Music Friday: Lorde Channels 'Hunger Games' Heroine in the Gem-Infused ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you awesome songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, Lorde channels Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen in “Yellow Flicker Beat,” a dark jam that’s infused with references to gemstones and precious metals.

In the first verse, Lorde sings, “I’m a princess cut from marble, smoother than a storm / And the scars that mark my body, they’re silver and gold / My blood is a flood of rubies, precious stones / It keeps my veins hot, the fires found a home in me.”

“Yellow Flicker Beat” was released in 2014 as the lead single from the Lorde-curated soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1, which starred Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen.

Lorde explained the inspiration behind “Yellow Flicker Beat” in an interview with radio station KROQ’s Kevin and Bean.

“I reread the books, and I just wanted to tap into everything that Katniss is feeling in that film,” she said. “I felt like Katniss was like, ‘OK, I’m taking names. I’m coming for blood. You don’t do these types of things to my friends and family and get away with it.’ I just wanted to make something kind of dark and haunting.”

Just before the song’s release, Lorde teased “Yellow Flicker Beat” on her Instagram by posting this photo of her hand marked with hand-written lyrics from the song.

On her own Tumblr, Lorde wrote at the time, “It’s my attempt at getting inside her head. I hope you like it.”

And a lot of music lovers did. The song was a huge hit for the New Zealand-born performer as it charted in 14 countries, including a #1 placement in her native country, #34 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and #21 on the Canadian Hot 100. It was nominated for Best Original Song at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards and Best Song at the 20th Critics' Choice Awards.

Lorde's performance video boasts 85.6 million views and the music video featuring clips from the movie has earned 18.6 million views. Kanye West remixed the song for the Hunger Games compilation album.

The 23-year-old singer-songwriter, who was born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, is clearly enamored with gemstones. In her Grammy Award-winning debut single, “Royals,” she opened with the line, “I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh.”

The daughter of an award-winning poet, Lorde, endured the names "Dusty" and "Casper" as a child because of her light complexion.

She got her big break as a 12-year-old when Universal Music NZ executive Scott Maclachlan saw a video of her performing at an intermediate school talent show. She signed with the label one year later and reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 as a 16-year-old with her song "Royals." With that feat, she became the youngest solo artist to write and perform a US chart-topper.

Please check out the video of Lorde performing “Yellow Flicker Beat.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along...

"Yellow Flicker Beat"
Written by Ella Yelich-O'Connor‎ and ‎Joel Little. Performed by Lorde.

I'm a princess cut from marble, smoother than a storm
And the scars that mark my body, they're silver and gold
My blood is a flood of rubies, precious stones
It keeps my veins hot, the fire's found a home in me
I move through town, I'm quiet like a fight
And my necklace is of rope, I tie it and untie

And the people talk to me, but nothing ever hits home
People talk to me, and all the voices just burn holes
I'm done with it (ooh)

This is the start of how it all ends
They used to shout my name, now they whisper it
I'm speeding up and this is the red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart
We're at the start, the colors disappear
I never watch the stars, there's so much down here
So I just try to keep up with the red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart

I dream all year, but they're not the sweet kinds
And the shivers move down my shoulder blades in double time

And now people talk to me, I'm slipping out of reach now
People talk to me, and all their faces blur
But I got my fingers laced together and I made a little prison
And I'm locking up everyone who ever laid a finger on me
I'm done with it (ooh)

This is the start of how it all ends
They used to shout my name, now they whisper it
I'm speeding up and this is the red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart
We're at the start, the colors disappear
I never watch the stars, there's so much down here
So I just try to keep up with the red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart

And this is the red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart
And this is the red, orange, yellow flicker beat-beat-beat-beat

Credits: Screen capture via YouTube.com. Screen capture via Instagram.com.

Is It Possible to Set a Diamond Ablaze? These Scientists Deliver the Answer

Diamond sits alone atop the Mohs scale as the hardest naturally occurring material known to man. It is harder than a ruby, sapphire or emerald and has the ability to slice through steel like a hot knife through butter. The only substance that can scratch a diamond is another diamond.

Under normal circumstances, diamonds truly are forever. But in the labs of the British Royal Institution, the famous De Beers ad slogan was put to the test.

Because a diamond is made from pure carbon, scientists have theorized since the 1700s that it should burn like other carbon materials, such as graphite or coal.

And, indeed, during the early 1770s, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier used two powerful lenses to magnify the sun’s rays directly onto a diamond. The diamond slowly disappeared and carbon dioxide gas accumulated, proving that the diamond was made from carbon.

In the 2013 video, below, British scientist and author Peter Wothers enlisted the help of Nobel prize-winning chemist Sir Harry Kroto to demonstrate what it takes to get a diamond to burn. (Kroto passed away in 2016 at the age of 76.)

