This is a lovely sentiment that results, alas, in a rather anodyne pop song. I took two of the chords from that song, reversed them, and this is future me talking back to her sort of saying ‘It’s going to be OK.’” “I was so apprehensive about what was to come and about growing up and there was so much I didn’t know. “I was listening to ‘Ribs,’ which is a little weird of me, but I was, and just thinking about who I was at that time of life,” Lorde explains, in a track-by-track PR release. Growing up a little at a time then all at once The tradeoff now is being thrilled she’s in a better place while fearing that she’ll never make a better song there.Īnd so now, midway through Solar Power, we get a breezy little acoustic-guitar jam called “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All),” which aims for the gentle majesty of Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” but settles for mid-tier cardigan coffeehouse Taylor Swift and leans a bit too hard on generic (and algorithmic) Instagram uplift: And Lorde’s wistful teenage lamentations (“Mum and Dad let me stay home / It drives you crazy getting old”) that would sound ridiculous if she weren’t so deadly serious. The massed wail of breathy backing vocals that crests with my favorite high note of the past decade. Her electro-goth marvel of a debut album, Pure Heroine, delivers on that promise throughout-“We’re so happy / Even when we’re smiling out of fear” is still a killer line-but “Ribs” is the one. It is 2013, and Ella Yelich-O’Connor is 16 years old, and the malevolent hush of her shocking smash-hit debut single, “Royals”-“We’re bigger than we ever dreamed / And I’m in love with being queen”-has made her 21st-century pop’s most improbable and vital superstar yet. Take her at her word, even when it seems like she might be joking. (OK, this record isn’t the end of the world.) We’ll get through this together. She knows how that might sound-a little tuned out, a little pedantic-and yeah, sometimes it sounds like that. She just wants you to put your phone down and catch some rays. Most likely this uneasily blissful and banger-averse record isn’t what you want, but it’s clearly what Lorde thinks you need. But I figured I’d get that out of the way because I value your time, and so, quite earnestly, does she, though all the beachy and weedy and deep-spacey earnestness makes Solar Power somewhat of a sun-kissed bummer. Not to bum you out, here on release day for the serenely restless New Zealand pop star’s third full-length, Solar Power. The best Lorde song is still “Ribs” the best Lorde album is still Melodrama.
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