Severe flashes of reality
That North Shore girl’s new album cuts through the pretence and bravado of the pop superstar life.
Arrival. Presence. The moment. These are the keystones to traditional rock and pop stardom. La-la-land glitz and Hollywood-branded effervescence are watermarked through every video, performance and snatch of social media as the hallmarks of some kind of celebrity theme park, full of VIP-only roller coasters, ecstatic Ferris wheels and signs proclaiming only those so-high can take their seats on these exclusive rides.
In the four years since her debut single, Royals, and album, Pure Heroine, North Shore songstress Ella Yelich-O’Connor has earned a ticket to this eternal A-list party if anyone has. But on her new full-length offering, in the space of 11 incredibly perceptive and intimate songs, she manages to tear down the pretence and bravado and expose the whole cavalcade of fame for what she sees it is: Melodrama.
It’s only natural that we’ve been slightly obsessed with Lorde’s arrival in the limelight. Now, though, we hear what
Ella thinks of Lorde’s arrival, what she has achieved, where she’s reached.
And it’s possibly best summed up in the final lines of the final song, Perfect Places: “All the nights spent off our faces, trying to find these perfect places. What the f--are perfect places, anyway?”
Fame isn’t perfection, regardless of the headlines, dollars and fan adulation. The teenage Lorde was happy to play at being royalty, but the 20-year-old has experienced its gleaming palaces and overflowing luxury and realised the artist and songwriter in her can’t simply dive in and lose herself to the hedonism.
Sure, the hedonism is right there, but Melodrama tends to concentrate on those severe flashes of reality that pepper unruly drunkenness. In Sober, “we pretend that we just don’t care, but we do care”, while Sober II (Melodrama) sees her “psycho high” but, ever the outsider, amazed “how fast the evening passes cleaning up the champagne glasses”.
In the outstanding Liability and its reprise as the penultimate track, these moments of clarity merge into anxiety as she ponders others’ comments that “she’s a little much for me” or “you’re not what you thought you were”.
And this is where Melodrama crosses into genius. Lorde’s injection of doubt into the idealisation of fame and fortune leaves gaps for honest break-up songs such as The Louvre, Writer in the Dark and Supercut and different voices (both actual in terms of singing voice and referential in terms of swapping easily between “I”, “we” and “you”) that draw the listener in to her storytelling and create a constant tension between Lorde the star and Ella the person, the Kiwi just like us.
Musically, it’s Lorde the artist, though, who wins through. Where the lyrics are underpinned by doubt, the “brand new sounds” she sings about to a backing of bouncing pianos on opener Green Light provide the perfect hangover cure.
From the clever industrial beats and smirking pop on Hard Feelings/Loveless and the simple piano of Liability to the dancefloor-friendly Supercut and the giant chart-topping Green Light and Perfect
Places, Melodrama is packed with stylistic gems. Her smart curation of an album topped and tailed by its big hits – with repeated song titles, a reprise that isn’t really a reprise and two tracks crashed together – just begs for repeated listens and hidden meanings.
Melodrama certainly marks Lorde’s arrival in superstardom – but by being both highly perceptive and exceptionally analytical of her role as a musician, it also is the basis for a new appreciation for her artistry.
MELODRAMA, Lorde (Universal)