Wothers added a bit of drama and comic relief by using Kroto’s wife’s engagement diamond for the experiment. The viewer can see Kroto getting increasingly more uncomfortable as it becomes very clear that his wife’s diamond — under just the right conditions — has ignited.

In pure oxygen, diamonds can burn at 1320 degrees F. In normal conditions, the ignition occurs at about 1520 degrees F.

Wothers’ experiment was conducted in a chamber of pure oxygen. The resulting gases were collected in a tube leading to a beaker of limewater. The experiment anticipated that if the burning material contained carbon, the smoke would contain carbon dioxide. When the carbon dioxide was mixed into the limewater, it turned the mixture a milky white color — basically delivering calcium carbonate, an antacid used to calm a sour stomach.

In his preliminary experiment, Wothers easily ignited a bit of graphite using a torch. Then he upped the ante by doing the exact same experiment using the Kroto engagement diamond.

Surprisingly, that lit up, too. The diamond burned as a golden ember without producing any flames. At that point, Kroto half-jokingly commented that he hoped Wothers could afford to pay for a replacement diamond.

As you might have figured out by now, Wothers had cleverly swapped the Krotos’ engagement diamond with a much lower quality specimen before the experiment began.

If you’re worried about how a diamond is protected when a ring needs to be retipped, for example, be assured that jewelers go to great lengths to make sure that the extreme heat of the torch does not affect the gemstone. Some jewelers use boric acid to protect the stone while others depend on the pinpoint accuracy of a laser welder to keep the diamond out of harm’s way.

Kroto won his Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 for his work in discovering fullerenes, a pure carbon molecule that takes a shape similar to a soccer ball. Research has suggested many uses for fullerenes, including medical applications, superconductors, fiber-optics systems and nanotechnology.

Check out Wothers’ diamond-burning experiment here…

Credits: Screen captures via YouTube.com.

25 Years of Searching Yields 2nd-Largest Diamond in Arkansas Park's History

In a shining example of how persistence pays off, Kevin Kinard scored a 9.07-carat diamond during a Labor Day visit to Arkansas's Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro. The 33-year-old bank branch manager from Maumelle, Ark., had caught the diamond bug during a second-grade field trip to the park and had returned regularly ever since. For 25 years, his amateur prospecting turned up no diamonds.

All that changed on September 7 when he picked up a curiously shiny, marble-sized brown crystal in the southeast portion of the park's 37.5-acre search area. The crystal turned out to be the second-largest diamond discovered in the 48-year history of the park. The largest was the 16.37-carat white Amarillo Starlight, which was unearthed in August of 1975.

Kinard told park officials that he and his friends were wet sifting for about 10 minutes before he decided to break off from his group to walk up and down the plowed rows of the search field. While scanning the ground, a stone with a rounded, dimpled shape caught his eye.

“It kind of looked interesting and shiny,“ he said, “so I put it in my bag and kept searching. I just thought it might’ve been glass.”

After a few hours, Kinard and his friends headed to the Diamond Discovery Center, where park staffers help identify visitors' finds.

“I almost didn’t have them check my finds, because I didn’t think I had found anything,“ Kinard said. “My friend had hers checked, though, so I went ahead and had them check mine, too.”

A few minutes later, a park manager invited Kinard into the Discover Center's office to tell him the big news.

“I honestly teared up when they told me," he said. "I was in complete shock!”

Park officials described the dewdrop-shaped stone as "brandy brown" with a metallic shine, which is typical of all the park's diamonds.

Park Assistant Superintendent Dru Edmonds noted that conditions in the diamond search area were perfect for Kinard to find his diamond.

“Park staff plowed the search area on August 20, just a few days before Tropical Storm Laura dropped more than two inches of rain in the park,” Edmonds said. “The sun was out when Mr. Kinard visited, and he walked just the right path to notice the sunlight reflecting off his diamond.”

Kinard pointed out the uncanny connection between the diamond's weight and the day he found it.

”It weighs 9.07, and I found it on 9/7. I thought that was so unique!” he said.

As is customary with large diamond finds at the park, Kinard was encouraged to give his diamond a name.

He decided to honor his friends by calling it the ”Kinard Friendship Diamond.”

“We love to travel together and had such a great time out here,” he said. ”It was a very humbling experience.”

The search area is actually a plowed field atop the eroded surface of an extinct, diamond-bearing volcanic pipe. Visitors have found more than 33,000 diamonds since the Crater of Diamonds opened as an Arkansas State Park in 1972.

Amateur miners get to keep what they find at the only diamond site in the world that’s open to the general public. The park had been closed for two months due to COVID-19 health concerns, but reopened on May 22.

Admission to the park’s diamond search area is currently limited to 1,000 tickets per day due to COVID-19 restrictions. Visitors are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance at www.CraterofDiamondsStatePark.com, to ensure access.

Credits: Images courtesy of Arkansas State Parks.