Lorde is gearing up for the release of her highly-anticipated album Solar Power. Though she spent time away from social media over the last several years, Lorde is well aware of her fans’ monumental expectations around her next LP. But despite her career’s success, the singer will never try to replicate the height of her smash-hit debut single “Royals.”
Lorde sat down for an interview with the New York Times to talk about her upcoming release. The conversation eventually turned to her debut track, with the New York Times writing that she “vowed to never again reach for the heights of ‘Royals.’” According to Lorde, attempting for a single to gain a similar popularity is “a lost cause.” “Can you imagine? I’m under no illusion,” she said. “That was a moonshot.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the singer described how she was able to finally kick her addiction to her phone. Lorde set her phone’s screen to grayscale in order to trick her brain into looking at it less. She then deleted the internet browser off her phone and locked herself out of all social media apps. The final step she took involved a coder friend: Lorde asked them to make it impossible to access YouTube from her laptop. “I would see my screen-time go to like, 11 hours and I knew it was just looking at the Daily Mail,” Lorde said. “I remember sitting up in bed and realizing I could get to the end of my life and have done this every day. And it’s up to me to choose, right now. So I just sort of chose.”
Read Lorde’s full New York Times interview here.
Solar Power is out 8/20 via Republic. Pre-order it here.