If you’re anything like us, you’ve had “Green Light” and “Liability” on constant rotation ever since they were dropped, going back and forth between dancing with reckless abandon to sobbing in a blanket burrito on your bed. Lorde’s music has always had a way of tugging at your heartstrings while making you bop your head and tap your foot along with the dreamy, dark hues of pop she exhibited on her debut album, Pure Heroine, in 2013 at the tender age of sixteen. Now, three-and-a-half years later, she’s back with an evolved sound that’s still reminiscent of your favourite jams off of the last record — only it’s grown up a little bit, right along with her. “There’s definitely moments on the record where it’s like, ‘oh, she really went there,’” she says in a new interview about the upcoming album “…I had to tell the truth so starkly to myself, and to my friends and people around me.”
The New Zealand-born musician teases that Melodrama focuses on her first ever heartbreak and the emotions that arose thereafter, opposed to Pure Heroine which detailed her life growing up in a small town.
These themes of breakup-induced melancholy are apparent in both “Liability” and “Green Light,” which illustrate two different emotional states after going through a split: debilitating self-doubt and shades of anger.
While chatting with Elvis Duran she delves further into the inspiration for Melodrama, stating, “…I went from being sixteen and being like, ‘ugh, I’m never gonna write about [heartbreak]. That’s lame!’ And then […] you go through it and it’s such a colourful, intense thing and I found myself changing as I came out of that, and […] all of a sudden, I was like, ‘oh, I’m a different person, it’s amazing!’ and I have to write about this crazy thing.”
The album is co-written by her dear friend and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff, who was seen back-to-back with Lorde while playing the piano during her heartfelt Saturday Night Live rendition of “Liability,” and she could not be more excited about her writing mate:
“Jack is the best.” She gushes. “He is one of the strangest people I have ever met in my life. He is so himself, which I love, and we just had the best time hanging out at his house.”
Melodrama is currently available for pre-order on iTunes, and the album is slated for a June 16th release.
