Producer Jim-E Stack had already suggested that it took a while for he and Lorde to get the drums right on her new single, What Was That, and Lorde has now given us another insight into the making of the song in an interview with Rolling Stone.
As previously confirmed, Lorde made a creative breakthrough after recording her verse for the remix of Charli XCX’s Girl So Confusing, and she says that, in the search for the perfect percussion sound on What Was That, they actually used the drums from Radiohead’s Reckoner on it while it was in development.
Getting hold of these wouldn’t have been too difficult. The complete version of Reckoner appeared on Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rainbows, but a year later, the band also enabled fans to download the stems - including the drum track - so that they could create their own remixes.
Sure enough, with a little tempo adjustment you can get the grooves of the two songs to match up nicely, though there’s no suggestion that any of Radiohead’s beats made it onto the finished version of What Was That - a song that Lorde is happy to refer to as a banger.
“I love making bangers,” she says. “Someone’s got to make them. I’m really proud when they come out of me.”
Elsewhere in the Rolling Stone interview, we hear from some of Lorde’s friends and collaborators, who are keen to stress how influential she’s been since breaking through with debut album Pure Heroine in 2013.
“I see how the pop landscape has changed since she entered,” says producer Dev Hynes, who’s believed to have collaborated with Lorde on her upcoming album, Virgin. “I feel like post her success, production has been scaled back into quite a minimalistic place. It’s absolutely because of her.”
Olivia Rodrigo, meanwhile, says: “I think Lorde’s voice truly is the voice of a generation. I don’t know any modern songwriters who haven’t been influenced by her.”
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