Before she was a pop phenom, Lorde was just a kid from New Zealand with an unstoppable voice.
Before she was curating high-profile soundtracks and hanging out with Taylor Swift, Lorde was just a kid from New Zealand with an unstoppable voice.
The now-17-year-old is making headlines these days as the brains behind the new soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, personally selecting artists like Chvrches, Charli XCX, Major Lazer and Ariana Grande to contribute. But just five short years ago, Lorde was singing covers on a local radio station in her native New Zealand.
NEWS: Hear Lorde's New 'Hunger Games' Song in Full
Audio of the then-12-year-old singing Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" has resurfaced online and we can't stop listening to it! Lorde turns the powerhouse hit into a beautiful folk song, prompting the DJ to declare: "Well, it's a privilege to hear a voice like that."
WATCH: Lorde Gets the Weird Al Treatment
Lorde's debut single "Royals" nabbed two Grammy Awards at this year's ceremony and her album, Pure Heroine, is currently the third-biggest selling album of 2014 (that is, until Swift's 1989 bumps it down a peg this week).
The pop phenom graces the current cover of Billboard magazine, revealing that she thought it would be "cool for my career" to curate the Hunger Games soundtrack. "People that see me as having a couple of hits and performing on an awards show would see that, between records, I'd committed to a pretty serious body of work," she said.
The superstar teen has already shown off her talent and smarts, but she also has a sense of humor. Lorde apparently loved South Park's recent spoof of her, and further proved her awesome-ness by singing along with the show's "I Am Lorde Ya Ya Ya."
NEWS: So this is what Lorde and Taylor Swift do in their free time
Meanwhile, Lorde's bestie Swift is on track to top the charts this week with her latest studio album. See what she told ET's special correspondent Gayle King of CBS This Morning about what she looks for in a best friend. (And Lorde certainly fits the bill!)