World, meet Lorde. She's the girl who's taken Miley Cyrus' number-one spot on the iTunes charts and, consequently, started a Twitter fury. Lorde hails from New Zealand, has only one EP, and has been rising among the ranks of Internet fame since late spring. Oh, and she's 16.
"Royals" is easily her breakaway hit off The Love Club EP and reads like her manifesto. Lorde isn't just youthful, she's Youth with a capital Y. Cyrus' more recent antics have fallen from kindred rebellion to gratuitously shocking, whereas Lorde takes an outsider's perspective. She's the girl looking in on the party Miley's throwing, "driving Cadillacs in [her] dreams" instead of actually, well, driving them. She's the toned-down, controversy-free answer to the Cyrus-moment pop music is having. And really, what more can you ask for than a solid track that you actually want stuck in your head?