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Lorde (born 1996) is a New Zealand singer-songwriter known for employing unconventional musical styles and introspective songwriting. She signed with Universal Music Group (UMG) in 2009 and collaborated with producer Joel Little in 2011 to record material. The pair's first collaborative effort, an extended play titled The Love Club, was released by UMG in 2013, and its international chart-topping single "Royals" helped Lorde rise to prominence. Her debut studio album Pure Heroine followed that year and achieved critical and commercial success. The following year, she curated the soundtrack for the 2014 film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and recorded several tracks, including the single "Yellow Flicker Beat". Her second studio album Melodrama (2017) garnered widespread acclaim and reached number one on the US Billboard 200. Lorde's music is primarily electropop and contains elements of subgenres such as dream pop and indie-electro. (This article is part of a featured topic: Overview of Lorde.)

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Did you know ...

Recycling symbol

... that the recycling symbol (pictured) depicts a Möbius strip?
... that Nick Schmaltz's older brother and younger sister would team up against him when they played basement hockey as children?
... that the former German chancellor Bernhard von Bülow called Wilhelm II's 1900 Hun speech the "worst speech of that time and perhaps the most disgraceful speech that Wilhelm II [had] ever given"?
... that if a disaster is avoided through planning and vigilance, people will paradoxically doubt that the preparation was necessary?
... that Port Vale F.C. is the only club to have beaten all 91 other clubs in the top four divisions of the current English football league system in a competitive league fixture?
... that Eoseira wilsonii "slime" likely helped in fossil preservation?
... that George Balanchine's ballet Who Cares?, to songs written by George Gershwin, is likened to "a tap dance on pointe"?
... that Klaus Wallrath composed a mass for peace for the 2018 Katholikentag in Münster, performed to an audience of more than 30,000 by a choir, an orchestra, and a dance company?

In the news

Ronnie O'Sullivan

Ronnie O'Sullivan (pictured) wins the World Snooker Championship, defeating Judd Trump in the final.
Dritan Abazović is elected as the new Prime Minister of Montenegro by the Parliament.
Twitter's board of directors accepts a takeover offer from Elon Musk.
The Freedom Movement, led by Robert Golob, wins the most seats in the Slovenian parliamentary election.

On this day

May 3: World Press Freedom Day; Constitution Memorial Day in Japan (1947); Onbashira Festival in Nagano, Japan (2022); Constitution Day in Poland (1791)

Scene from Raja Harishchandra

1791 – The Great Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ratified the first codified national constitution in Europe.
1845 – A long-running feud between two towns in Wisconsin came to a head when a schooner crashed into a bridge; they later merged to form the city of Milwaukee.
1913 – Raja Harishchandra (scene pictured), the first Indian feature-length film, was released.
1942 – Second World War: Japanese forces began an invasion of Tulagi and nearby islands in the British Solomon Islands, enabling them to threaten and intercept supply and communication routes between the United States and Australasia.
1999 – A Doppler on Wheels team measured the fastest winds recorded on Earth, at 301 ± 20 mph (484 ± 32 km/h), in a tornado near Bridge Creek, Oklahoma.

Catherine of St. Augustine (b. 1632)
Jacob Riis (b. 1849)
Len Shackleton (b. 1922)

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Today's featured picture

Whale vocalizations are the sounds used by whales for different kinds of communication. Sounds are produced by cetaceans for various purposes by several different mechanisms. Toothed whales produce rapid bursts of high-frequency clicks that are thought to be primarily for echolocation, while the complex sounds of the humpback whale (and some blue whales) are believed to be primarily used in sexual selection. This young humpback whale is singing in the waters of Vavaʻu, Tonga.

Video credit: Sylke Rohrlach

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