No Lights, no Lorde: impersonator dupes Auckland partygoers

New Zealand has been sent in a tailspin after a surprise performance by Lorde at an Auckland public library was found to have been by a convincing impersonator.

The pop star was widely reported by attendees of the weekly No Lights No Lycra dance party to have made a guest appearance to perform her new single, Green Light, on Monday night.

A “super ultra special guest” had been teased in the lead-up to the event, billed as a “weekly hour of dance freedom in total darkness” at the Grey Lynn library for a door charge of NZ$7.

“Total darkness” apparently worked in the impersonator’s favour, with many of those in attendance excitedly posting on social media about Lorde’s surprise appearance.

“You know you are in Auckland City when Lorde casually rocks out as the surprise guest at your local No Lights No Lycra hosted at the community library,” posted one attendee on Facebook. “Those are some pretty stoked faces right there!”

Another thanked Ella Yelich O’Connor, “a.k.a. #Lorde you secret ninja you, surprising us like that and your voice was amazing live in the little hall in the dark!”

“But she wasn’t there,” as the New Zealand Herald reported on Tuesday.

“In fact, she’s currently thousands of kilometres away eating Creme Eggs with her mum in London.”

The pop star’s mother, Sonia Yelich-O’Connor, had responded to an excited report on Twitter, calling it “weird”: “We are in London [right now] – me n @lorde”, adding the Union Jack emoji.

“We in London,” confirmed Lorde on Instagram, with a photo of herself eating a Creme Egg.

She later tweeted of the furore that it was “deeply fake news but quite cute”.

The No Lights No Lycra crowd had been primed to expect a “super ultra special guest” by organiser Craig Neilson.

He posted on Facebook on Tuesday morning that the cat was “out of the bag”, naming the Lorde impersonator as Hannah Horsfield, a music student at Auckland University.

He told the Guardian that, of the crowd of approximately 100 people, “nearly everyone went away convinced that it was the real deal”.

“I really expected that people would be leaving the hall a bit uncertain, but I guess I really shouldn’t have underestimated Hannah.”

Neilson had told New Zealand’s Newshub that the prank was an “early celebration” of April Fools Day, to which Newshub drily added: “The April Fools prank was played ... almost a week before April 1.”

Asked by the Guardian whether Monday 27 March was not a bit premature, he said: “We celebrate Christmas from the start of October, so ... ”

New Zealanders responded to the prank with bemusement on social media.

The Guardian, and Lorde, and Lorde’s mum, and everyone who follows either of them on Twitter can confirm that Lorde is still in London.

Her second album, Melodrama, is due to be released on 16 June.