For some odd reason, Lorde’s dance moves have been a source of controversy: her 2014 Grammy’s performance saw her pulled up on a “zombie dance”, and she was mocked for what some people called “awkward” dancing while doing “Green Light” on Saturday Night Live. Most recently, the 20-year-old powered through her flu to forgo singing and do an interpretative dance to “Homemade Dynamite” at the VMAs. 

The silent performance, while beautiful and heartfelt, garnered some flack. In an interview with the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the musician spoke out about the performance.

“It’s sort of embarrassing to watch someone experience intense joy. Way more than pain… and I think that’s why people find what I do quite disconcerting,” she explained. “People got, like, so angry about me performing at the VMAs. I just danced. I just danced! And I danced with full fucking joy. Some people were like, ‘We get it, we love it.’ And some people were like, ‘This is offensive that I have to watch this.’” 

Lorde described the conclusion she came to: “It’s because it’s so private seeing someone experience such joy publicly.”

“It’s really like, changed my life... being very unafraid of intense joy publicly. And privately.” 

Super fan @Lorde_fix on Twitter tallied the number of times dance-related lyrics appeared on the singer’s recent album Melodrama not too long ago: the leitmotif pops up 10 times on the 11-track release.

Just like her Call Your Girlfriend idol Robyn (check Lorde’s previous cover of “Hang With Me”), Lorde loves to get carefree with her movement and cut loose, when she’s not curating onion rings on Instagram and conquering the world of course.

Listen to Lorde chat on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast here