Berlin (dpa) – After four years, the New Zealand singer Lorde is back with the new album “Solar Power”.
After the energetic and passionate album “Melodrama” in 2017, the 24-year-old presents her third album, which was released on Friday (August 20), full of energetic summer feelings.
The twelve lyrics in “Solar Power” are about natural forces, summer energies, but also about self-discovery – real life. In the virtual world, on the other hand, especially in social media, it is rare. “I didn’t know if I wanted to be a TikTok girl or an Instagram Stories girl, and it was a real crossroads,” she said in an interview with Apple Music.
The coronavirus affected the production of the album. «I was in New Zealand and my colleague was in New York. We’d only facetimed for about six months. (…) We had a little break, but it wasn’t too crazy, ”said Lorde on Monday evening in an interview with dpa and other media.
The sunny single “Solar Power” was released in June. It is accompanied by a dominant acoustic guitar. The song is a hymn to summer – even though it is deep winter in Lorde’s home country New Zealand. “The album is a celebration of the natural world, an attempt to perpetuate the deep, transcendent feelings that I have when I’m outside,” said the Grammy winner in an interview with Apple Music. “I hate winter, I can’t stand the cold, I tend to cancel all plans,” the 24-year-old begins the song with these words.
In an almost cyclical rhythm, Lorde reports to her fans with a new album. She has long been able to keep up with the big names Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey. They just recently delivered new albums. Now the New Zealander is following after a long break. Lorde, who is actually called Ella Yelich-O’Connor, rose to fame in 2013 with her first album “Pure Heroine”. The single “Royals” was number one on the charts in several countries. After the follow-up album “Melodrama” (2017), Lorde had largely withdrawn from the public.
While “Pure Heroine” and “Melodrama” were about parties and identities in teenage and young adult life, the comeback album “Solar Power” is about a big, paradisiacal party with nature and summer. The video for the single of the same name is also suitable, in which Lorde dances in an airy yellow outfit on a tropical, idyllic beach bay. Nevertheless, the singer-songwriter remains true to herself and doubts the sense of growing up in other songs on the new album.
“Well, my hot blood has burned for so many summers now. It’s time to cool it down, wherever that leads, ”the singer sings at the beginning of the song“ Stoned at the Nail Salon ”. It is a calm but intense ballad that, like «Solar Power», is accompanied by a folk influence. She questions getting older. «In times of heartbreak, sadness, deep love or confusion, I look for answers in the natural world. I’ve learned to breathe out and adjust to it. That’s what came through, ”said the singer-songwriter in an interview with Apple Music. This year’s album, like her last album “Melodrama”, was created in collaboration with the music producer Jack Antonoff.
The picture on the plate already attracted attention: Lorde can be seen from a frog’s perspective as she skips lightly over a camera. On Twitter, the photo was transformed into many memes, i.e. funny edits of the picture, within hours. The singer will come to Germany in the summer of 2022. Her “Solar Power” tour in June will take her to Munich, Cologne and Berlin, among other places.