Coming fresh out of a three-year hiatus, it's safe to say that Lorde is back. And this time, she's not going anywhere so soon. After the huge success of her first album Pure Heroine, which won her two Grammy's and international fame, she decided to move back to New Zealand where she went through some pretty life changing events. From moving out of her house at the tender age of eighteen to experiencing heartbreak from her four-year relationship coming to an end, Lorde chose not to let these things consume and get the better of her. No, instead she did what she was born to do: write. From her heart, her soul, to bare everything she has onto those pages with all she's got until her masterpiece was completed. And boy, did she do just that with her sophomore album, "Melodrama."
I, like many of her devoted fans, was one of the millions who stayed up past their bedtime patiently waiting for the clock to strike 12 am on June 16th. Constantly checking our phones and computers, refreshing the page every second once the time got closer until we spotted her album pop up on our screens. Where we would then go through and play her entire album front and back, start to finish because we've waited for this day for over three years and the feeling of her new music is just as good if not better than Christmas morning. During this time we would then decide our favorites. Favorite lyrics, favorite song to dance to, favorite song to scream at the top of our lungs, favorite song to sit and cry our eyes out to and our favorite song overall, which you know is impossible so we attempt to give our top five,
When taking a first listen to it, Melodrama could easily be put into the category of "Breakup Album." But this is not just a break-up album, it's more, so much more than that. It's an album of self-discovery, an album of loneliness, an album of accepting that loneliness for the better, an album of pure happiness and confusion. In other words, Melodrama is an album of growth, growing up and learning to get through all the things we deal with in our lives that we sometimes can't control or know the outcome to. But yet we still manage to have faith and optimism in finding that light when all we see around us is darkness.
"What the f*ck are perfect places anyway?" is a question Lorde asks in the ending song "Perfect Places," and an answer that isn't necessarily easy to come up with. When you think of it, what exactly are perfect places? Or better yet, is there even such a thing as perfect places? We get left with that cliffhanger, but I think that's just what Lorde wants to have happened. It would be so easy to be given the answer, to have it all figured out. Even as the album reads like a tragic and beautiful love story that gives off the vibes of a house party where everyone from any clique or group is invited, sprinkled in with a bit of an edgy late 80's early 90's dark and angst sound, from the beginning lyrics of "Green Light," where even from the start she expresses how she wants to find that green light, that way out, but there's something holding her back. She still aches for those moments and no matter how much she admits to wanting to just take her things back and let go, she can't. So she gets in her car and heads to the one place someone goes to let loose; a house party. But warning, this is only the beginning of the party, and whether the story gets better or worse from here you'll have to see and listen for yourself.
All I can say is although each song has their own distinct and unique sound to them, one emotion I felt throughout listening to the album was sadness. By the time I got to her heart wrenching song "Supercut," a sort of storytelling where the moments just come speeding in and out like your eyes are watching through a View Master or a reel footage of an old film, I could feel the warm tears stream down my face with no ending coming. It's not entirely all of the story but it's enough to remember how beautiful it once was before it all turned to packed up boxes with a thick layer of dust that gets stored in the back of your mind, never to open again.
These songs have a way of opening up those invisible wounds left on my heart from past lovers and relationships and make me go through that time again as a way of coming to a fateful conclusion and somber end to a time I still felt confused by after all this time has gone by. This album is therapy for me, to be able to accept the way the story ends, which isn't always a happy ending, but still be completely together from the blow and walk away clean and brand new. Whether it be the raw and vulnerable song "Liability" that only needs the company of a piano to hear her story, the soft tempo in the beginning that comes rushing like the waves of a tide coming and going back in with "Hard Feelings/ Loveless," where the end of a relationship can kind of feel like you're actually drowning, you can't breathe, as you keep playing on repeat how it all came to an end. The ultimate diss track 'Writer in The Dark," that can be reminiscent of something Taylor Swift, Adele, or Fleetwood Mac would do but it's better because it's Lorde's version instead.
"The Louvre," to me, reminds me of this tumultuous relationship that was doomed from the beginning but they still go all in despite the crash-and-burn after effect it inevitably brings. The ending music sounding like it was meant to come out of a Quentin Tarantino film, where now that all is said and done, they escape from the flames of two lovers once in love before it engulfs them.
Once "Sober" hits though it sounds and feels the complete opposite of the title. This is how one would be once that first drink- or few- hits you and suddenly the world is spinning and you feel like you're floating. So is she trying to forget him by drinking the pain and memories away? Who am I to say? Just don't get too carried away, because no matter how high you get, there's always that fateful fall. Which concludes my idea of these perfect places. Spoiler alert, there is no such thing as perfect places. Because, as much as one would like to forget and dance and drink their pain away, the party has to eventually end sometime where all you're left with after is just a headache, throbbing ankles and an empty drink.
In the end, Lorde has evolved from a newcomer teen to a full blown star with a grown-up attitude ready to embark on her new chapter. And no one can tell her differently. But even though her new album may sound and resemble the likes of other pop stars, she is not one of them. She is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O' Connor. She is Lorde and she is here to stay.
Welcome back Lorde, we missed you.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be busy dancing through the dark as I find my own green light.
