Lorde wants to save the climate by no longer having CDs produced, but by selling empty packages with download codes and photos from her new album “Solar Power”. It is the third album by the New Zealand musician. When the first came out eight years ago, David Bowie prophesied that it was the future of music. But now David Bowie is dead, and the 24-year-old can’t decide whether she wants to be Jesus or not. In the first single on the album, “Solar Power”, Lorde also stated that she was “a prettier Jesus”. She happily hopped around on the beach. As if any of us had seen a beach in the past two years. In the first song of the album, “The Path”, she now rejects any expectation of salvation: “Now if you’re looking for a savior, well that’s not me”. What now?
But sure, if she spends all her fucking time on the beach, how is she supposed to save us? Nice of you having fun on the beach, Lorde! At least we hear about her sad fate right at the beginning of the record: She was born in the year of “OxyContin”, “grew up in the tall grass” and since then – the poor! – a young millionaire plagued by nightmare flashes: “a Teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash”. In her free time, she steals forks for her mom. What is Lorde’s mother doing with stolen golden forks?
She shares the same producer as Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift, the inevitable Jack Antonoff
The use of drums to Lorde’s confession is impressive, but then unfortunately ends in an assembly line refrain. The sometimes unusual song structures don’t help either. There are also major arpeggios with confused effects, which are inevitable with producer and co-author Jack Antonoff. The whole album sounds a lot like Jack Antonoff’s last productions for Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift. Lorde insists it’s not because of Jack. But nobody believes her.
This is what the cover of “Solar Power” looks like. It is the third album by the New Zealand singer.
(Photo: Universal Music)
Lorde already worked with Antonoff on “Melodrama”, but he has evidently developed a synthesizer allergy and only produces bedroom pop albums. In the case of Del Rey’s “Norman Fucking Rockwell” it was a godsend, but Lana is the only one keeping this 4K twilight folk excited by building a California dreamscape in it. With all the others – unfortunately this also applies to Lorde’s surf version of it – you just fall asleep. And if you manage to stay awake, you worry about your brain because every song wipes out the previous one in your memory.
(But maybe Lorde is right, and Jack Antonoff is not at all to blame for all of the Jack Antonoff albums. Techno phase is. And just can’t live it. Then he would be the first pop victim of matriarchy. Who knows. It would be possible!)
Cool, Lorde thinks of child labor when sunbathing!
the Vogue interviewed Lorde in her 73-question format, which issue is most important to her today. She replied, “Things that affect New Zealanders, I’m thinking of child poverty, improving the Māori protection systems and our climate legislation.” To which the interviewer replies, “Yeah, that’s really cool,” as if she had named her favorite nail polish. But his seemingly inappropriate answer also contains a deeper truth: Cool, Lorde thinks of child labor when sunbathing!
This is what their new music feels like too. As if it could only be made by people who are rich and beautiful, who hang out in the most beautiful places in the world and who do not have to deal with material worries or well-founded existential fears. Saturated, especially the apparently modest, reserved elements.
The dry acoustic guitar is now something like the Steve Jobs wheelchair of the female pop star. Just as internet billionaires are showing with a normcore outfit how high they are on the social ladder – to the point that they are allowed to go below any clothing standard at any time – the streaming millionaire demonstrates with minimalist arrangements that she has long been above the struggle for attention is. One way or another, their albums end up at the top, even if half an hour in the massage chair is more exciting than their toothless.
Like Billie Eilish, Lorde sings about growing up in showbiz, in the luxury bubble. She knows her way around.
(Photo: Ophelia Mikkelson Jones)
Now you could see this as a great opportunity to smuggle the most bizarre ideas into the top ten. In fact, this happens selectively. Also on “Solar Power”. In the coda of “Fallen Fruit” a rare keyboard garland, feedback noises and evaporated guitar loops wrap around each other. Even the sun salutation to the latently creepy psychedelic of the sixties “The Man with the Ax” exudes a hazy charm in some moments. But unfortunately these ideas are robbed of all barbs and rawness. The dry guitar does not ground the chart hit hanging in the consensus sky. But the clarified noble production transforms the driest guitar into an exclusive exhibit. A readymade that stands around as decoration in any Soho house. A “music box” without a sound carrier in it.
Like Billie Eilish, Lorde sings clarified about growing up in showbiz, in the luxury bubble. Lorde is a bit older, “Solar Power” is their third album already, and the style is different, but it is noticeable that both avoid classic hit qualities to a large extent. Billie is now on musicals and polished chansons, and Lorde has made a strangely evenly rippling sunshine album.
Well, artists keep developing. You also have to get involved with what may be foreign to you at first. But at Lorde you get the impression that with increasing success she got tangled up in her productions and lost sight of her musical strengths. There are only a few who remain really interesting in a long, very successful career as an artist. Most of them drift, at least if they are not catapulted directly to the top like Billie Eilish, first into the smoothness that can be streamed away and then, after financial success, into comfortable quality music.
If the sun really does show Lorde the way, then we hope it doesn’t lead there. If she does, she still has the beach. Capri, friends, Capri.