Lorde "felt scared" at the height of her early fame.

The 28-year-old singer had barely finished school when she released the hit single Royals and recalled feeling "really overwhelmed" following the launch of her second album because she realised that her hobby had very quickly become her job and become "too big" for her liking.

Speaking on the Therapuss podcast, she said: "I feel like at the end of Melodrama, I had this kind of...not meltdown but I remember feeling all of a sudden that this thing that was my hobby that I did after school was now my employment.

"It had gotten too big. I was a kid and I just felt this like like 'Aah!', I felt scared. I didn't know...I was getting that little bit older, and that new crop was coming in. I was like 'I don't know if I wanna do this at this level...' I felt really overwhelmed and went home to New Zealand, got a dog, and had this moment of 'I don't know if I wanna do all of that.' I thought I could just be this girl who was off the map and really mysterious, even more distant. It came from a place of feeling really joyful, very chill."

The What Was That hitmaker - whose real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor - had struggled touring her album and found the whole thing very "intense" but and ended up "sort of disappearing" from the music scene for a little bit until she realised that she needed to get back to her craft.

She said: "It was also very crazy touring Melodrama, like I found it for that whole time, very intense. Endless, hardcore music. I for some reason found it very intense and wanted something that felt very light and easy after that. But it was cool. I love Solar Power so much, I truly needed to make it. I wouldn't be here with another album if I hadn't made Solar Power but I think it showed me that you have no choice but to be who you are supposed to be.

"Me sort of disappearing and being all wafty and on the beat, I thought 'I just don't think this is me...' I'm just meant to be this person that makes these bangers that f*** us all up and, like, that just like, rip across a festival ground. I'm supposed to do that to our bodies. I'm not supposed to vibe out, and I love to vibe out. I, like, love to vibe out. In an alternate universe, I just lived in New Zealand and worked at an organic farm or something but that's not the vibe for me right now."