Lorde reveals why she disappeared

It’s been two years since Lorde deleted most of her Instagram photos and tweets.

Since May 2018, the New Zealand singer has only had three photos on her grid and two remaining tweets which were posted in 2017.

The 24-year-old Royals singer was regularly appearing in photos with Taylor Swift and her famous posse, as well as documenting her various adventures touring around the world as she cracked the international scene.

Then she went underground.

Now in a rare interview she has addressed why she basically disappeared – and not just from social media either. The two-time Grammy winner was seen in public for the first time in almost a year in October, photographed going for a walk in Auckland with her Universal Music executive boyfriend Justin Warren.

“Part of what made me peace out on social media, apart from feeling like I was losing my free will, was the massive amounts of stress I was feeling about our planet, about systemic racism, and about police brutality in this country,” she told her actress friend Cazzie David for Interview magazine.

Lorde then asked David – who is Larry David’s daughter – how she copes using social media regularly.

“I don’t know how you, someone I would describe as being reasonably neurotic, cope with that. How do you deal with having front-row seats to the hellfire?” Lorde asked.

“(It) destroys the part of my brain that can make work … How do you balance needing to have your finger on the pulse while also not going insane?”

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A month before she deleted the majority of her Instagram posts, Lorde copped backlash when she uploaded a photo of a bathtub with the caption, “And iiii will always love you,” seemingly in reference to Whitney Houston’s death.

She swiftly deleted it and apologised.

“Extremely extremely poorly chosen quote. I’m so sorry for offending anyone – I hadn’t even put this together I was just excited to take a bath. I’m an idiot. Love Whitney forever and ever. Sorry again.”

She hasn’t released new music since her hugely successful second studio album Melodrama in 2017.

Now it appears Lorde – real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor – is forging a comeback with a third album on the way.

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She told fans in a lengthy email back in May she had been working with Jack Antonoff (who collaborated with her on Melodrama).

“I started going back to the studio again in December, just for something to do, and to my surprise, good things came out,” she wrote.

“A thing started to take shape. And then, of course, the world shut down. We’re still working away – Jack and I facetimed for over an hour this morning going over everything. But it’ll take a while longer.”

She hinted yet again in the lead-up to the New Zealand election in October, urging people to vote and saying she’d “next year give you something in return”.