No Better

"No Better" was written by Lorde (credited under her birth-name Ella Yelich-O'Connor) and Joel Little. On 13 December 2013, the track was released as a digital download single on the iTunes Store. The single was made available for free until 19 December as a part of the iTunes Store's "12 Days of Gifts" Christmas promotion.

"No Better" is an electropop and trip hop ballad with hip hop elements. The song has a similar sonority to that of other songs from Pure Heroine, featuring Lorde's "feathery" vocals and minimal production. It incorporates "woozy" basslines, and "pulsing" synthesisers in its instrumentation, making the song's melody "dreamy", according to Whitney Phaneuf of HitFix. Lyrically, the song features Lorde "[celebrating] an infatuation that deepens as the seasons change". At the first verse, she sings "We roll in every summer when there's strength in our numbers / And your breath's hot and gross but I kiss you like a lover". During the chorus, the bass beat becomes more intense as Lorde sings "Go all the way / Have your fun, have it all".

Marc Hogan from Spin wrote that the song "flits between fairly vivid first-person details", while Whitney Phaneuf from HitFix labelled "No Better" a "sexy" track. Eric Danton of Rolling Stone opined that the lyrics of the song are "girlish and knowing". Writing for Slate, L. V. Anderson shared that "No Better" is reminiscent of some of the best tracks on Pure Heroine, but also "lighter, simpler [...] and more confectionary than most of her debut album", in spite of its dark theme. "No Better" entered the New Zealand Artists Singles Chart at number seven on 23 December 2013. It dropped to number nineteen the following week, before falling out of the chart. The song was released on streaming services in 2021.

In 2025, during the Ultrasound World Tour, Lorde performed the song for the first time since 2014.

• Digital download

1. "No Better", 2:50
2. "Royals" (music video), 4:03