In Lorde”s world, it”s not always the most popular kid who wins. She embraces the misfits, as “Royals” taught us. In “Team,” a band of high school kids in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world are looking for a new ruler. And they pick the new king in a decidedly Mad Max way as two kids don helmets, hop on bikes and joust with table legs.
Because it”s Lorde”s world, the unpopular kid -the one with the stringy hair, acne and a limp, is victorious.
Despite the bombed-out building (which is the perfect metaphor for how most of us feel about high school), Lorde is in a lush setting, full of greenery. With her hair pulled back, her sullen expression, and her dark lipstick, she looks more like a post-goth vampire than your typical high school kid.
Though she sings “we live in cities you”ll never see onscreen,” in an effort to heighten the sense of disenfranchisement and the distance between Auckland and the rest of the world and the kids in the song, the video for “Team” was actually shot in Brooklyn.
Lorde has said that the video came out of a dream she had about “teenagers in their own world, a world with hierarchies and initiations….I dreamt about this world being so different to anything anyone had ever seen.”
“Team” is the second single from “Pure Heroine,” following “Royals,” which has spent nine weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100.
What do you think of “Team?”