{"id":6418,"date":"2021-08-19T08:25:07","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T07:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=6418"},"modified":"2021-08-19T08:25:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T07:25:08","slug":"lordy-lordy-lorde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2021\/08\/19\/lordy-lordy-lorde\/","title":{"rendered":"LORDY, LORDY, LORDE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LORDY, LORDY, LORDE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

shouts Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When then seventeen year old Lorde rose to the occasion with a tribute performance to the late Kurt Cobaine, at the induction of Nirvana into the hall of fame not everyone was delighted by her presence. Iggy Azalea called the performance as \u00b4inappropriate\u00b4 on the grounds of Lorde\u2019s youth, and a reviewer at the New Zealand Herald claimed: \u00b4Kurt would have hated that\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dave Grohl and friends, however knew differently. Lorde\u2019s appearance at Nirvana\u2019s induction was a measure of her standing among alt-rock\u2019s grandees, who knew talent when they saw it and welcomed her as one of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The pose and polish she possessed at seventeen was astonishing and Ella Yelich-O\u2019Connor aka Lorde still only twenty four is a musical grandee herself. The anticipation for her new single, Solar Power,\u00a0complete with butt-tastic cover art<\/a>\u00a0(left)<\/em><\/strong> that bears strong echoes of Free\u2019s self-titled second album (or perhaps Funkadelic\u2019s\u00a0Free Your Mind\u2026 And Your Ass Will Follow<\/em>) \u2013 has been palpable. Released to coincide with a solar eclipse, the song is an intimate, gorgeously uplifting and supremely confident summer anthem that exhorts us to \u00b4forget all of the tears that you\u2019ve cried, it\u2019s over,\u00b4 might even come to be looked back on as the sunny sound that signalled a seismic change for the better in our battle against covid. In musical terms, though, it recalls George Michael and\u00a0Screamadelica<\/em>-era Primal Scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the accompanying video, we see Lorde on the beach, barefoot, frolicking amongst her friends,\u00a0Midsommar<\/em>-style, and sloughing off the tensions of the last year. Those looking to understand the fan worship will find it all there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Iggy and the odd disgruntled critic aside, the consistent love for Lorde is unusual in an industry in which an artist\u2019s stock rises and falls on social media for all sorts of reasons unrelated to talent, like a Prime ministers popularity ratings. Perhaps it\u2019s because her music is accessible while containing a marked dose of strangeness, and the fact that her song-writing \u2013 at once emotionally raw and witty \u2013 has a strong multi-generational appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am a sixty seven year old writer and music lover of catholic tastes but I have become somewhat tangled up in the Baez, Mitchell, Armatrading (and Emmylou Harris and Nanci Griffith, (left<\/em><\/strong>, who was lost to us a couple of days ago) music that emanated from my generation. I never thought I would say this but artists of Lorde\u00b4s young age, even those like her prepared to take the road less travelled, do not often grab my attention. I rarely bump into them, even at the crossroads, it seems. And yet when the press release for her new single dropped into my e mails, I realised I knew her name and that something, somewhere, some song, some attitude, had left some dust on my shoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other than goggling google there is no social infrastructure here on Lanzarote that would enable me to make chatty enquiries about Lorde, but that lunchtime over a pint and chicken fajitas by that the Jungla Bare by the beach in Matagorda, a non stop music channel of contemporary pop was playing and I knew that my favourite waitress, Emma, took control of \u00b4entertainment\u00b4. As she served us I asked her politely if she had heard of Lorde. She thought she might have done, if only by name, but a guy across the floor, probably of my sort of age called across to me that he knew of some of her work and he gave it a thumbs up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is nothing of a story really but artists with cross-generational appeal are rare indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retaining outsider credentials while working within the bounds of pop music is no mean feat either; Billie Eilish has pulled off the same trick in recent years, to even greater applause (Lorde is known to have inspired Eilish and her brother Finneas). As Laura Snapes wrote in The Guardian, \u00b4[Lorde has] always carried herself more like an auteur than a modern pop star\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s surely significant that, although Lorde talks approvingly of her