It’s past midnight on a Friday in the Mojave desert east of Los Angeles, and 200 young Lorde fans are surprisingly calm as they wait for the pop star to appear. Many don’t look much older than the 20-year-old Lorde herself, whose 2013 debut single, Royals, went straight in at the top of the UK singles charts and spent almost a year in the Billboard Hot 100, and made her — then 16 — the youngest artist to achieve a No 1 single in America since 1987.

Since Royals, and Pure Heroine, the Grammy-nominated album that followed, fans have been patiently waiting for new music. Two tracks — the party anthem Green Light and piano ballad Liability — finally arrived in March, and already these