New Zealand isn’t really in the pop music export business. There are exceptions – Crowded House, OMC, Kimbra – but those drips don’t stand a chance against the torrent flowing from the US and UK. Instead, when New Zealand music has snuck out into the world, it’s generally been away from the mainstream. Flying Nun’s ramshackle guitars, Ladyhawke and the Naked and Famous’ arch synthesisers. That seems to suit our self-image as a nation – there’s a suspicion, bordering on disdain, for the unabashedly commercial within all culture. 

Which is why it has been such a wonderfully strange experience watching Royals grab the world’s attention. The single is by Lorde, the nom de guerre of Ella Yelich-O’Connor, a singer from Auckland’s North Shore who turned 17 this week.

The production is spare and haunting, and the vocals somehow simultaneously vulnerable and imperious, but it’s Royals’ words which have propelled its ascent to the top of the UK and US charts. What’s so fascinating about its success in those vast, sophisticated markets is that its lyrics are a direct response to the sensation of being overwhelmed by overseas culture, particularly that which glories in excess and wealth. That’s a potent sensation, one familiar to millions the world over, but also the kind of subject tackled by essays and thinkpieces more than pop songs. Royals successfully tries to understand the push and pull – why we love something which so often describes a world bearing scant resemblance to our own.

The chorus goes:

But every song’s like / Gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin’ in the bathroom / Bloodstains, ballgowns, trashing the hotel room / We don’t care / We’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams

The song then goes on to find satisfaction, even joy despite the absence of those totems from our lives. At least, that’s how it sounds to me. One of the many interesting things about Royals is the way different audiences grapple with its meaning. For some, the song is a stinging critique of consumer culture.

The New York Times noted its use as a victory song for the new New York mayor Bill de Blasio, saying that Royals “gives catchy form to what had been a major theme of the de Blasio campaign: his 'tale of two cities,' addressing the income inequality between the wealthy few and a struggling majority." For me, it’s nothing of the sort – acknowledging the existence of an irony is not the same as loathing any part of the equation which causes that irony.

Other see its lyrics as disdainful of contemporary pop music. Based on the time I spent with Lorde – I wrote a lengthy profile of her for Metro magazine – the idea that she hates pop music is ludicrous. This is a woman who covers Kanye West, adores Drake and gets excited for new Miley Cyrus singles. But that is perhaps one of the reasons it has so resonated as a single – that shape-shifting ability to reflect the assumptions of the listener.

Those are a few possible ways of hearing it, anyway. Another is that it’s a privileged white woman belittling black cultural aspiration. At least, that was the take of Verónica Bayetti Flores on feministing.com, who caused something of a minor international pop cultural incident with her analysis, under the unambiguous headline ‘Wow, That Lorde Song Royals is Racist’. It goes on to ask: “why not take to task the bankers and old-money folks who actually have a hand in perpetuating and increasing wealth inequality? I’m gonna take a guess: racism."

Predictably, because Lorde is ridiculously popular, the post became an excuse for commenters to beat up on the writer, a venting space for a bunch of New Zealanders to defend their countrywoman.

It’s funny (read: embarrassing) that whenever anything gets written about New Zealand anywhere on the internet, we as a nation all dutifully congregate to refute, apologise or agree wholeheartedly with what’s being said. Click-hungry web editors take note: as a small, self-conscious set of islands with high internet penetration, we’re easily manipulated. Praise or pillory us and the clicks will roll in for days like the waves at Raglan.

Many of the guests from the bottom of the world arrived at feministing bearing well-argued responses, often pointing out that the song’s very next line ridiculed white cultural excess. Other visitors behaved a little strangely, making the post’s author’s point seem more valid in their attempts to refute it. “Wayne" summed up one vein of the sentiment:

If this woman that did the review, would have opened her ears a little more, than she would have realized what Lorde was referring too, and that is the over popular culture in music today. Bling, Pimped out rides, half naked artist on stage and in video’s, as well as showing off their money to the point, that they look like a big damn joke.

Basically what Wayne is saying is that, even if Royals isn’t racist, he sure is, and thoroughly enjoys the way listening to it reinforces his prejudices. This is a bit of a shame. Because Royals deserves a more nuanced critique.

Fortunately, the Wayne-type response was balanced out by the biting response of New Zealand satire site The Civilian, which went digging for other racist elements in Royals. These included discovering that the line "let me live that fantasy" really meant that “Lorde desperately wants to live out her fantasy of owning black slaves." 

Which shows that, even if we don’t really know how to respond when one of our citizens becomes an international pop sensation, at least one New Zealander quickly figured out how to best defend them from the inane attacks which go with the territory.