Lorde snaps at fans demanding new album

Lorde has fired off a testy response to impatient fans demanding she releases new music.

The Royals singer's last album, Pure Heroine, was released in 2013 when she was just 16-years-old, and fans, who have been waiting almost three years for a follow-up, took Lorde, real name Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, to task on Instagram after the musician posted a picture of herself on vacation.

One with the user name @gabatron9 wrote: "Do you think we'll ever get another album or should we just give up on you as an artist?"

The singer-songwriter replied by saying she had been working hard and that it took her longer to produce new material than other pop stars who do not write their own music.

"@gabatron9 give up on me if you want to! I'm an artist, I write a record when I have enough special stories to tell, and it's all me, every melody every lyric, not some team who just start the machine up every eighteen months like clockwork," she wrote. "the record is written, we're in the production stages now. I've worked like a dog for a year making this thing great for you guys."

The New Zealand-based singer rose to international fame in 2013, when her acclaimed debut record stormed up charts around the world. Lead single Royals earned the musician two Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and best Best Pop Solo Performance, however the star has not released any new music since 2014, when her song Yellow Flicker Beat appeared on the soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1.

Over the summer (16) Lorde, 19, has been dropping hints that fans may not have to wait too much longer for a new record - in July (16) she revealed she had travelled into the wilderness in search of musical inspiration.