Lorde "danced to Nelly Furtado" to get over her break-up.

The 20-year-old musician split with her boyfriend James Lowe last year after three years together, and has revealed she spent her time after their break-up "drinking tequila" and listening to the 'White Flag' musician in an attempt to heal her broken heart.

She said: "I basically turned 19 and the world was like: 'Alright, we're going to toss everything up in the air and it's all going to come down in a really crazy way.'

"All of a sudden I moved out of home, I went through a break-up. It felt like every day and every night I was totally having my mind blown by all these new things. I really felt like a young adult for the first time, kind of socially ... That period was so creative I just was like: 'Oh, my God.' I just couldn't write it all down fast enough. So that's very much what the record centred around.

"I think as you do grow up, you go through a break-up and be like: 'I just don't want to think about it and I want to drink tequila and dance to Nelly Furtado.'"

The 'Royals' hitmaker also spent a lot of time "partying", which she says influenced much of her new album 'Melodrama' as it was a "super-new" experience for her.

She added to Vogue Australia's October issue: "The whole time I was writing it ['Melodrama'] I was going out a lot, I was partying a lot, I was going to a lot of shows. I wanted to just be dancing all the time. It was almost like I just want to make the stuff that I want to dance to on Saturday or whatever, which was a super-new thing for me."