Song of the Day 10/30: Lorde, “Royals”

I’ll wrap up my songs-inspired-by-photos week with a connection nobody saw coming. When Lorde’s 2013 song made her the youngest person to ever have a No. 1 single, most people probably thought the New Zealand native was referring to actual royalty. Not so. She was thinking about Kansas City Royals Hall of Famer George Brett.

“I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs,” she told VH1. “He was a baseball player and his shirt said, ‘Royals.’ It was just that word. It’s really cool. I was like, I really like that word, because I’m a big word fetishist. I’ll pick a word and I’ll pin an idea to that.”

Lots of young singers and a cappella groups have tackled the song. Perhaps the last person you’d expect to cover it is Bruce Springsteen, yet there he was in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2014 paying tribute to the island nation’s newest pop star, with a few lyrical changes that indicate why he found the tune compelling.