REVIEW: Lorde releases surprise single 'No Better,' a stunning cut track from debut album 'Pure Heroine' [LISTEN]

By Carolyn Menyes c.menyes@gmail.com | Dec 13, 2013 02:21 PM EST

It's a big day for surprise music. Of course, most headlines are circling Beyoncé, who surprisingly dropped her fifth studio album (fittingly titled Beyoncé). However, she wasn't the only one. One of 2013's biggest breakout stars, Lorde, also dropped a new single on iTunes. An outcast from her debut album Pure Heroine, Lorde premiered "No Better" today (Dec. 13) right at the stroke of midnight.

Though it didn't quite make the Pure Heroine cut, that doesn't mean "No Better" is any worse than the songs that are on the record.

It features similar instrumentation as "Royals" or "Team," with stripped down, trappy drumbeats and dazey synthesizer melodies. Of course, Lorde's vocals are as dreamy and ethereal as ever as she winds through lyrics that read like a revealing diary throughout a year.

"We roll in every summer when there's strength in out numbers / And your breath's hot and gross, but I kiss you like a lover," she sing at the song's opening, though times soon shift. "Now the days are getting colder / And the burning of our limbs doesn't happen quite as bad and the burning's dry skin / Deep in the fantasies and dreams of the wits to like the movies that we watch to pretend it wasn't winter," she sings soon after.

The brilliant 17-year-old songwriter has done it again.

Listen to Lorde's "No Better" below.

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