Lorde - Melodrama (2017)

"fallen fruit" is pretty good imo

Dancing with my girls, only having two drinks, then leaving
It's a funny thing, never thought you’d gain self control

i still find the lyrical position of this album like super obnoxious

"the path" and "solar power" resemble each other so much that it's like the album begins twice. "california" and "stoned" are the worst two songs on the record for me, the latter's "i've got nothing to say, and that's ok" attitude reflects poorly on the project

i also keep longing for any kind of textural variation in this record to give me a sense of, idk, flow, instead of what it does, which is mostly sunbathe in one spot. i even like some of the songs that are so soft they're on the verge of disappearance, "man with the axe" especially, but it's part of a suite of songs that are all super quiet and yearning

"mood ring" is actually a highlight in that context in that it suddenly reminds me of, oh yeah, nelly furtado's folklore, which i appreciate being reminded of. "oceanic feeling" strikes me as what more of this record should've sounded like, but even that's only remarkable for how loose the song structure is, getting sort of dubby and ambient at the end, but even this is like not really quite enough for me. i feel like if it just... stretched out a little further... it could almost do a john martyn "small hours" thing, but it doesn't. maybe that's the wrong angle to regard this album from, but idk, it's also stoned beach music

idk why i felt the need to weigh in on this record other than i felt like a hater and didn't want to be an uninformed hater

i still find the lyrical position of this album like super obnoxious

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson)

It's a flyspeck, but the POV shift in these lines annoys me.

there are a few good ideas on here but it's way too mellow overall and i wish it actually did anything with those ideas

like if the whole album had gone in on the balearic ambience of "oceanic feeling" instead of mostly forgettable very mellow 70s folk stuff it could have been great

Listening to the album now for the second time and while there are no particular stand out tracks (so far), it's got a pleasant vibe imo.

I had the weird comparison pop into my head that Lorde’s music career is hitting half of the plot beats from Mean Girls (“outsider” shows up, gets elevated to popularity, sheds the things that made them interesting in the first place and turns into the new iteration of the popular) and I can’t stop thinking about it

Yes it’s a stretch and falls apart on closer look, I know this already but I can’t stop giggling about the surface comparison

Are we sure she’s not being ironic with this? Solar Power seemed super-sarcastic to me.

she went out of her way to describe "mood ring" as satire

a lot of reviews are like "satire that resembles the real thing isn't satire," which is extremely untrue, but imo the writing isn't strong enough to make the satire function anyway

She's often hard to read, and while I often blame myself Lorde proves the exception. "Royals" still confounds me.

also the satire just sort of stops at "haha isn't this woo-woo new age healer ridiculous and caught in some kind of grief cycle that they're using nonsense to cope with." knowing that lorde is doing this doesn't improve the song for me and instead cuts off any emotional connection i could have with it xp

Brad OTM; it doesn't really matter if it's satire if it's also bad

I guess that’s true in terms of issuing a verdict on the album, I’m not postmodern enough to think it doesn’t matter at all.

a lot of reviews are like "satire that resembles the real thing isn't satire," which is extremely untrue, but imo the writing isn't strong enough to make the satire function anyway

i think it's more that she doesn't feel distant enough from what she's satirising in the first place, like her public persona is already hippie-ish enough that it'd be easy to believe she was getting super into new age wellness nonsense for real?

so y'all are saying it would be better if she leaned into it and was earnest about this goopery

absolutely not

Even if it’s ironic, going after instragramming goopers seems lazy. The world is a target-rich environment for satire and disdain, many of whom are way worse than hot girls.

Pandemic pop has really sucked.

my daughter reckons it's a fake-out and she's going to drop something deep and dark soon

glad the kids are keeping the secret second album conspiracies going

Even if it’s ironic, going after instagramming goopers seems lazy. The world is a target-rich environment for satire and disdain, many of whom are way worse than hot girls.

Yeah, she's satirizing something that really doesn't need satirizing, and doing it in a way that feels both heavy-handed and inadequate (she says it's an indictment of white people co-opting indigenous traditions, but the song barely touches on that.) I feel like this is Lorde's "57 Channels and Nothin' On." Like, oh no, I'm a rich person living in a bubble and I can't think of anything to write about, so here, let me "satirize" a bunch of tired pop culture shit that everyone already knows is dumb.

Also I keep getting stuck on the fact that mood rings are children's toys; is there some expensive Goop version of a mood ring that I don't know about?

What's confusing is that "Mood Ring" was clearly satirical, but the earlier two songs (which had the same sound/vibe/theme) didn't seem to be? Idk - I haven't listened to the rest of the album and probably won't.

there was an element of it to "solar power", just not as directly

oh no, I'm a rich person living in a bubble and I can't think of anything to write about

This is half of pop music now.

that's not really anything new either

there was an element of it to "solar power", just not as directly

― ufo, Friday, 20 August 2021 23:58 (yesterday) link

idk she intro’d it with… ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.
Her feet are bare at all times. She’s sexy, playful, feral, and free. She’s a modern girl in a deadstock bikini, in touch with her past and her future, vibrating at the highest level when summer comes around. Her skin is glowing, her lovers are many. I’m completely obsessed with her, and soon you will be too.
‘

yeah that just goes to show how muddled it is lol

the stuff that read to me that way in "solar power" was "i'm kinda like a prettier jesus" and the whole video

I thought the “prettier Jesus” thing was her paying tribute to a fan meme

just made my own Solar Power sequence:

Leader of a New Regime
The Path
Solar Power
Secrets from a Girl (Who's Seen It All)
California
Mood Ring
Fallen Fruit
Dominoes
Big Star
Stoned at the Nail Salon
The Man With The Axe
Oceanic Feeling

actually, I'd probably make "Stoned" a hidden track at the end of "Oceanic Feeling"

New EP in... maori !

Indeed, and this article about it is a must read

https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/09-09-2021/lorde-interview-maori-lyrics-solar-power/

and this one - https://www.thebigidea.nz/stories/tokenism-in-full-force-my-take-on-lordes-album

Lorde just told the crowd at the Anthem that she swam??? In the Potomac??? To get a feel for D.C???? The crowd is in SHAMBLES

— natalie escobar 🎷🐛 (@_NatalieEscobar) August 30, 2022

Possibly one of the wildest things I’ve heard of being said on a stage here.

LOL I love her pic.twitter.com/TtmpuQ2DaS

— Jimmy (@jimmyeppley) August 30, 2022

Maybe next time she wants to appreciate the local waterways, someone could take her around the Anacostia Community Boathouse.

lol

In between songs, the singer reminisced about the themes of each of her three albums, noting that Pure Heroine “was about not being a teenager,” Melodrama “was about a boy,” and Solar Power is “about the climate.”