Lorde’s Artistry is Not Defined By Her Sadness
Tags: Music, Lorde, Solar Power

In early 2013, I received a Facebook message from my friend that said “you might like this song” and a YouTube link. We were both fifteen year olds who thought ourselves as fans of “indie music”, which just meant we knew who Lana Del Rey and MGMT were. It wasn’t unusual for her to give me music suggestions, stuff I could download via youtube-mp3.com and transfer to my iPod classic. Neither the title track or the artist name were familiar to me, so I had no idea what to expect.

The song was Royals by Lorde.

I instantly fell in love, and quickly located the rest of The Love Club EP to add to my library. Her music became the soundtrack to my tenth grade, and she was virtually all I listened to for the next few months. As an awkward teenager living in Australia (and not one of the glamorous parts either), I connected with her music in a way I never had before. Lorde’s experiences and feelings felt so similar to my own, and it felt like she was a friend.

This feeling was strengthened when I was lucky enough to see her live shortly after the release of Pure Heroine — one of her first Australian shows, on a $35 ticket I got for my 16th birthday, at a venue that could only fit about two thousand people. She had yet to find her bravado, so to speak, and was a quiet girl who hid behind her long hair and the long black sleeves that defined her style in the beginning. And yet, she warmed up to us as the night went on, laughing and talking with the crowd (a friend I’d made on the night yelled to “Drink that water, Lorde!” during a break, to which she giggled and replied “I will.”) She knew that her audience was filled with people around her own age, going through the same things, who could probably understand her disillusionment with the grandiose ideas of wealth and America better than most — Australia and New Zealand are neighbours, after all. It wasn’t the most exciting or theatrical concert I’d ever been to, but there was something special about spending that night with her before her career reached unimaginable heights.

Flash forward a little bit. It is now 2017. I am nineteen and in my first year of university. The past few years have not been kind to me, and I was now living in an unfamiliar city, completely alone for the first time in my life (three older brothers makes for a…loud childhood.) I was recently coming to terms with the realisation that young adulthood isn’t all I made it out to be, the kind of thing you can’t process until you reach it. I don’t miss high school by any means, but my early twenties have been lonely and confusing in their own kind of way, something I was beginning to see in my final year of being a teenager.

As if by some greater power or a contractually obligated release, 2017 was also the year that Lorde came out with Melodrama. It was a departure from the slow, gentle thump of Pure Heroine, which had been a snapshot of being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; an expression of desire to be invited to the party but turning your nose up at it in faux distaste, because you’re meant to be so much cooler than that. Melodrama was louder and more vibrant, a diary of finally getting invited to the party right after your heart breaks in two, and losing yourself to the sound and the lights so you don’t have to think about your failed relationship or what tomorrow will bring. In short, it was the album that I so desperately needed for that stage of my life, and I welcomed it with open arms.

Once again, Lorde’s music defined my experiences for the next few years. I had my heart broken and I broke some myself, I laughed loudly while drunk at parties and reeked of vomit the next day when cleaning up plastic cups, I fell in love with strangers and out of love with friends, I replayed my past over and over again but looked away from my future, I found myself getting lost in the bright lights in my head and in the world around me, so they could temporarily blind me from all the things that I didn’t want to see. Melodrama was the friend that lit your cigarettes and encouraged you to do tequila shots but held your hair back and comforted you when you were throwing up in the bathroom later, crying about how unloveable you were.

Lorde performing at the Sydney Opera House for Melodrama Dance

After finishing the tour for her sophomore album, Lorde disappeared from the public eye. She wiped her social media accounts, her website no longer updated, and she retreated to New Zealand, where she would be far less likely to be photographed on the street. The party was over, and it was time for everyone to go home until our hostess welcomed us back.

That invitation came a week ago, in the form of an email (her preferred method of communication with fans) which announced her upcoming album, Solar Power, and the lead single of the same name.

In her two year absence from our lives, there was a lot of talk about what Lorde would give us when she came back. Another collection of songs about the trials and tribulations of youth? Another album about crying in the taxi and blowing all our friendships to sit in hell with that one special someone? People wanted Lorde to give us another set of songs to cry to, to reach through the speakers and hold our hand as we navigated adulthood.

Solar Power was not that. It was a departure from her usual melancholy music, a song that sounded more like Loaded by Primal Scream than anything Joni Mitchell or Lana Del Rey ever put out. Solar Power is about leaving the sadness behind, turning away from the digital world, and embracing the simple pleasures of surf, sand, and sun.

