Lorde is back, officially grown out of her teens, and celebrating – as always. And she gets the green light.
I challenge you to find someone who owned their adolescence like Lorde did. To many of us similar in age, she was an icon in those awkward years spent dabbling in side fringes and blue eyeshadow. Someone who could perfectly articulate those painful and confusing emotions that came with high school flings, toxic friendships, and personal growth. A strangely precocious teen who seemed to stand on top of the shit pile that was adolescence, while the rest of us drowned in it. Her debut album, Pure Heroine, was a dark pop opus centred on love, loneliness and naivety, and Ella Yelich-O’Connor relished in it.
“All my life I’ve been obsessed with adolescence, drunk on it. Even when I was little, I knew that teenagers sparkled … Since 13 I’ve spent my life building this giant teenage museum, mausoleum maybe, dutifully wolfishly writing every moment down, and repeating it all back like folklore.”
Well, now she’s 20, and like most of us, her adolescent days are over. After her silence in the past few years, I seriously thought that Lorde’s legacy may have forever remained as a white teethed teen. To be honest, I’d almost completely forgotten about her until the internet exploded with her essay-length Facebook post on her 20th birthday, which told of the looming album.
“Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies, and this record – well, this one is about what comes next.”
After that post in November, the curly-haired Kiwi has been teasing her fans with many promises and a trail of vague, cryptic hints, leaving us all wondering and waiting. For a progressive artist like Lorde, the release of her comeback single was likely to be unconventional and unexpected, but the treasure hunt arranged in Auckland really blew all predictions out of the park. Fans found a beach doused in green light, a smoking car, and song lyrics on the face on light boxes. Two days later, Green Light dropped.
She’s back, and bolder than ever. Lorde’s comeback single was released earlier this month after what seemed like an eternity of Lorde teendom. Green Light is a boppy single made for belting out and thrashing around the room to. It’s a punchy, raw song that captures the aftermath of breakup, and being wonderfully lost in the process. It’s about embracing the freedom and the chance to rebuild yourself, which I think is a pretty darn fantastic perspective in a world that often romanticises messy breakups and loneliness.
Green Light is almost completely different to her Pure Heroine style, which shouldn’t have surprised me but did. She possesses a kickass confidence whilst baring all her vulnerabilities. A ferocious and buzzing energy has thrown her back into the forefront of the pop music scene. Her looming album, Melodrama, signifies her endeavour into the mysterious and dreaded twenties; a path many of us are stumbling down. Will Lorde dominate adulthood in similar teen-queen fashion? Green Light suggests yes.
Something that was just as exciting as the new song, was the sneaky “I will definitely, definitely be coming Down Under quite a bit sooner than people think” line Lorde dropped in a recent Triple J interview. Splendour alarm bells are ringing in my head (!!!).
“The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world.”
Oh Lorde, we are ready and waiting to dance with you.
All quotes obtained via Triple J and Lorde’s Facebook Page.
Words by Annabel Bowles.
Image by Lucas Shaw.
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