Lordy, lordy. Another day, another Lorde-branded achievement.
Following on from becoming the longest reigning female on the US charts and breaking a historic milestone, last week Lorde peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Royals’.
The Auckland pop singer’s success continued this week when her Pure Heroine album debuted at #1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, becoming the first female New Zealand solo act to do so in the chart’s 30 year history.
But now its been revealed that the 16-year-old pop prodigy scooped another milestone when she stormed the top of the Aussie charts, beating strong releases from Haim, Justin Timberlake, Birdy, and a Hunters & Collectors tribute album to the crown.
Pure Heroine has now been officially named the second fastest selling album of the year in Australia, outselling the combined sales efforts of the the week’s next ARIA Top 3, as Noise 11 reports.
Lorde’s ten-track debut release sold 20,153 copies in its opening week, which absolutely trounced the units shifted by the Californian Haim sisters‘ own debut Days Are Gone (8,398 copies), the Hunters & Collectors tribute album Crucible (5,800), and Justin Timberlake’s blockbuster sequel, The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2 (5,751). Even combined, the three releases total 19,949 copies is still 200 shy of Pure Heroine.
The huge opening week sales of Lorde’s debut puts her just in front of Aussie hip hop heroes Bliss N Eso, whose own ARIA #1 debut album Circus In The Sky was the highest sales debut for an Australian act for 2013, selling 20,808 copies for the trio as they stormed the charts back in July.
The sales of Lorde’s debut release aren’t enough to topple the year’s fastest selling blockbuster album however, with Daft Punk’s inescapable Random Access Memories earning the Parisian robots a staggering 49,175 copies sold Down Under in its first week, carving an undeniable path to the top of the ARIA Charts upon its release in May. Coincidentally, Daft Punk’s latest remains the highest selling vinyl release of the year also, helping boost Australian vinyl sales to double in recent years.
The news of Lorde’s domination of the Aussie charts arrives as the Kiwi is set to arrive Down Under for a highly anticipated four-date tour before returning as part of the Laneway 2014 festival lineup in February 2014 alongside a strong female-centric lineup of Haim, Savages, Adalita, CHVRCHES, Warpaint, The Jezabels and many more.
Lorde, real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor, also recently gave an insightful look at her own swift rise to fame with an articulate opinion piece in which the 16-year-old discussed the music scene’s inherent sexism, ageism, and the difficulties of maintaining her integrity against controlling industry figures.
Commenting on the difficulties of being a teenager thrown onto the global stage, Lorde writes in her piece: “I’m a teenager, and I’m a girl, and those are factors that can stand in the way of maintaining control. I’ve had more people than I can count talk to my manager in meetings instead of me, like it doesn’t matter what I think. This usually lasts all of 10 minutes, until I insert the kind of dry sentence that makes most adults splutter and blush and reach for their water, and after this they start taking me seriously.”