contemporaries, her main idols are her musical elders, among them Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks (right) <\/em><\/strong> has, in turn, said Lorde would have been the \u00b4third girl in Fleetwood Mac\u00b4). Listening to Writer In The Dark (as advised by The Guardian) I would agree with their assertion that Kate Bush must be up there among her heroes, too. Like her forebears, Lorde is a smart lyrical stylist. Single lines such as \u00b4She thinks you love the beach, you\u2019re such a damn liar\u00b4, from the house-y anthem Green Light, manage to tell entire stories without condescending to spell them out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That ability to write a novel in a sentence is certainly one shared by the likes of  the earlier-referenced Nanci Griffith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Lorde first appeared with the single, Royals. in 2013, she presented a song so perfectly stripped back, it was basically all bones and her future looked frightening. The song shot to number one all over the world, and this teenager with an unusually old soul suddenly had the music industry at her feet. I was probably peripherally aware of that, but wisened old grump that I am I\u00b4ve seen and heard so many flashes-in-the-pan sparkle and fizz and fade into nothing and so perhaps put her to the backroads of my mind and decided to simply wait and see. Such situations rarely end well. It\u2019s hard to hold your own in a business that likes to mould women to its own ends; the list of young girls embarking on careers in their mid-teens, and being crushed by the experience, is depressingly long.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, the fact that actual deities shower her in praise, David Bowie (left) 9I described her music as like \u00b4listening to tomorrow\u00b4, brings its own pressures. Yet Lorde appears to have met these challenges with preternatural levels of zen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her precociousness echoed that of the young Taylor Swift, both with her early record deal (Lorde signed to Universal at 13 after a friend\u2019s dad sent them a recording of her covering a Duffy song) and her ability to write exceptional songs from a young age. But where Swift\u2019s determination to succeed was clear, Lorde appears comparatively detached, her vibe suggesting success would more likely be greeted with a shrug than an air-punch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her leisurely timetable when it comes to making albums would also suggest a woman working at her own pace and basking in the luxury of time. Of course, it\u2019s not like she\u2019s been sitting around doing nothing \u2013 also on its way this year is a photobook, Going South, which documents Lorde\u2019s experience of \u00b4hitching a ride to the end of the world\u201d to see the effects of the climate crisis in Antarctica. But while other artists indulge the desire to keep up a steady flow of content, Lorde appears happy to retreat from view. \u00b4I just hibernate for a bit\u00b4, she told a New Zealand radio station recently, \u00b4and then I pop back out with a brand new universe.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her approach, which also extends to ignoring her social media accounts, would suggest that keeping the world at arm\u2019s length can do wonders for a career. Less is almost certainly more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she seems to have impressed the crtics with her new album xxx and impressed me, too, with what she had to say to The Guardian when discussing the recording, in a piece with journalist Laura Snapes published on Friday 25th<\/sup> June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her third album, Solar Power, released in the summer of this year, has humbler origins than previous releases especially for a songwriter who likes describing inspiration as \u201cdivine\u201d. The loose, sunny instrumentation \u2013 inspired as much by Crosby, Stills & Nash as Nelly Furtado \u2013 mirrors a shift within the 24-year-old, brought about by her acquisition of a dog she says she has to pamper and clean up after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solar Power glorifies anything, it is life\u2019s natural rhythms: tides, seasons, the evolution of a feeling, or indeed, canine cogitation. Lorde<\/a> wanted to reflect how she feels at home in Auckland, where she lives in blissful obscurity. There are hardly any paparazzi; once in a blue moon she pops up on MailOnline, buying a rug. In 2018 she deleted all but a few posts from her Instagram and Twitter and abandoned both. Her greatest joy is contemplating the promise of a long summer day: will she garden? Swim? Fish? She rues spending today\u2019s solstice trapped on Zoom; at home, she would have swum at dawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The album\u2019s genesis, she says, \u201cwas this feeling of the clothes coming off and the skin being exposed and feeling this playfulness\u201d. Behold the artwork, in which she leaps over the camera, revealing an acute bikini wedgie. \u201cWhen I first saw it I was like, ooh!