At 16, Ella Yelich-O’Connor arrived in the glittery world of chart pop as a ready-made outsider — a New Zealander with a low voice, Gothic look and piercing insights into the dreams and disappointments of teenage life.
“We’ll never be royals,” she insisted on her No 1 single, Royals, and now that she is 20 and a genuine A-lister she maintains that observer’s cynicism.
By calling her second album Melodrama she can deal in big feelings while acknowledging that they’re a bit over the top.
“I’m a little much for everyone,” she admits on Liability, a sophisticated piano ballad.
With producer Jack Antonoff, who brought modern and nostalgic synth sounds to some of Taylor Swift’s 1989, she offers melodic, unusually structured synthpop with dark undertones.
On songs such as Supercut and Hard Feelings she probes at a serious break-up and an uneasy feeling that we’re all just faking our lives for Instagram. It’s the kind of pop we need in unsettling times.
