Lorde may have only just kissed sweet 16 behind, but the girl born Ella Yelich-O’Connor has achieved an awful lot before her 17th birthday.
The New Zealand sensation’s music domination includes a stack of historic accolades, including becoming the longest reigning female on the US charts while her breakout single ‘Royals’ peaked on the American charts. Shortly after, Lorde released her debut album Pure Heroine, which earned the accolade of being the second fastest selling album of the year after it debuted at the #1 spot on the ARIA Albums Chart.
So it’s with little surprise to learn that the Kiwi singer-songwriter was at the centre of a fierce bidding war that has reached its multi-million dollar climax.
Lorde has signed a US$ 2.5 million deal with Songs Music Publishing, who beat out big name companies like Sony/ATV, Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt, and Spirit, who were courting the curly-haired music-maker in securing her signature, as Billboard reports. Fittingly inked on 7th November, the day of Lorde’s 17th birthday.
The new deal means Song Music Publishing now has worldwide rights to Lorde’s debut EP, The Love Club, her debut LP Pure Heroine, as well as future recordings. Quite the coup for the smaller scale music company, as its founder and CEO Matt Pincus admits, “she could have signed anywhere she wanted to sign, and I don’t know what other people were offering, but as we often say – music publishing is about relationships and it’s about people.”
Lorde joins a roster that includes Pharrell, Nelly, and Conor Oberst at Songs Music Publishing, which was first founded in 2004 by Pincus. A fierce bidding war that has reached its multi-million dollar climax… Fittingly inked on 7th November, the day of Lorde’s 17th birthday
The CEO credits his Songs co-hort, company president and A&R head Ron Perry, with getting Lorde inked in a highly competitive bidding fracas. “Ron really connected with Ella and vice versa, and it’s really a tremendous opportunity for us,” explains Pincus. “I’m incredibly proud to be Ella’s publisher – we think she’s a once-in-a-generation type artist.”
Perry explains how he met with the young talent and her managers, Scott Maclachlan and Tim Youngson, on nearly every live date of her American tour following a tip-off from one of his team.
“My A&R guy Corey Roberts picked up on her in January, and sent me an email saying, ‘Stop what you’re doing’,” he recounts. “That was pretty ballsy considering he just started working for us six weeks prior. But I did, I flipped out right away, I played ‘Royals’ for Matt and he heard the first 12 seconds and was like, ‘That’s a hit.’”
The Songs duo are now pegging for more hits from Lorde, chiefly through potential collaborations with fellow clients on the music publishers’ books, including superstar producer Diplo and Canadian Abel Tesfaye, better known as the man behind the moody music of The Weeknd, who has already taken a shining to Lorde with his own remix of ‘Royals’.
“She’s gonna be a really big songwriter outside of Lorde,” says Perry of their new star signee. “She’s going to have a lot of big songs out there as Ella, and it’s a great feeling that we can be at a place that understands music comes first and foremost.” “We think she’s a once-in-a-generation type artist.”
Perry has already seen Lorde live in concert around 10 to 15 times, including a recent showcase where the singer teamed up with fellow young musical prodigies, Haim, as Bustle reports.
The zeitgeist-capturing trio of sisters were joined live by Lorde at VH1’s ‘You Oughta Know’ concert showcase at New York’s Roseland Ballroom on Monday, where the two musical forces combined for a cover of Sheryl Crow’s ‘Strong Enough?’
Haim originally tackled Sheryl Crow’s 90s hit for Triple J’s Like A Version segment back in August, but for its live debut, the vocals of the Haim siblings – Danielle, Este, and Alana – were enhanced by the ‘Royals’ singer; a live audio stream of the concert performance has turned up online (listen below).
Both Haim and Lorde performed at last July’s Splendour In The Grass festival, and each released their respective debut albums shortly after, with the former’s Pure Heroine vastly outselling Haim’s Days Are Gone.
Both artists return Down Under as part of the Laneway 2014 festival lineup next February alongside a strong female-centric lineup of Savages, Adalita, CHVRCHES, Warpaint, The Jezabels and many more.
It’s also the second time that a Lorde cover has surfaced this week, with her darker take on Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack getting its debut recently.
