8. Lorde - Pure Heroine
It's hard to believe the person behind Lorde's intelligent and poignant debut Pure Heroine is 17 year old New Zealand born Ella Yelich-O'Connor. Her first single Royal, "Let me be your ruler, you can call me queen bee" marked a global hit for the antipodean teenager and she's since been battered by a whirlwind of hotblooded attention from a variety of corners. It would be patronising to harper on about the fact that she is so young (she was born the same year as Friends!), as with every artist they want to be taken seriously. The record depicts themes of teenage angst, unrequited love, a TMZ/E! obsessed generation along with social agitation but avoids the trap of presenting us with an exercise in self loathing - this is a brutal dissection of love and innocence crushed. Lorde has expressed her Lana Del Ray influences which can be heard on songs like Ribs and Glory and Gore but she also has a similar songwriting style to Sky Ferreira, Natalie Kills and even Ellie Goulding in that at the core is a cleverly crafted and well executed pop song. Her mature social observations blur with her youthfulness when she offers bouts of creative poetry in songs like Tennis Court, "Pretty soon I'll be getting on my first plane, I'll see the veins of my city like they do in space" and we get to hear her bolshy side in 400 Lux when she sings in her breathy, honeyed tones "Don't you think it's boring how people talk?... well I'm bored...cause I'm only as young as the minute is full of it." Pure Heroine, if it hasn't already, should be employed by your iPods right now.