[Editor's Note: Shea Serrano sometimes writes about Why This Song Sucks, and sometimes about his hilarious and poignant life and times. Better put your shoes on because your socks are about to be blown off.]

Song: “Royals” by Lorde

History: Some time between year 1250 and 1300 Eastern Polynesians settled on (what we now know as) New Zealand. In 2007 Flight of the Conchords had a show on HBO. Then the one guy from Flight of the Conchords (not the curiously handsome one, the one with the weird mouth) was the bad guy in Men In Black III. And then now Lorde has a song that a lot of people like. That's the entire history of New Zealand in about 70 words.

Atmospherics: Pretty much perfect.

Analysis: While this song is of course adorable, and while Lorde is of course is massively talented, there are just too many inaccuracies and oddities to ignore. Example:

I've never seen diamonds in the flesh

You've never seen the Twilight movies? If I remember correctly, young master Edward had a ton of diamonds in his flesh.*

*Like I'm not 100 percent that Edward had sparkle skin. I may appear to be a grown man, but am actually a 13-year-old girl typing this all out right now while lying on my belly on my bed. My legs are kicked up at the knees and intertwined. I'm wearing a nightgown. And Drake's “Hold On, We're Going Home” is playing on repeat in the background. I wish those were lies. Sadly, they are not.

This line is particularly odd:

But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece

The Roc is in the building!

And this:

Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash

That actually sounds kind of amazing. Like, TIGERS? Plural? Bro, I just want for one day to be like, “Nah, no. You know what? Fuck this single tiger bullshit. What am I, a peasant? I need multiple tigers on this gold leash. SEVERAL tigers.”

The most problematic part though, the part that just cannot be overlooked, is the clear erroneousness of the premise:

And we'll never be royals

Credit: Courtesy of Buckingham Palace

Credit: Courtesy of Buckingham Palace

Lorde has made approximately $90M since this song was released. She is for certain rich now — or at least closer than I am; two days ago I told my wife to only put $8 in gas in the car because that's all we could scrounge up — and she's probably about to get wifed up by one of the single dudes in line for some throne or another.

I'm saying, making a song about not being rich and then pushing that song so that you eventually do get rich, that's just kind of a sneaky dick move.

Malibooyah. Everyone's favorite song sucks. That's a little thing called in your face logic.

Conclusions:

(I) Lorde is young and talented and attractive and I am old and a hack and ugly.

(II) Jacob over Edward

(III) But for real, I might even take just a few gold-colored cats on a leash.

See also: Our review of Lorde at the Fonda last month

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