page_title: Writer in the Dark
section_title: Background and development
hierarchical_section_title: Writer in the Dark / Background and development
caption_attribution_description: Secret radio show for 107.5 Las Vegas
context_page_description: "Writer in the Dark" is a song recorded by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde for her second album Melodrama. Lorde co-wrote and co-produced the track with Jack Antonoff. It is a piano ballad with sparse production and an outro. The song was inspired after Lorde woke up late one night with a stranger; its lyrics are Lorde's lament to an ex-lover, in which she says she will always love him but she also needs to move her life forwards.
  The song received acclaim from music critics, many of whom commended its songwriting and compared it to that of Taylor Swift and Lorde's vocals to Kate Bush's register. Lorde performed "Writer in the Dark" and six other songs as part of a re-imagined Vevo song series at Electric Lady Studios, where she recorded the song. "Writer in the Dark" was part of the set list of her Melodrama World Tour.
context_section_description: In an exclusive podcast interview with The Spinoff, Lorde stated that she wrote "Writer in the Dark" from the perspective of "something being finished, but still feeling like I had something I wanted to say". She was also inspired to write the lyric, "Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark" after she woke late one night in a bed she was sharing with a stranger. In a separate interview, Lorde said "Writer in the Dark" was the last song she recorded that made the final cut of the album and the second (after "Supercut") in which she "was speaking to someone or closing a door". The singer-songwriter said about the songwriting process, "It's interesting when you’re female and you write this confessional, painfully honest music about your life. There’s a lot of guilt associated with that."
  According to Lorde, the song is her way of saying, "It's what I've always been. It's what I was when you met me. It's what I will continue to be after you leave. That's exactly what was going to happen when you kissed a writer in the dark." She noted that the lyrics of the chorus fluctuate in emotion. Lorde also said the writing process felt therapeutic and complex. When asked about writing from a traditionalist perspective, Lorde said she felt she made the song unique by implementing words such as "pseudoephedrine", the name of a sympathomimetic drug, which she said would work in a rap song; she enjoyed taking standard forms and putting "spiky bits on them". The singer also compared "Writer in the Dark" and "Liability" (2017) to a rap cadence.
caption: Jack Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced "Writer in the Dark".
exif: {}