Kiwi songstress Lorde has taken out the Brit Award for best female international solo artist. It is the second Brit Award for the 21-year-old artist, who also scooped the same gong in 2014.
She beat out Taylor Swift, Pink, Alicia Keys and Bjork to claim the award.
The singer, whose real name is Ella Yelich-O’Connor, couldn’t make the awards because she was preparing for her Melodrama world tour, but she thanked fans via Twitter and appeared via video link at the awards.
“Thank you darling UK for my second Brit Award I am overjoyed,” the singer Tweeted.
In her video message (which you can watch in the player above) she said “I can’t be there because I’m rehearsing for my tour right now, but I am so, so incredibly honoured to be this year’s Brits 2018 recipient for the best international female.”
She also thanked her fans for attending her shows, saying “it has been so much fun.”
Lorde made a surprise performance at the 2016 awards, performing a heartfelt tribute to David Bowie who had died that year.
She was snubbed at this year’s Grammy Awards, when she wasn’t invited to perform at the show, despite being the only female to be nominated in the album of the year category.
The singer attended the awards with a quote from from New York artist Jenny Holzer stitched to the back of her dress.
It read ‘Rejoice! Our times are intolerable. Take coverage, for the worst is a harbinger of the best. Only dire circumstances can precipitate the overthrow of oppressors. The old & corrupt must be laid to waste before the just can triumph. Contradiction will be heightened. The reckoning will be hastened by the staging of seed disturbances. The apocalypse will blossom.’
In an explanation via her Instagram account, she said it was her version of a white rose, the symbol being used at the awards in support of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements against sexual harassment.
Lorde has been a very vocal about the scandal that has embroiled Hollywood following the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment revelations, even going so far as to suggest she predicted the storm.
“These old men in power have a storm coming, the likes of which they cannot comprehend,” she wrote in January last year, months before the scandal erupted.
White roses were also used at this year’s Brit Awards. UK singer Paloma Faith was unhappy with the lack of support from male counterparts, telling BBC News “The only thing I’m upset about tonight is not more men carrying white roses. I think they should have.”
