Lorde Meets George Brett! Motivation Behind ‘Royals’
What do George Brett, his Kansas City Royals major league baseball team, and New Zealand have in common?
Nothing, right?
So when one hears Lorde, the breakout wonder teen artist from New Zealand sing her Grammy Award winning song, Royals, thoughts of Kings and Queens come to mind. Princes and Princesses, Dukes and Duchesses, picnicking on rolling British greens or perhaps daintily dancing in a royal hall, not American baseball.
But when Lorde sings of Royals, that’s exactly the inspiration behind her song – George Brett and his Royals baseball team!
While this George Brett inspired revelation came to light in interviews with Lorde back when Royals was taking the world by storm, the Athlete and Artist finally met in Las Vegas this week. A picture of Lorde and George Brett was sent out via Twitter byMLB.
While Lorde, the 17-year old singer and songwriter from New Zealand, had previously discussed Royals, the entire story behind the No. 1 hit was revealed in a September interview withVH1:
“I’d been kind of thinking about writing that song for a while and been pulling together a couple little lines here and there, and I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude signing baseballs. He was a baseball player and his shirt said Royals. I was like, I really like that word, because I’m a big word fetishist. I’ll pick a word and I’ll pin an idea to that.”
The National Geographic photo was, of course, of former Kansas City Royals player George Brett. In the 1976 photo, Brett is surrounded by fans waiting to get baseballs signed, the stadium towering above the smiling star, and “Royals” prominently displayed on the front of his jersey.
Along with George Brett’s uniform, Lorde told Rolling Stone that the song is also inspired by her interest in the “upper crust” class of society:
“I’ve always been fascinated with aristocracy. I’m really interested in the Ivy Leagues, the final clubs, all the really old-money families, the concept of old money.”
Lorde performed in Kansas City in March and, according to TMZ, that’s when Lorde’s people got in touch with George Brett to see if he could rendez-vous with her in Vegas before her concert.
According to Brett, he’d been invited to meet her before but something always got in the way, like when he couldn’t attend her show in Kansas City. But that time he did send her an autographed jersey that also said, “Lorde, you are Royal to me.”
And, according to Lorde, that gift from George Brett is one of the coolest things she owns.
Images via Google Images
