Lorde Shared A Heap Of Her Notes App Entries & Did This Binch Have A Pandemic Premonition?

Us plebs have received, nay, been blessed by another email transmission from the fingertips of Lorde today, and this time she’s unlocked her phone and dived into her Notes app to show us how things work in her brain. A real look behind the curtain here, people.

Writing to us from an other-worldly place (read: New York City in the midst of all of this), Lorde scrolled back in her Notes to late 2018, when she was writing down musings and thoughts of what would transform into her upcoming album. She also shared a hot secret about working as a musician in this age: the top two apps for just about every bloody muso out there are Notes and Voice Memos.

“I was up late last night, scrolling through the Notes folder on my iPhone,” she begins.

“Notes has become sort of this mythical zone for the modern songwriter, as with Voice Memos, and it’s true – we are all writing every fucking song using these two applications.

“My Notes app also functions as a sort of interesting time capsule – I can see lists of groceries or Christmas gifts I needed to buy years ago alongside deep thoughts about where I’m at and what I’m making as they start to form.

“I took some screenshots last night, cause I thought it could be of vague interest to you.”

Lorde, my sweet summer child, you have never been more correct. They do interest me! They interest me a lot! I want nothing more than to crawl inside your weird mind and have a poke around to see what you’re thinking about at all hours of the day and night.

And so, here are some of the entries in Lorde’s Notes app between November 2018 and March 2019. A small sample, sure, but fascinating nonetheless.

Not long before this, Lorde had bailed from social media entirely, leaving most of her life outside of her music to become a bit of a mystery, apart from the odd email drop and her onion ring reviewing finsta – the only celeb account worth following tbh. She recently jumped back on her main Insta to start promoting her upcoming record, but largely leaves it untouched.

In early 2019, she began jotting down notes about music she wanted to make, with lots of references to the sun.

“Starting to conceptualise — again,” Lorde wrote in the email.

“This is before any music has really been written… Maybe I had one song.”

OOP, ok babe.

Speaking of the sun (???) Lorde starting noting ideas of a visual piece she wanted to make – which absolutely turned into the film clip for her return single, Solar Power.

Just look at this planning and forethought.

She also pinned down something that she says she now believes “more deeply than ever”, and tbh I think it should probably be her personal motto and mantra.

Finally and almost most incredibly, a full year before anyone had even really panicked about the coronavirus pandemic, thoughts of antibodies were flitting around in Lorde’s head enough for her to note it down in the middle of the night.

In the email, Lorde also let slip that she’s been “on set shooting a thing outdoors” which has set of little bells of excitement in my brain, as well as going on long walks around the city, heading into the studio when she can (!), and wishing she could just give us the whole album tomorrow (!!!) – I mean, I wouldn’t complain if she did.

So after this slight taste of the inner workings of her mind through odd thoughts and phone scribblings, do I now want to read more? Do I need to know whether she has a folder dedicated entirely to onion ring reviews? You bet your sweet ass I do.