Lorde Celebrates 20th Birthday With a Heartfelt Promise That New Music Is Coming ‘Soon’

Lorde, the Kiwi wunderkind singer/songwriter beloved by angsty teens and Taylor Swift alike, first catapulted onto the pop scene in 2012 at the tender age of 16. Mysteriously little was known about the teenager, but her moody, anthem “Royals” off of debut album Pure Heroine was radio gold. She championed authenticity, charmed Drake, and became Swift’s BFF of the moment. In the last few years, however, Lorde has kept a decidedly low profile. On Sunday—as she prepared for her 20th birthday—Lorde shared an emotion-filled note to Facebook about what she’s working on.

“Sometime in the last year or so, part of me crossed over. For one thing, I made a very deliberate choice to withdraw for a little while from a public life. I haven’t had my hair or makeup done in a year, the free handbags dried up LONG ago, and the paparazzi at the airport are almost always for someone else,” she wrote in the rather poetic farewell note to her adolescence.

“I maxed out every single emotion I have in the best possible way, the colours still aching behind my eyes like this weird blissful hangover,” she explained of the past year. “My heart broke. I moved out of home and into the city and I made new friends and started to realize that no-one is just good or bad, that everyone is both.”

As for an update on that long-anticipated followup album? If Pure Heroine was a shrine to “teenage glory,” then the next release will be “about what comes next,” she explained. But don’t get too excited: “You’ll have to hold on. The big day is not tomorrow, or even next month realistically, but soon,” she said, adding that she’s currently working in the studio in New York. “The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world,” she concluded.