Today's Pick

On Friday morning, her 18th birthday, Lorde celebrated by unleashing the haunting music video for her popular single, "Yellow Flicker Beat," the alluring lead the theme song from her "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1," soundtrack. She's become a bona fide pop star without sacrificing any of her art-kid weirdness, and the Lorde-curated indie-heavy soundtrack will hit stores on November 17 via Republic Records, and the film hits theaters worldwide on November 21.
The New Zealand teenage songstress penned the intense tune with her "Pure Heroine" collaborator Joel Little. The music is similarly eerie, with Lorde purring over softly buzzing chords that segue into a darkly driving arrangement with a hip-hop groove. "People talk to me but nothing ever hits... voices just burn," she sings. With the typically sweeping themes and moody, electronically enhanced melodies, the electropop entrancing number features Lorde's brooding croon over minimal synthesisers and rattling drums.
According to Lorde, it was her "attempt at getting inside" the head of the movie series' heroine Katniss Everdeen. The song begins with a slow and measured start, which features the "touched by pain" lyrics "I'm a princess cut from marble/ smoother than a storm." As the drums start, Lorde sings "This is the start." And Lorde wanted to give us a visual of the dark, yet powerful song.
Directed by Emily Kai Bock who bringing some of the same ominous Lynchian darkness, the sleek clip is a full-on showcase for the "Royals" musician's freaky witch-marionette rap-hands dancing while moving her body and arms like she only can in several moody, atmospheric settings, including a seedy motel, an empty auditorium, a swimming pool, and even a cushy party, as she sings, "This is the start of how it all ends/ They used to shout my name, now they whisper it/ I'm speeding up and this is the/ Red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart."

To close out the year, New Zealand electro pop songstress Lorde has released a magical new arresting, adult-free video for her excellent ballad "Team," the second single and follow-up to her massive debut hit tune "Royals" taken from the 17-year-old chanteuse's debut LP, "Pure Heroine," the seventh best album of 2013. The down-tempo track, draws from the genres of pop, rock, electronic dance and electrohop, gets a suitably dark clip which is a beauteous, slightly melancholic series of striking images and a must-see.
Filmed in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the Young Replicant-directed clip opens with picturesque shots of the ocean, before settling on a giant abandoned edifice on the water. Inside, sporting a set of braids, is the self-anointed "queen bee," Lorde. Surrounded by greenery, the singer is flanked by her minions-who've all been transported to this mystical commune, and pass around a gallon jug of some mysterious blue liquid as she croons the song's addictive chorus. This is the "palace" within Lorde's dreams and it is, by the looks of it, a pretty magical place.
In between shots of the teenage pop singer spazzing out in a blue, foliage-filled universe, two young men have it out with one another, indulging in kidnapping and motorbike jousting. It's an unseen city, apparently, without any parental guidance. Lorde finds herself on what appears to be an island of misfit teens. It's a place that looks like the villain's lair from Skyfall, where Lorde sings about themes familiar from her breakout single while a dirt-bike jousting tournament takes place. The message of the story, at least according to the refrain about being "on each other's team," is one of togetherness, but the down-tempo track and bleak visuals suggest otherwise.
"This video was borne from a dream I had a few months ago about teenagers in their own world, a world with hierarchies and initiations, where the boy who was second in command had acne on his face, and so did the girl who was queen," Lorde posted on Facebook when the video debuted on last Tuesday. "I dreamt about this world being so different to anything anyone had ever seen, a dark world full of tropical plants and ruins and sweat. and of this world, I dreamt about tests that didn't need to be passed in order to be allowed in: sometimes the person who loses is stronger. Enjoy XX!"

Let's face it: It's easy to gorge ourselves on the glut of momentarily satisfying but ultimately nutrition-free singles by the mostly forgettable pop stars that are currently clogging the airwaves. But it's rare to discover an artist who actually makes us think or dare we say it  feel. And it's even rarer when she's only 16-year-old. Then again, Ella Yelich-O'Connor, who adopted the moniker of Lorde. She was discovered when her now manager, Scott Maclachlan, saw a video of her performing at a Belmont Intermediate School talent show when she was 12.
Some new artists arrive with a buzz so loud it knocks you down. Occasionally that clamor can be a substitute for true talent, but that's not the case with Lorde. The New Zealand teenage sensation is terrifically skilled and totally poised to make a big dent on the pop landscape. In her lyrics you hear a wisdom deeper than her years and a writing sensibility that blends both philosophy and politics. Her rich vocals enhance all the ideas she's trying to convey, and as her massive debut hit "Royals" reveals, she delivers them with a cool-headed passion.
Musically, "Royals" is a minimal song that incorporates elements from different genres. The song is influenced by art pop, pop, grime, and blues. Lyrically, it expresses the protagonist's disdain for celebrities' lavish lifestyles and contains a vow that she will not become one of them. She wrote the lyrics to "Royals" at her house in only a half hour, and takes the minimalist theme of the song and applies it to two painfully normal men who are driving Cadillacs in their dreams. It has an addictive hook that thrives on its simplicity. The track reached No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, making her the first New Zealand solo artist to have a No.1 song in the US, and the youngest artist to hold the US No.1 in more than 25 years.
Directed by Joel Kefali, the video for the eminently catchy "Royals," which, in line with the subject of the song, depicts the beauty in the monotony of everyday teen life as it mostly consists of scenes centered around four normal teenage boys doing unexceptional mundane things in slow motion. Lots of lulls also fill the video, and Lorde herself doesn't even appear that much beyond an opening and closing image and one scene during the bridge with the exception of one extended frame of her singing and her voice sounds golden over a bare bass-and-snap R&B beat.