Do we like Lorde?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record on people, plenty of real giving, and one contested call on Israel that she owned up to herself.
Lorde has spent most of her life inside one record company. She told fans she has been under some form of Universal contract since she signed a development deal at 12, and that deal ended at the end of 2025. Her own description is stark: “a 12-year-old girl pre-sold her creative output” before she knew what that meant.
The 2026 move was a clean break rather than a bust-up. She called the Universal staff “incredible people”, said she wanted a “clean slate”, and didn't rule out signing again, possibly with them. For an artist who debuted as a teenager, going independent is a pretty grown-up way to take the wheel.
Now the harm check. We searched her words and acts on LGBTQ+ people, women, race, migrants and the planet. What turned up was on the right side: in a 2025 interview she acknowledged her privilege and said she didn't want to “take any space from anyone who has more on the line than me”, in the context of trans people. We found no campaigning against any group and no dodgy company she keeps, but the record on climate in what we read is thin.
Her one properly contested moment is Israel. In December 2017 she first signalled she was reconsidering a Tel Aviv gig after an open letter from two New Zealand activists, then cancelled. She said “I didn't make the right call on this one.” Israel's culture minister hoped she would reverse the decision, and BDS supporters praised it. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a boycott of a government's policies or a snub to fans.
The recent good is the big stuff. After two Minneapolis shows she pledged all the merch sales, $204,000, to local immigrant advocacy groups, and posted a photo of “ICE out” written on her hand. That follows the 2016 donation of $20,000 to a charity that provides school lunches for kids, which she gave because she said she was passionate about all children having food at school.
Is she perfect? No bloke or sheila is. The record we found shows an artist who gets things wrong, says so, and then gives money away without much fuss. We found no court cases or serious allegations against her, though a pop star's private life can't be fully known from the press.