If you were expecting “Solar Power” to be a climate anthem, you’ll be disappointed. Lorde’s first song in four years, a gently intoxicating track anchored by acoustic guitar and bongo drums, is instead an ode to the summer, and the bright, new state of mind that even the smallest pinch of sunshine can bring.
The track, the release of which coincided with the solar eclipse, is all the things we’ve come to expect from the New Zealand singer – catchy, playful, seemingly both ultra-specific and universal – along with a softer, more carefree attitude than we’ve heard from the artist before. On Pure Heroine, the debut album released when she was just 16, Ella Yelich-O’Connor (to use her real name) sang of a “new art form, showing people how little we care”, but this was a forced carelessness, one in which it was still essential that she “looks alright in the pictures”. On her second record Melodrama, a masterful examination of young womanhood, Lorde lent into just how much she cared, about past relationships, about grief, about working out the kind of person she wanted to be.
Content from our partners