\u201d she gasps coyly, raising a dainty hand to her mouth. But it worked. \u201cIt felt innocent and free, a little feral, a little spicy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The simple life dissolved a little self-seriousness. \u201cMaking my first record, I would have rather died<\/em> than have an acoustic guitar,\u201d she says. \u201cAcoustic guitars were like, bonfires and guys in dumb hats, it was very mid-2000s to me.\u201d She belly-laughs. \u201cAnd then everything I listened to became guitar music by way of both 2004 and 1976!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was too young to enjoy the \u201cbright, forward, shimmery acoustics\u201d of Natalie Imbruglia, Natasha Bedingfield and All Saints first time around. Delving back, she heard \u201ca time of optimism\u201d in this critically maligned era. \u201c\u2018Take me to my beach\u2019, \u2018If you\u2019re fond of sand dunes and salty air<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 all these crunchy outdoor images were so compelling to me, and felt so ripe for a return.\u201d (I hear the Spice Girls\u2019 Viva Forever in it, and am mortified to learn she has never heard it. I send it to her later, and it hits the spot. \u201cGonna spend some time with this.\u201d) She told her drummer Matt Chamberlain to make his parts \u201csound like skateboarding\u201d, a sense memory she wanted to channel. She can\u2019t skate, although her teenage friends could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always remember seeing that light come up from the bowl and it being so blue, it\u2019s a very visceral memory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This newfound ease does not, however, portend a crusty campfire singalong. She and co-producer Jack Antonoff \u201cstill pored over every fucking detail! I\u2019m a maniac, my ears are unparalleled. You can\u2019t get a thing past me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solar Power\u2019s title track and lead single draws on the transformative pleasures of the beach, referencing the buoyant daze of Primal Scream\u2019s Loaded and George Michael\u2019s Freedom 90. (Bobby Gillespie and Michael\u2019s estate gave it their blessing.) It doesn\u2019t reach for the wayward euphoria of Melodrama\u2019s lead single Green Light, but more attainable epiphanies. Some critics called it slight. \u201cI don\u2019t think of Solar Power as a shallow moment,\u201d says Lorde. \u201cIt\u2019s still very much a moment of depth and it feels very big to me, it\u2019s just also light and flirty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melodrama was one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2017. Lorde still considers it a miracle it got made \u2013 she and Antonoff, both \u201cyoung and clueless\u201d, were left alone for two years. \u201cWe had taste and feelings but we didn\u2019t really know how to make anything.\u201d Yet it failed to replicate Pure Heroine\u2019s commercial highs. She didn\u2019t seem to care. (In 2018, she said: \u201cIf you\u2019re here for the commercial performance of my work you\u2019ll only become more and more disenchanted.\u201d) Nonetheless, her influence has never been louder: the likes of Olivia Rodrigo<\/a>, Conan Gray<\/a> and Holly Humberstone<\/a> have appropriated Lorde\u2019s instantly identifiable sprite-like vocal harmonies<\/a>. She hasn\u2019t noticed \u2013 she doesn\u2019t listen to much contemporary pop \u2013 although she\u2019s flattered. \u201cIt\u2019s my joy to be patient zero on a harmony virus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solar Power. seems much more intimate than its tumultuous predecessor, centring those trademark vocals in classic pop melodies that summon the Carpenters\u2019 uneasy beauty. While Lorde still thinks of herself \u201cabsolutely\u201d as a pop artist, she is \u201cway past being interested in if it\u2019s going to play on the radio or anywhere in a literal pop context. It\u2019ll be interesting to see if this becomes a sound people are interested in because it\u2019s so fucking zany.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She calls Solar Power joyful and optimistic, but I am struck by its sadness: the laments on celebrity, the climate crisis, wellness culture and time passing; the weighty self-doubt. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was that sad,\u201d Lorde says, surprised and inquisitive. She cites the prismatic folk song Stoned at the Nail Salon. \u201cThat kind of searching, being unsure that I had chosen the right path and feeling lonely, I don\u2019t see those as permanent or even bad emotions. It\u2019s all part of the thing\u201d \u2013 life \u2013 \u201cto feel that trepidation. Maybe it is sad, but I\u2019m very comfortable in the periods of limbo, or times where I feel afraid or vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also on that song, she sings of how \u201call the beautiful girls will fade like the roses\u201d. That relatively recent revelation was \u201ctruly the first time that I had entertained the notion that the sexy models on Instagram who made me feel inferior \u2013 they too will age\u201d. She shrugs happily. \u201cWe\u2019re all on the same bus. At some point we have to get on the bus back.