Singer Lorde Gets Croatian Citzenship

Lorde (Screenshot/Green Light (Roskilde Festival 2017)

Grammy Award-winning singer Lorde has revealed that she has now got Croatian citizenship.

Lorde, whose real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor, rose to fame thanks to her smash hit ‘Royals’ in 2013 which made her the youngest solo artist to achieve a US number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in more than 25 years.

Lorde on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine

Talking to US comedian Marc Maron on his podcast WTF, Lorde boasted that she now has Croatian citizenship.

“My mother is Croatian – there are actually like a 100,000 there (in NZ), a lot have been there for a long time,” she started off saying, before adding.

“There is a lot of wine (in New Zealand), the Dalmatians drink a lot of wine down there. So yeah, I’m Croatian, I got Croatian citizenship,” she said.

Maron then asked if she got that from having Croatian heritage through her mum, to which Lorde replied.

“I got that from think like being a bit of a fancy, famous Croatian. I think they hooked me up so to speak,” Lorde, whose father is New Zealand-born with Irish heritage, said.

Last month Lorde was invited to a special luncheon hosted at Government House in New Zealand put on for Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, who was there on an official state visit.

Lorde and Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović (Photo: Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović Facebook)

Lorde’s hit ‘Royals’ spent nine weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and earned her two Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and for Best Pop Solo Performance.

She was just the second person with Croatian heritage to win a prestigious Grammy Award after Krist Novoselić from Nirvana won one for Best Alternative Music Performance for MTV Unplugged In New York in 1996.

Lorde with Nirvana’s Krist Novoselić

She also picked up a Brit Award, curated the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, (2014) and in 2013, was named among Time’s most influential teenagers in the world.