The return of our Lorde
Apop royal walks among us again. Four years after she took the world by storm with her debut album “Pure Heroine,” Lorde is back on the scene with her brand-new single “Green Light” (released Thursday afternoon).
The New Zealander used Twitter to tease fans about the track earlier in the week, promising it would be “complex and funny and sad and joyous and it’ll make you DANCE.” She was right on all counts. “Green Light” sees the 20-year-old turning her lyrical introspection outward, into a moment of glorious, gospel-flecked dancepop. In an interview with Internet radio’s Beats 1, she tells Zane Lowe that the track was inspired by her first “heartbreak,” and the chorus features the telling line: “I’ll come get my things/But I can’t let go.” Though, instead of immersing herself in melancholy, Lorde has transformed the hurt into a moment of euphoria that’s already guaranteed to be one of 2017’s biggest hits.
It’s the first original track Lorde (real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor) has released since “Yellow Flicker Beat” in 2014 (which was part of the soundtrack for “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1”). It’s also the first song from her upcoming second album “Melodrama,” which has been produced and co-written by Bleachers singer and fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff.
Lorde has already promised, on Twitter, that “Green Light” is just “the first chapter of a story I’m gonna tell you, the story of the last 2 wild, fluorescent years of my life. This is where we begin.”
Buckle up, because it sounds like it’ll be quite a ride.