Songfacts®:

• Lorde sets "Leader Of A New Regime" in the future after a catastrophic ecological disaster. The singer, along with a few other survivors, has escaped to a far-flung natural island where they've started a new regime. She hopes they can find a new leader for their sanctuary who's learned the lessons from the environmental breakdown.
• Lorde pokes fun at the luggage choices one survivor makes.
  
  Made it to the island on the last of the outbound planes
  Got a trunk full of Simone and Céline, and of course, my magazines
  I'm gonna live out my days
  
  In the Spotify Storyline feature for this song, Lorde said she "liked the image of a former popstar packing nothing but magazines and designer dresses."
• Lorde wrote the song with American producer James "Malay" Ho. His resumé also includes work on Frank Ocean's Channel Orange and Alicia Keys' Girl On Fire albums.
• Malay and Lorde co-produced the track with the Kiwi singer's go-to collaborator, Jack Antonoff. At 1:33 it's a near interlude. "I wanted to have a little reprieve and go in that Crosby, Stills & Nash direction a little bit and be like, 'Where's it going to go from here?," Lorde told Apple Music. "Whether it's culturally, politically, environmentally, socially, spiritually. I felt that desire for doing something new."
• Lorde co-directed the video with Australian director Joel Kefali, her collaborator on the "Solar Power," "Mood Ring" and "Fallen Fruit" clips. It finds her on a tropical island, wandering its rocky shores.