\u201d Contemplating time passing was comforting, she says. \u201cI was old enough to finally think about it. When you\u2019re a kid, you\u2019re immortal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She says the record is definitively a product of joy, albeit joy born from the revelations of grief. Which brings us back to her dog,  Pearl. In 2018, exhausted from touring and craving stability, Lorde decided to get a dog. \u201cAnd he would have gold hair, and that would take me somewhere,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd he did. He was the ultimate tour guide.\u201d He lay under the piano while she learned to write on an instrument for the first time. \u201cTo feel this energy that was not being generated by me was really profound,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caring for him helped her understand her parents and contemplate her own future children, to consider things \u201cthat are greater than my feelings on this dancefloor\u201d, she says, with self-deprecation. \u201cI could have the worst workday ever, but you come home and this being is pleased to see you. You\u2019ve done that right for another day, you know? There was an element of wanting to take my performance scores away from \u2018How\u2019s this review?\u2019 I\u2019m not so that way inclined now, but maybe at the time I was a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After less than two years together, Pearl succumbed to lifelong health issues. Lorde emailed fans to say the loss would delay her new record; the grief was long-lasting. She hasn\u2019t returned to the park where they walked. Without wishing to diminish his life, the scale of her devastation seemed to represent some greater loss. \u201cIt was absolutely, you\u2019re right, something bigger,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was everything. But I don\u2019t know how much of this I wanna talk about with a journalist.\u201d She chuckles kindly and tries to trace its outline. \u201cGrief is a really transformative force. I\u2019d never experienced it fully like that, and it makes you question everything. It overturns a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How it has changed her is probably a detail for the next album. \u201cThis record is about how precious life is, really,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She got a sense of it when she fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Antarctica in February 2019<\/a>. \u201cThe only thing to contemplate there is this raw force,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s as much terror as beauty. You don\u2019t feel welcomed by the natural world \u2013 I completely felt like an interloper.\u201d She calls it a spiritual pilgrimage. \u201cIt was the middle of summer in New Zealand. Going from the beach and tans to this hostile, cold environment and back to the beach, that whiplash helped set the scene to start writing this record.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Addressing the natural world on the album \u201cwas kind of a grieving process as well as a celebratory one\u201d, she says. Fans are convinced that the video to Solar Power, in which Lorde skips around a rudimentary beach civilisation populated by bored acolytes, is a political comment. Dressed in yellow, she must represent the sun duping braindead kids into ignoring climate warning signs! Or callous politicians ignoring the issue while everyone suffers! The beach will appear in more videos and \u201creveal its mysteries\u201d, she teases, but the album is not \u201cmy big climate change record\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m not a climate activist, I\u2019m a pop star. I stoke the fire of a giant machine, spitting out emissions as I go. There is a lot I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A much-analysed moment from the Solar Power video, in which she hustles the camera past some rubbish, is her \u201cwinking at the huge amount of idealism that people direct at where I\u2019m from\u201d, she says. \u201cWe have our literal and metaphorical trash on the beach like everyone else.\u201d She won\u2019t be drawn on Jacinda Ardern, a focus of global adulation but a source of frustration for young New Zealanders, who consider her risk-averse. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of shit we need to work on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wanted to disabuse anyone of the idea that she had any answers. The album opener, The Path, is set at the 2016 Met Gala, where Lorde steals a fork for her mum, observes \u201csupermodels dancing around a pharaoh\u2019s tomb\u201d, then admits: \u201cIf you\u2019re looking for a saviour, well that\u2019s not me.