America’s Pastime Helped Inspire Lorde’s Worldwide Smash “Royals”

Seventeen-year-old New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O'Connor better known as Lorde was one of 2013's breakout stars, thanks to her massive hit "Royals," which has earned her several Grammy nominations.  She wrote "Royals" in response to all the pop songs that brag about luxury items like cars and jewels, but the song actually has its secret origins in a sport that isn't even played in New Zealand: baseball.

It turns out that the title of the song actually came from a photo that Lorde saw of a Kansas City Royals baseball player; he was wearing his jersey, which said "Royals" on it.

"The way I write is that I find a particular word or phrase which kind of defines the concept that I'm thinking about, and when I find that word, everything sort of clicks, And so I just cut that picture out of a National Geographic 'cause I thought it looked cool, and I thought, 'Yeah, that's a great word, I've got to incorporate that somewhere," and it just kinda tied in with what I was thinking about."

While Lorde is hailed as somewhat of a child prodigy for producing such an acclaimed song at such a young age, she says she can't take all of the credit for her hit.  The singer says her co-writer, Joel Little, also deserves some props for creating a song that has captured the attention of music fans worldwide.

"I think people like the song because the beats and the melodies are really cool, and because the lyrics are really cool, I wrote all the lyrics and Joel produced it, and we wrote all the melodies together so it's very much collaborative."

Lorde will be performing at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, January 26 on CBS.