Lorde in the music video for Solar Power

As I write this, I’m sitting on my bed in a sweater and coat, buried underneath an electric blanket. My cat, a grumpy old woman that is 80% fur, is cuddled under the quilt with me. My constant companions are my annual winter cough and the candles I have lit at all times. I’m very much caught up in the kind of winter that Lorde declares that she “can’t stand,” the kind of winter that I personally love. I’ve never enjoyed summer, so it’s hard for me to understand the passion Lorde has for the season in Solar Power. But every time I listen to the song, I’m filled with a desire to run to the beach and wait for the UV rays to burn through the clouds and redden my cheeks. It was different from what we were used to, but I loved it all the same, as I had done with every other Lorde release since I first discovered her, eight years ago.

So it was surprising to me that a lot of people didn’t feel the same way about it. It wasn’t what people were expecting, but more importantly, it wasn’t what they had wanted. Wasn’t Lorde supposed to give us our sad girl anthems? Wasn’t she supposed to give us music to cry to? Wasn’t she supposed to tell us how to deal with the messiness of your early to mid twenties? This isn’t what we spent years waiting for! Doesn’t Lorde know that we can’t enjoy the warmth of the sun because we’re too sad and confused to do anything except cry?

I could argue that it’s just the first song from the album, and that we have no idea what lies ahead. I could argue that Lorde’s previous emails to us have spoken about grief and her time in Antarctica, and that the rest of the album might reflect those better. I could argue that she’s still working with Jack Antonoff, who produced all the heart-wrenching tracks on Melodrama that people love so much.

Except…it doesn’t matter if all those things are true or not. Because Lorde’s talent is not determined by the mood of her music. The entire Solar Power album could feel exactly like the titular track, and it wouldn’t make Lorde any less talented or any less connected with her fans than she was when she released Melodrama.

And the expectation that she’s supposed to release sad music for twenty-somethings to cry to is an incredibly bizarre one.

Artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski have spoken about their frustration with this idea of the “sad indie girl persona.” This myth that because their songs are personal, they should be about the more upsetting and difficult times in their lives. Because feelings of grief and anger and heartbreak are easier to relate to than songs of hope and joy and love, and that’s what we want from female singer-songwriters. If they’re going to show us their diaries, then it needs to be the juiciest parts, the ones that speak the most to our experiences.

It’s a reflection of an unfortunately popular mindset that I see a lot in online spaces now, that healing and growing is unfair, that only negative emotions are valid, that we’re all supposed to wallow in our misery together because if one person can’t be happy, then no one can. If artists want us to connect to their work, then they either need to be sad or they need to fake being sad, because that’s their appeal. Your personal experiences only matter if they’re similar to our personal experiences.

And I have to wonder if these people actually enjoy the artist as a person and a creator, or if they enjoy them because they’re an extension of themselves. Because if you only see their value when they’re creating stuff that reflects you…then maybe it’s time to throw in the towel, instead of expecting the artist to either continue to suffer or warp their story for your sake.

I don’t relate to Solar Power the way I did with Royals or Green Light, but I certainly don’t feel any less connected to Lorde because of it. The song is hopeful and honest and human in a way I know Lorde to be, and it doesn’t devalue her past work. Maybe it even strengthens it.

Maybe it’s a continuation of the narrative of Pure Heroine and Melodrama, about where you go the morning after the party you used to long to be invited to. When you’re left with your mistakes and your regrets, and you can so clearly see the hearts you’ve broken and the scars of your unhealthy coping mechanisms. And you know that you can either continue down that path of sadness, let it swallow you whole and overtake you. Or you can dust yourself off, grab the hands of the friends you still have, and dance around in the sun as you finally begin to think that maybe, just maybe, your future can be bright and happy, as long as you let it.

Or maybe Lorde didn’t mean any of that, and Solar Power has no deeper meaning, and it really is just a fun song about getting high on the beach with your friends. As someone who spent their New Year’s Eve doing exactly that, she has my full support. And even if I’d spent NYE curled up in my bed, alone and sober and asleep by 8pm, she’d still have my full support. Because I fell in love with her music all those years ago because there was something so human about it, and there still is. That hasn’t gone away because the sadness has.

Artists want to connect with audiences, want to release something that other people can relate to, want to make their fans feel seen and heard. But this expectation that this connection should come at the expense of their own well-being and desires is a selfish one. Lorde does not exist to create songs for young adults to feel depressed over. She is simply an artist who wants to create stories inspired by what she’s been through, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, and take her fans on a journey. And if that journey is taking her up towards the sun, to something more happy and freeing, then all the more power to her.

I know that I won’t be getting off this ride.