no. 30 — Pure Heroine by Lorde. I tried so hard to dislike Lorde when…
By: Jenna Sylvester
Tags: Non Binary, Album Review, Music, Lorde, Personal Essay

I tried so hard to dislike Lorde when “Royals” first hit the radio. I was still in the middle of my pretentious distain for anything popular; that internalized misogyny wherein one assumes anything teenage girls enjoy must be tedious, lame, and overrated. There’s a lot of artists I wrote off because of this belief, and I lament that now. I rolled my eyes instead of letting myself earnestly enjoy something. Pop music is popular for a reason- it’s full of catchy, easily relatable lyrics. It’s fun, it can be light or serious, and frankly I’m tired of policing my opinions in order to fit into some weird mold that doesn’t serve me.

This is to say that I cried freely when I saw Lorde in concert. There were a lot of teenage girls sitting behind me, and I’m not going to lie they were infuriating. We were in the absolute nosebleeds, and they insisted on screaming at Lorde to play certain songs, even though there was no way she would ever hear them. I was annoyed for a large part of the show, and then Lorde played “Liability” and I just started bawling[1].

Lorde’s music captures the banal, overarching ache that defines being a teenager. Common occurrences, like buying someone orange juice becomes romantic, even enviable. Her music feels exactly like the lens through which I saw my life as a young adult. I would go on long, dramatic drives, wandering my town alone, pulling over every few miles to scribble down what I thought were revelations[2] in a tiny journal I kept in the glove compartment. I felt like everything in the whole world was only happening to me, that I was the only one who understood my place in life, that I was simultaneously part of the group and an outlier.

Of course, in some cases I was, and still am, the outlier. In my friend group at home, I am the only person who isn’t cis[3]. Though I didn’t identify that way until I was 20, the symptoms of gender dysphoria still plagued me, even if I didn’t have the vocabulary to define it. But for the most part, my life is commonplace. I am on the same path as most of my peers even while I crave a rocket towards something “better.” This desire to be better than the people around me is one of the reasons I scorned Lorde for so long. And let me tell you, it’s dumb. You can’t elevate yourself by putting down other people. That’s not how it works.

Because I was in New Zealand, I decided I had to start loving Lorde. She was the only artist from NZ I knew of at the time. I used to watch the “Royals” music video over and over in secret. The song was stuck in my head constantly, but I felt ashamed to admit I liked it. Now that I was on her home turf, I decided to let that shame go and fully embrace her music. Once I did, I realized that she’s revered for a reason. She’s an incredible songwriter, one with a unique ability to capture that period of time when you’re not really an adult but not really a kid. Maybe she captures it so well because she was in that stage at the time of writing these albums, but it takes a special talent to be able to write so clearly and eloquently about something that is still occurring.

Listen again if you haven’t in a while, and let yourself revert to your teenage self. Let yourself be an idealist and a pessimist at the same time. And maybe let yourself enjoy something, because if something is a guilty pleasure, it can’t be fully enjoyed.