Lorde Writes A Beautiful Ode To Teenhood

I don't know about you, but as a teenager with dreams of being a writer and musician, I took myself very seriously, and I was over-dramatic, full of angst, and mostly, just plain confused about life. I am always very impressed when I learn of teenage artists being so eloquent and seemingly sure of themselves, as was the case with Lorde when she released her incredible debut album, Pure Heroine, at only 16 years old. How did she know who she was at that age? Well, Lorde only wrote from her heart, and she just gave fans an insight into her thoughts about being a teenager, and about writing ofher upcoming album, with a candid Facebook post. On the eve of her 20th birthday (on Nov. 8), Lorde wrote a beautiful ode to adolescence, and it's a message that every former emo and misunderstood teen can relate to.

In her Facebook post, Lorde proves she's still wise beyond her years at 20, and her expressive writing is just further proof of the sheer talent this young artist has. In ruminating about the fact that she is about to be considered a full adult, Lorde opened up her note,

Tomorrow I turn 20, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for days. I walk around the city, up by the park and by the health food store and down into the subway, this new age hanging in front of my eyes like two of those Mylar balloons that never come down. Can people see it, I wonder, that I’m about to cross over?

If that doesn't sound like one of my LiveJournal posts from a few years ago, I don't know what does, but Lorde makes it all just sound so much better. The singer is very obviously trying to cope with the idea that she will not be considered a teenager once she turns 20, and this is something I personally can relate to. But unlike Lorde, I didn't write a debut album that perfectly captured the essence of being a teenager. She said of writing about being a teen on Pure Heroine,

I was 16 when most of us met. Can you believe it? I laugh thinking about that me now - that glossy idiot god, princess of her childhood streets, handmade and ugly and sure of herself. All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled. I knew they knew something children didn’t know, and adults ended up forgetting. Since 13 I’ve spent my life building this giant teenage museum, mausoleum maybe, dutifully wolfishly writing every moment down, and repeating it all back like folklore. And now there isn’t any more of it.

Lorde went on to explain why she stepped away from the limelight a while ago, in a bid to understand herself better as she was growing up, which I think is another marker of how incredibly self-aware she is. By rapidly become a global pop star, she understood how this bizarre life could affect her and she made the choice to step away and let her upcoming music reflect what she was feeling:

My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both. I started to discover in a profound, scary, blood-aching way who I was when I was alone, what I did when I did things only for myself...I threw sprawling parties and sat in restaurants until the early hours, learning what it’s like to be an adult, even talking like one sometimes, until I caught myself.

Based on this message, Lorde's second, highly anticipated album will be as autobiographical as her debut, and will express many of the feelings and experiences many of us have dealt with in becoming adults. In another touching line, Lorde perfectly teases the album, "Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record - well, this one is about what comes next." I can't wait.