What does a chart topping, international hit get a 16 year old girl from New Zealand? Well, for a start her Twitter account now boasts over 400,000 followers. Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor, better known by her stage name as Lorde, has rocketed to success after “Royals” was released. As a girl in the midst of her teens, Lorde is no stranger to social media such as Twitter. Does her fame taint the freedom that younger audiences love to express via Twitter? A quick look at her Twitter feed will show that Lorde uses Twitter much like anyone else her age would. She just happens to be able to say things like “wow, number 3 record in america, in excellent company! this is so special.”
Lorde’s Twitter feed reflects more of the avid music fan and less of the highly successful music star. She loves tweeting about music she enjoys, retweets generously and apparently hates capitalization and punctuation. The big difference between her Twitter feed and that of many other successful musicians is that hers isn’t all about herself. It is and it isn’t. The recurring theme isn’t “Lorde”. The recurring theme is “Lorde’s eclectic thoughts and funny/relevant things she wants to retweet”. If you squint your eyes and scroll down her timeline it may be difficult to tell the difference between the famous pop star and a teenager with a trigger-finger for sending out tweets. There is no polished star quality to her words, she just says what she wants.
Not even a stint at #1 on iTunes can protect musicians like Lorde from the hypnotic allure of Candy Crush and stress of acne.
Some of her retweets are as follows:
Don’t be deceived, she doesn’t only tweet typical teenage girl stuff. It is apparent that music plays a huge role in her life, as if the fact that she’s an internationally praised musician doesn’t cue to that already. With the same authenticity and voice that she tweets her adolescent thoughts she shouts out other artists, commends fans and tells about upcoming releases and info.
While she freely shouts out cities she is playing in, Lorde isn’t big on tweeting fans back. According to twtrland, 50% of Lorde’s tweets are replies, but seldom are they to someone other than another artist. Maybe the two-way communication exists in the depths of her Twitter feed before she exploded into the international music scene. Although she doesn’t respond to her pleading fans on Twitter, Lorde also has a Tumblr, where she will respond to questions more frequently.
Lorde doesn’t seem to worry about meticulously planning out the promotion of her music. Not through Twitter anyways. She uses Twitter like I do. If she thinks something tweetworthy, she probably tweets it. And if she sees something funny or relevant she will retweet it. While there are some musicians who try to maintain a personal voice in their mainly professional Twitter, Lorde’s personality is first and foremost. If she’s got a new live performance or music video out she will tweet about it, but unlike many of her contemporaries she won’t spam her followers daily.
She isn’t nonchalant about her success. Caps lock, exclamation marks and smile emojis are pretty good indications of someone being giddy with excitement. While her music may be bigger than life right now, Lorde is just a tweet-loving teen.That makes for an entertaining and easy to read feed. If you scroll down far enough you’ll even see tweets about her school prom.
Of all of the Twitter Tuesdays thus far, none are more candid and personal than Lorde’s. This New Zealander’s voice may be considered old and soulful, but her Twitter is young and playful.
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ryanglaspell 