Lorde recently appeared on Marc Maron’s podcast WTF, and during a wide-ranging conversation — which hit everything from Phil Collins’ pop genius to New Zealand’s housing crisis — she revealed that her #1 single ‘Royals’ was created using less-than-legal means.

When speaking about how she bristled against the stage-of-the-art studios she was offered by her label when working on her second album, she said: “This doesn’t feel like any kid could have it. I like the idea of every kid getting the same set of crap plugins that they steal from the Internet.”

She then confessed that she and producer Joel Little did just that when creating ‘Royals’, and from the sounds of it, the entire Pure Heroine album.

“That’s how we made the song that won the Grammy. It’s literally cracked plugins.

“We didn’t pay for ProTools for like a year after that. ‘We should start paying for this thing’. “Don’t worry Pro Tools,” she quickly added. “We pay now.”

Listen to the episode here.

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