For practically half of her life, Indy Yelich says she’s played the “supporting act” to her big sister: Ella Yelich-O’Connor, better known as Lorde, whose sudden catapult to global fame with “Royals” turned her entire family’s life upside down in 2013. But the 26-year-old pop singer-songwriter has no qualms about that.
“There’s the main actress,” Yelich tells Billboard, but “the supporting act is still a really big part of the story. All you can really do is be yourself, and deal with the cards you’ve been dealt.”
On Wednesday night (July 30), the Auckland native was fully the leading lady at The Wayland bar in New York City’s East Village, where she played songs from her new EP, Fame Is a Bedroom, for the first time ahead of its release on Friday (Aug. 1). The space was packed with Yelich’s fans and a collage of friends who make up the small community she’s managed to build in the city, more than 8,000 miles away from home. One of them, a SoulCycle instructor, met her after she took his “Lorde vs. ODESZA”-themed class. Many sipped on Yelich’s favorite kale-infused margarita, upon her bubbly insistence that they absolutely had to try it as she got set up.
Yelich has spent the past few years in New York, originally moving to the States at age 18 to pursue acting but later shifting over to music. In 2022, she dropped her debut single, “Threads,” carving out her own sliver of the space her sister had dominated for years, and steadily building up a fan base of her own.
As she’s strengthened her creative voice with subsequent releases, she’s now ready to reckon with the insanity of her life — some of which can be chalked up to being sister with a global pop star, but most of which is due to the inherent chaos of being in one’s mid-20s — on Fame Is a Bedroom, a lucid dream-pop blend of influences both classic (Fleetwood Mac) and modern (Holly Humberstone, Mk.gee).
“A lot of it is saying goodbye to past versions of myself,” she tells Billboard, over the noise of guests chattering, mixed drinks being shaken and a downpour outside, perched on a stool at the end of the bar minutes before her set. “With fame, it’s influenced my desire to be understood. It drove me to want to express my own version of myself in music. I would’t be here without it, but it’s kind of the little devil on my shoulder. It’s something that I’ll never necessarily want for myself, but I love it in a weird way, and I’ve made friends with it.”
At the heart of Fame Is a Bedroom are tender yet messy relationships — and yes, that does include the one she shares with her sister. A devastating split from a much older man — Yelich calls it her “Mr. Big” era — informed the simmering breakup ode “Up in Flames,” which includes a shout-out to The Wayland, previously a favorite date-night spot for her and her ex. She’s had no trouble reclaiming the bar for herself post-breakup, though, because, as she says with a glint in her eye, “It was always mine, baby. I’m an East Village girl, he lived in FiDi. This was mine from the start.”
There’s also “Sail Away,” which she says was inspired by a confusing relationship with a female friend whom she “put on a pedestal,” developing unreciprocated romantic feelings that blurred with the innately “primal” way “women love each other.” But the standout track — also the most healing to write, according to Yelich — is “Idol,” on which she was finally able to articulate all of the emotions she’s accumulated over the complexities of sharing her sibling with the public for so many years.
The lyrics are unflinching: “They don’t understand your love/ Never be bound by blood,” she sings of Lorde’s fans over a bed of synths and electric guitar. “I’m the one that you’re running to.”
“Idol” isn’t intended as a message to the rest of the world, though. “It’s a love song to my sister,” Yelich emphasizes. “It’s saying everything I wanted to say [about her fame] and putting it to bed. It’s really about coming to terms with a private relationship where there’s such trust and love, and also grappling with the emotional tug-of-war of sharing someone that I’m so close to.”
That said, Yelich admits that she was a little nervous to play “Idol” for Lorde (whom she, of course, knows simply as Ella), having some reservations about putting confessions such as “You crush me/ And trust me, I know that you love me” so plainly. Fortunately, both sisters were working on their most recent projects at the same time, and they often listened to each other’s demos as they were still being made. And with Lorde also pulling back the curtain on a tricky family dynamic on her June album Virgin — the fifth track of which finds her confessing her desperation to be mom Sonja’s “Favourite Daughter” of three girls — Yelich felt the runway clear for her to dig deep, too.
“I was really inspired by her honesty,” she says earnestly of her sister. “I was just really proud of [her writing about] the muse that is our mother. I can relate to it so much. There’s a complexity in, you know, the intimacy of sisterhood. I really grew alongside that song.”
Taking that lesson with her, Yelich is continuing to move forward with her heart on her sleeve. “Am I shiny?” she asked at The Wayland with her brow furrowed, powdering her face, divulging that a guy she has a crush on is in the audience, and taking the makeshift stage in the corner of the pub. More shows are in her future — she’ll play Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn in November — but on Wednesday night, she radiated happiness at the small gift of performing at her favorite bar in front of people who love her.
Right before she started singing, the most important of them walked in. Looking low-key in a simple white button-down and ponytail, Lorde quietly camouflaged herself in the rest of the crowd, and as Yelich sang “Idol” straight to her, the cheekbones she and her baby sister share crinkled with unspoken emotion, pride glowing on her face. That night, she was the supporting act, and she didn’t seem to mind at all.
Listen to Fame Is a Bedroom below.