Watch Lorde Cover Rosalía’s ‘Genius’ Song ‘Hentai’: ‘F–k, It’s So Good’

During the first of two nights at Radio City Music Hall for the New York stops of her Solar Power tour, Lorde performed a cover of “Hentai,” the overtly sex-positive song from Rosalía’s latest album Motomami.

In a recent email to her fans, Lorde praised Motomami, saying: “I’ve listened to the Rosalía album every day since it came out, fuck, it’s so good, I gagged when I heard that interpolation of ‘Archangel,’ ‘Hentai’ is genius, ‘Sakura’… projects like this remind me why I live for pop music — at its best, there’s nothing better.”

The dreamy song gave room for Lorde to deliver a performance without much strain after having to postpone both the Connecticut and Washington, D.C., stops on the tour due to a bout of laryngitis.

On her last tour, in support of her sophomore release Melodrama, Lorde ran a series of hometown covers from city to city, sharing her rendition of Drake’s “Shot for Me” in Toronto and Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown” in Chicago. For Solar Power, most stops on the tour have solely featured cuts from her own discography.


Rosalía will also take the stage at Radio City Music Hall for two nights when her own newly announced tour launches in September.