Stephen Colbert Joked About Lorde’s Butt In An Interview And It Was Very Awkward
"If I had a butt like that, I'd be jumping over somebody too."
We’ve covered a lot of awkward artist interviews over the years — from Karl Stefanovic’s disastrous run-in with The Chats, to The Project repeatedly fucking up interviews with artists like Maggie Rogers, Troye Sivan, and The Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger.
Lorde’s recent chat with US talk show host Stephen Colbert wasn’t quite as cringe-inducing as any of those, but it was still somehow wildly awkward. She’s been doing the promo rounds in the wake of the release of ‘Solar Power’, the lead single from her upcoming third album of the same name.
And whether it was the Zoom delay, or Colbert’s strange line of questioning about a prank he pulled on Lorde during a trip to New Zealand in 2019, the interview felt forced and jarring from the beginning — but it reached fever pitch when Colbert tried to joke with the singer about the cover art for her album.
If you haven’t seen it, here it is:
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Naturally, it spawned a shit-tonne of memes when it was revealed a couple of weeks back. Colbert joked that he couldn’t show the cover on CBS, as it would violate the channel’s “standards and practices”.
“CBS’ standards and practices will not let me hold up the album because, ironically for an album called Solar Power, there’s a photo on it of, well, where the sun don’t shine,” Colbert joked. “I think it’s a beautiful album cover. What was the inspiration for that?”
Lorde, who has always been a little reserved in TV interviews, just looked uncomfortable, before laughing and explaining it was a photo her friend took of her on a beach.
“For those who don’t know, it is my butt, kind of from below, and I’m in a bikini,” she tells Colbert. “So, it’s, like, a little hardcore. But it was so joyful to me. It felt, like, innocent and playful and a little bit, like, feral. And I don’t know, sexy.”
“If I had a butt like that, I’d be jumping over somebody too,” Colbert quipped.
The whole thing was just a very strange exchange — you can watch it below, the album art convo kicks off around the four-minute mark.