The return of Lorde
After a four-year break, she’s back with a new track
Solar Power The 24-year-old New Zealand songbird’s lead single off her new album, Solar Power, sees her frolicking in a yellow dress on a beach in the music video.
Upon the release of the album’s title track she told fans in an email, “Her feet are bare at all times. She’s sexy, playful, feral and free. She’s a modern girl in a deadstock bikini, in touch with her past and her future, vibrating at the highest level when summer comes around. Her skin is glowing, her lovers are many. I’m completely obsessed with her, and soon you will be too.”
Singers such as Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, as well as others from New Zealand, contribute backing vocals. It’s the first time Lorde (real name Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor) has added other voices on a track of hers.
Celebration Her third album is a “celebration of the natural world and an attempt at immortalising the deep, transcendent feelings I have when I’m outdoors”.
She revealed that her best friend, Ophelia Mikkelson Jones, took the cover photo of her running in a bikini in a spontaneous moment of joy on the beach. The album – which Lorde describes as “happy, playful music” – is due out on 20 August and she can’t wait for fans to hear it. “I want this album to be your summer companion, the one you pump on the drive to the beach. The one that lingers on your skin like a tan as the months get cooler again.”
The Antonoff influence She’s teamed up once again with acclaimed US producer Jack Antonoff, who co-wrote and co-produced her last album. “He came over to work in the studio in Auckland and I went to Los Angeles,” she told fans last year. “It flowed and a thing started to take shape. Then the world shut down and we FaceTimed.” Solar Power marks a sonic departure from 2017’s largely breakup album, Melodrama, and her debut, Pure Heroine, which dealt with the angst and ecstasies of being a teenager. Jack has worked with the likes of Taylor Swift and was behind Lana Del Rey’s Grammy-nominated album, Norman F*****g Rockwell!.
Solar Power’s album cover is a candid photo of Lorde on the beach.