So I was kinda waiting for this to drop. Intended as the third single from Pure Heroine, TEAM was released a few weeks before the album officially launched in the US – I almost thought it had been sidelined as a buzz single, but low and behold, it now has an accompanying (and brilliant) video. Production value has unsurprisingly increased. Lorde maintains her charisma and barely features in the visual. It’s good, it’s really good. The lyrics “we live in cities, you’ll never see on screen” still remain as one of the best introspective pop commentaries for the tumblr generation in 2013.
The story behind the video, in the words of Lorde:
“This video was borne from a dream i had a few months ago about teenagers in their own world, a world with hierarchies and initiations, where the boy who was second in command had acne on his face, and so did the girl who was queen. i dreamt about this world being so different to anything anyone had ever seen, a dark world full of tropical plants and ruins and sweat. and of this world, i dreamt about tests that didn’t need to be passed in order to be allowed in: sometimes the person who loses is stronger.”
