Why Lorde’s New Album ‘Solar Power’ Flopped… And Why That’s Okay
Lorde performing at Lollapalooza in 2014 | Creative Commons Image.
(REVIEW) When Lorde’s new song Solar Power dropped on June 11. The initial reaction was horror.
This isn’t what we were trained for.
While there are some fans who will worship anything Lorde makes, especially a track featuring Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, it simply didn’t land for most fans.
A viral TikTok later that week claimed Solar Power sounded like background music for a women’s shaving commercial. Brutal.
The pop star had huge expectations placed on this album from her audience of 20-somethings, for whom Pure Heroin and Melodrama were the soundtrack of their youths.
Since the full Solar Power album was released last Monday, we have the complete scope of what Lorde has done. Our angsty 16-year-old who wrote Royals has since grown up and created an album that introduces a dreamy world where the sun is our savior and simply listening is an act of self-care.
Solar Power is unarguably happier than previous music Lorde has created, but to reduce it to just another pop album wouldn’t be fair. These 12 tracks have been intentionally placed together to tell a narrative about healing, growth and getting older.
My favorite track Stoned at the Nail Salon, which was released before the full album, makes it clear that Lorde knew exactly what she was doing and even anticipated that fans would need to warm up to the shift in tone. The line, “Cause all the music you loved at sixteen, you'll grow out of” shows self-awareness towards her audience. She knows that many of her fans loved her music in their adolescence, and as she grows up with them, this album displays a lot of peace and perspective she’s found.
This mentality is a complete 180 from most songs off Melodrama that were a lullaby of Gen Z feelings of isolation and loneliness. Liability, as fans have noted, has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The last line, “You’re all gonna watch me disappear into the sun” is exactly what she does thematically throughout Solar Power and visually in the album art.
Musically, the album follows the theme of the sun as a form of divinity. The songs feel light hearted with their carefree choruses. At times the music and lyrics align to feel like bubbles and sparkles or the gates of heaven. Yet, lyrically, much of the album tackles lost love, the inherent privilege and power of men and what it means to grow up. At many points, there’s tension between the lightheartedness of melody and the heaviness of lyrics.
Still, why isn’t it sad enough for Lorde’s fans?
The album itself collectively acts as a commentary on growing up, specifically how age makes feelings less intense. In Lorde’s previous albums from her teens, her music marinated in a type of sadness that comes from firsts: heartbreak, betrayal, feeling like a burden. Solar Power feels more mature. It can recognize that heartbreak hurts but that romantic love is not more important than self-love. It identifies again and again the sun as this savior, capable of healing us and sending us on a better path. So, while this album doesn’t rip our hearts out in the same way her previous albums have, it seems happier while still emotionally saturated.
The utopia Lorde creates that is full of soft rays of sunlight and honey-like oceans is perfect for a light-hearted summer. Perhaps the reason it hasn’t been received with welcoming arms is because of the particularly uncertain world it was released into.
The album ends in what can be considered a six-minute meditation on the ocean with an emphasis on breathing. It points one final time to the healing the sun brings as it guides listeners out of Lorde’s utopia and back into their real lives, refreshed.