performs on the Pyramid Stage during day five of Glastonbury Festival in 2022. Photo / Getty Images
Continuing her letter, she says she goes online to look at everyone on social media, writing, “everyone looks very thin” and heartbreakingly admits, “Just thinking that makes me feel tired and far away. I’m not sure if it’s having an effect on anyone else.”
Lorde then shares she was scheduled to attend Paris Fashion Week, however just this week she sent a text to her manager to cancel her appearances explaining, “At the start of my career I promised myself I’d never be one of the people in the light smiling if it wasn’t real.”
The next paragraphs include confessions of drug use where she said she consumed mushrooms - a natural hallucinogenic drug - which helped her discover “a lot of information about what my body had been through in our time so far, what it needed, where God was and where God wasn’t; I felt in my bones how destabilising it is to leave home and start a new life the way I did.” She said the trip also made her realise her body is “magnificent, and that hating it is as futile as hating a tree”.
Nearing the end of the lengthy newsletter, she includes some positives of her year including photos from a short European festival tour where she and her crew pulled together a “cool new version” of the show in a couple of days.
Lorde and Caroline Polachek at Sziget. Photo / Getty Images
Lorde goes on to share some of her book recommendations which included Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Motherhood by Sheila Heti and Rough Translations by Molly Giles - one she notes was “brought into my life by sweet angel bookworm Chris Chang” referring to the TVNZ Breakfast host.
Sharing her love for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, she said she loved engaging from London and raised awareness for The Kindness Institute - a mental health resource for Māori rangatahi - asking fans to donate if possible as it recently lost government funding. “I know the cost of living is cooked for Kiwis right now and pop stars asking people to donate sux, but if you work at a good-sized company maybe you can wrangle a donation from your employers?! I’m gonna email my record company about it.”
She continued to share the Sylvia Plath poem Stings that her mum, Sonja Yelich, shared with her, writing that it “sums up the above”.
Finally, the singer signed off her post telling fans, “don’t worry about me”, and admits, “I still laugh every day, it’s all moving, even when it goes slow. I’ve accepted the mission — I have a self to recover.”
