Lorde’s fanbase have spent years pleading for her return, only to find themselves divided after the release of her third album “Solar Power.” Before its release, fans on TikTok and Twitter joked that they used her debut and sophomore albums as markers and soundtracks to life stages, and that they were desperate for a new album to represent a new era in their lives. For many, her debut album “Pure Heroine” embodied the wannabe grunge and drama of early high school in a small town, and “Melodrama” acknowledged growth from a painful breakup and coming to terms with life and relationships as a creative.
I remember listening to “Tennis Court” for the first time at age 14, captivated by the gritty trap beats and seeing myself in the character portrayed. I remember crying to “Ribs,” age 15, and mourning the breakdown of a close female friendship. I remember bopping along to a censored version of “Homemade Dynamite” over the speakers at my afterschool retail job at age 16. I remember walking home, age 17, fresh out of a short-lived teen romance, listening to “Supercut” and leaning into the “Melodrama” of adolescence. Listening to her early music today, I’m filled not only with a sweet sentimentality, but also a remaining love and appreciation for those songs.
In anticipation of “Solar Power,” fans went so far as to joke that the new album would dictate their new personality, holding Lorde’s work as sacred and personally instructive, clinging to the significance of her music through their youth. Lorde, however, had other ideas.
“Solar Power,” inspired by growing into her mid-20s and brimming with motifs of Mother Nature, sonically and thematically marks a shift away from her debut and sophomore albums. Lorde, alongside superstar producer Jack Antonoff, has created what the singer describes as her “weed album,” having departed from her grimey electropop standard in favour of an earthier, stripped back sound. This alone is blindsiding to some, but tuning in to certain lyrics has proved totally alienating for many.
In her single “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” an existential yet resigned quarter-life-crisis looking back at an adolescence spent in the spotlight, Lorde sings:
[Pre-Chorus]
Well, my hot blood’s been burnin’ for so many summers now
It’s time to cool it down, wherever that leads
[Second Chorus]
‘Cause all the music you loved at sixteen, you’ll grow out of
And all the times they will change, it’ll all come around
I don’t know
Maybe I’m just
Maybe I’m just stoned at the nail salon again
Here, Lorde owns up to the drama and intensity of her past, then tells herself the time for youthful theatrics is over: “It’s time to cool it down.” Times are changing and she has been growing out of the music of her teen years. This assertion is jarring for some listeners, who find themselves very much tied to the music they loved at 16, and for whom such music is likely Lorde’s.
Taking an analytical view, fans clinging to the tunes of their youth might be relieved to learn that Lorde might be kind of wrong. In 2018, the New York Times put out a study using Spotify data to determine how our date of birth relates to our favorite songs. They found that for women, on average, their favourite songs came out when they were 13 and that the most important period in developing music tastes was between 11 and 14. For men, these preferences set in a few years later, with their favourite songs most likely released when they were 14 and the most significant period from ages 13 to 16. The study also found that childhood influences were stronger for women than for men. Contrary to Lorde’s claim, people’s early teens were twice as influential in determining adult musical tastes than their early 20s. In other words, the music we loved at 16 (or actually younger), is really likely the music we love as adults too — music we don’t really grow out of.
Of course, the lyric aims to serve more as a turn of phrase than a statistical reality; Lorde is moving on from the hyperemotionality associated with teenagehood. Even with this understanding, many listeners felt excluded from the narrative of really being done with the past that Lorde presents in this song and as an overall theme of the album.
If fans were honest with themselves, they would have realised there was no chance this album was going to be received as relatable in the same way “Pure Heroine” and “Melodrama” were. Having spent much of the past two years with social media as our only connection to the outside world, and missing out on what we had hoped would be formative young adult experiences, it is hard to connect with a lot of what “Solar Power” is about. Lorde spent early 2019 in fucking Antarctica. I literally have no understanding of what that would be like. She spent the majority of the pandemic in Aotearoa (New Zealand), where a woman Prime Minister led the country out of COVID largely through a message of kindness; vaccinations were embraced and, as of November 2021, only 28 deaths have been caused by the virus. She doesn’t live the same life as most people. She isn’t traumatised by COVID in the same way as people in major U.S. and U.K. cities are.
Lorde also escaped the strange phenomenon of sliding back into youthful tendencies in the way many 20- and 30-somethings did throughout 2020. Nostalgia for our teens years was at an all time high with the peak of the pandemic, with many young adults reporting a regression into their teenage selves, spurred by stress and moving back in with family.
In “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” the same track proclaiming a letting go of youthful favourites, Lorde instructs listeners to “spend all of the evenings you can with the people who raised you.” This line cannot penetrate the hearts of the early 20-somethings forced to spend the majority of last year in their childhood bedrooms, desperate to burst from their parents’ walls into freedom and rebellion.
Despite all this — the lyrics not universally hitting like her other albums, the statistical inaccuracy —
Lorde doesn’t, and shouldn’t, care. Lorde is not aiming for commercial success or to be relatable. It’s OK, or rather, it’s really good that some don’t connect with all of her lyrics, or that they might not be the guide or soundtrack some fans had hoped for. In her album opener and thesis statement, “The Path,” Lorde shuts down the idol status bestowed on her by fans: “If you’re looking for a saviour, it’s not me.” Lorde is urging listeners to take their own path — to release her from the chokehold of idolisation.
As hard as it may be to accept, Lorde’s “Solar Power” is teaching us to loosen our grip on her as a hero. If audiences take on this lesson, we can find ourselves in a place where can hear assertions such as those in “Stoned at the Nail Salon” and respond less with indigance and more with curiosity, keeping an appreciation for Lorde and her artistry rather than using her as a mirror off which to reflect what should be personal and private individual experiences. So, while there’s totally still a place for the artists you loved at 16, growing up means there just might be less room for their deification.
this is an excellent article
Comments are closed.