\u201d She says it\u2019s an odd place to start, \u201cbut I know enough about how people view me \u2013 we\u2019re taught to view famous people as gods now \u2013 and I just wanted to dismantle that\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One song, Fallen Fruit, is a crushed flower-power lament for the spoiled Eden her generation inherited. But that\u2019s the only protest song. She recalls Mark Rylance saying that artists should tell love stories about the climate<\/a>. \u201cThe opposite has been proven not to work,\u201d she says. \u201cI do think these songs are love stories more than anything. But love is complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lost flower-children in the Solar Power video and the sad girls in the album\u2019s lyrics mollifying emptiness with weed, manicures and crystals chime with the quote in Lorde\u2019s Instagram bio from Joan Didion\u2019s 1967 essay Slouching Towards Bethlehem<\/a>, about dropouts and psychedelics in Haight-Ashbury. In isolation, \u201ca return to innocence \u2013 the mysteries of the blood \u2013 an itch for the transcendental\u201d looks like a statement of artistic intent. In context, it comes from a psychiatrist assessing how romantic movements formed in times of crisis always end in authoritarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is she suggesting darker times still to come for a generation who have reached for alternatives in the absence of traditional support structures? She\u2019s wary of revealing too much, but \u201cthat\u2019s the vibe\u201d, she says coyly. \u201cI read a lot about the dropping-out movement and commune life, the ideological crises people were having then, and felt a lot of parallels with what people are going through now. It\u2019s all gonna become clear later, but it was such a fun, rich zone to be mining.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lorde spent most of the pandemic in New Zealand, which was minimally impacted by Covid. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m that tapped into the greater cultural consciousness around it,\u201d she confesses. She has never felt better. \u201cI think it\u2019s getting offline, but I really feel like I\u2019m only just now scratching the surface of my powers, which is a very exciting feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She quit social media and turned her phone into a \u201cdumbphone\u201d \u2013 she shows me the greyscale display, believed to minimise compulsive checking \u2013 after she came across the author Annie Dillard<\/a>\u2019s aphorism: \u201cHow we spend our days is how we spend our lives.\u201d She repeats it emphatically. \u201cI was like, I can\u2019t do this for ever, this can\u2019t be it.\u201d Social media was fun for years. \u201cBut I think it was altering my neural pathways and homogenising my trains of thought. I was losing touch with my ability to explore an idea at my own pace, which felt like losing my free will at times.\u201d She laughs, baffled. \u201cI was very addicted. To be able to put that aside has put me into such a position of power and fertility and creativity and confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over email, I ask if she worries about losing touch, especially making work that touches on generational predicaments. \u201cI actually think falling out of touch is one of the better things, emotionally and creatively, to happen to me in my 20s,\u201d she replies. \u201cI\u2019m aware it\u2019s absolutely a social and economic privilege to do so. I really think people need me to be able to see our world clearly in order to write about it, and I couldn\u2019t do that and remain online.\u201d The work, she says, \u201ccan be as rich and personal as it is\u201d because of those boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was inspired to get offline after reading the artist Jenny Odell\u2019s How to Do Nothing<\/a>, a polemic on resisting productivity. She hopes Solar Power will do for fans \u201cwhat that book did for me, which was to retrain my attention. It was literally walking my dog \u2013 45 minutes twice a day at the local park \u2013 and that was so big and transcendent for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Lorde emerged, articulate teenage pop stars who wrote their own songs were few and far between. Now there are dozens in her wake, from Rodrigo to Billie Eilish. Her own precocity has shapeshifted, evident in how she has enforced normality on her life. \u201cI was just at home for\u00a0years<\/em>,\u201d she says of Solar Power\u2019s roots. \u201cIt would make me feel vulnerable sometimes, feeling that cut off and that irrelevant, so to speak. But it\u2019s also very powerful, and I can understand that as something that is precious.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the album is not \u201cmy big climate change record\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m not a climate activist, I\u2019m a pop star. I stoke the fire of a giant machine, spitting out emissions as I go. There is a lot I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6427,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6418\/revisions\/6427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}