On Thursday, New Zealand native Ella Yelich-O’Connor celebrated her 17th birthday. She’s better known by the world as Lorde and she’s scored an international hit with “Royals.” The track spent another week on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and she celebrated her birthday with a Tumblr post for her fans.
“Royals” notched its sixth week at the top of the Hot 100 and has topped several other Billboard charts as well. The track, which is featured on the album Pure Heroine, is No. 1 on the Radio Songs chart for a third week and topped the Hot Rock Songs chart for a 10th week. It is at No. 2 on the Streaming Songs chart and No. 3 on the Digital Songs chart.
According to EW, Lorde wrote a special message for her fans on her Tumblr page, noting that it’s crazy for her to think about how different turning 17 was from turning 16.
“I think back to my last birthday; it fell in the middle of exam revision but a bunch of my friends came over anyway to eat cake and ruffle my hair and talk about Pokemon,” she wrote about last year. “This time last year I was making a Soundcloud, and a Twitter, and a Tumblr, all in the name Lorde. I had no clue what was going to happen with the music. I hoped it’d be alright.”
Lorde also spoke with The Telegraph this week, giving an interview in which she gives her thoughts on the current state of music, which is quickly becoming one of her trademarks.
“I didn’t expect to be in this world but I think it’s kind of cool,” she said. “For a long time pop has been this laughable, shameful thing. But it’s actually gratifying and fun and can unite populations, which I think is incredibly powerful. So hopefully I am showing that pop can be taken seriously.”
You can check out the video for “Royals” below, in case you have somehow not heard the song yet.
image: NBC