Lorde celebrates her ‘Melodrama’
Singer’s second effort embraces drama of being a young woman
“It’s a really weird day to announce a tour.”
It’s the week before Lorde unveils her second album,
Melodrama (out Friday), and she just revealed that she’ll be playing a string of headlining shows internationally this fall. But the news is quickly eclipsed by former FBI director James Comey’s Senate hearing, which sends Twitter users into overdrive churning out hot takes and memes (some referencing the Kiwi singer).
“Everyone’s tweeting me like, ‘Are there tapes?’ (A play on Comey’s memorable “Lordy” remark.) I love it.”
Lorde, 20 (real name: Ella Yelich- O’Connor), is in the homestretch of a press tour that began in March with the release of first single Green Light, a bombastic heartbreak anthem. Although the song did not become the hit that many had anticipated, it boldly ushered in an even more emotionally candid era for the pop star.
“When you start making work when you’re a teenager, you wanna play it cool a lot of the time,” YelichO’Connor says. “A really important part of this record was throwing my cool away.” Her 2013 debut album, Pure
Heroine, was a staggering success for a then-16-year-old unknown. Selling more than 3 million copies, the album earned two Grammy Awards. But after more than a year of touring, Lorde decided to largely withdraw from public. She started writing Melodra
ma early last year in New York. Her hazy, heightened nights out at home are what ultimately informed the new music, which explores that awkward, often thrilling transition between being a teenager and twentysomething.
“Especially with young women, people are just like, ‘Oh, God, she’s so over-the-top about this! She’s so dramatic!’ ” Yelich- O’Connor says. “I felt like taking that and making it an empowering thing. Like, ‘Yeah, I’m (expletive) dramatic. Watch me make this crazy piece of art about it.’ ” Tracks like Sober and Home
made Dynamite capture those giddy, confusing first stages of falling in love, while vulnerable cuts such as Liability and Writer
in the Dark are about making peace with being alone.
Beyond the music itself, which she co-produced, Melodrama is undeniably the product of her very specific vision. When it came to making decisions, “I was definitely just as assertive as last time, if not more,” she says. “I feel like I’m the work’s mom. I have to be like, ‘Hey, come on, this is what is best for it.’ ”
Gratefully, “no one ever told me it had to sound a certain way or be a certain thing,” she continues. “And good, because it definitely wouldn’t have worked. I’m the kind of artist that’d be like, ‘Oh, you want that? I’m going to go away and give you what you definitely don’t want.’ I’d just be a brat about it.”