Crystal. Maybach. Diamonds on your timepiece. Jet planes. Islands.Tigers on a gold leash. We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair~Lorde
Royals by Lorde seems to be the kind of song that everyone wants to cover, and some of them are damn good. I’ve pasted in a couple of the best ones below.
Meanwhile, sixteen year old New Zealander, Lorde, has a runaway hit on her hands. A song reputably written in half an hour in response to the wealth and shallowness of the Hip Hop Industry, has a simple pared down video directed by Joel Kefali and featuring Lorde’s school mates. 
The video is a depiction of ordinary teenage life, limited to a few scenes of two young men getting about their very unglamorous business. Lorde features in short, interspersed flashes, singing some lines (there is a US version and an international version), and that’s about it!
Does it work? Well its got that spare, barely-choregraphed, home movie thing going for it, but I doubt that’s been enough to truly satisfy the palate of the sophisticated music video consumer. No dancing. No imagery directly connected with the lyrics and guys with zits (the latter is enough to make me like it! Love a dose of reality).
With nearly 130 million views on YouTube, it’s certainly been seen by a bunch of people. Fortunately the song is so good, my feeling is that the video neither enhances nor detracts!
Here’s the US version:
And here’s the Florda State University Capella Version:
And the Ali Brustofski version with Savannah Outen, Andrew Garcia, Caitlin Hart & Josh Golden
And lastly … the Pentatonix
Which one do you like best?
You missed the best cover, Marianne. Walk off the Earth. (They do great covers. Check out ‘Somebody that I use to Know’ as well.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgD5p1XiVT0
Hi Scott, I’ll check it out right now. Braiden just recommended this one too. Hey what did you thing of Lorde’s video?
http://youtu.be/mSTJ2z-lGp8
I like the video and the song, but I can’t work out if I like the video for the reason they wanted. They probably did that particular video because they couldn’t afford anythign else (and lets face it, it was unlikely the song was going to make anyone a lot of money). But the song is also about regular people living a million miles from fame and fortune so it suits.
It’s nice to see a song standing on it’s own without naked women dancing around (I like the song Blurred Lines (yes and the video clip (-: ), despite the lyrical undertones) or a dozen dancers and million dollar productions.
I agree, I doubt they had a budget for it, but it is kind of grounded.
and I actually like Blurred Lines until I saw the clip and the whole Miley thing. Now I can’t listen to it.