Lorde lets 'em talk with precocious performance Talent: 16-year-old Lorde. Lorde October 17, Metro Theatre Kids these days. If they're not loitering around admiring boys with buzz cuts or dreaming of the glamorous life, they're ... apparently writing fiercely modern, instant-classic pop songs about boys with buzz cuts and dreams of the glamorous life. By now you'll know Lorde, the 16-year-old New Zealander whose effortless-sounding anthem for the young and the restless, Royals, is topping charts worldwide. Almost unbelievably, her precocious talent further extends to her live performance. Despite facing a heaving, potentially intimidating, sold-out Metro, Lorde opens the show by striding coolly on to the stage, fixing the crowd with a steely gaze and immediately proving she can sing live as well as on record, as a couple of anonymous male cohorts behind her provide synth sounds, samples and (some) live drums. The opener is called Bravado and, having already shown there's much more to her than that title implies, Lorde continues to entrance and excite with most of her other 21st-century pop hymns from The Love Club EP and the startling debut album that followed it last month, Pure Heroine. Tennis Court is an early, feisty crowd pleaser, all smashing R&B beats and soaring hooks as the singer flings her avalanche of curls along with abandon, although there are sweeter, gentler moments in the pretty melancholy of 400 Lux. She also puts a confident stamp on covers as disparate yet effective as the dreamy Swingin' Party, by alt-rock grandads the Replacements, and hip-hop man of tomorrow Kanye West's pulsating Hold My Liquor, which morphs brilliantly out of her own Ribs (as it were). Finally, having purred and smouldered through the snapping beats and juddering bass of inevitable set highlight Royals, Lorde announces, "I don't do encores," and closes out a breathtakingly assured hour with the hyper hurrah of A World Alone, all the way down to its closing lyrics "Let 'em talk." And talk we do, in glowing terms, just as the rest of the world will continue to do so, too. Lorde plays her second and final Sydney show at the Metro tonight (Friday).