FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Lorde - Melodrama
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FROM next week…
I will return to usual business with Vinyl Corner; featuring general albums that I think people need to buy on vinyl. This time around, I am continuing my run of albums that are among the best of the decade. I would urge people to get Lorde’s Melodrama on vinyl, as it sounds terrific and would make a great post-Christmas gift! Many are waiting for her third album, but that has been delayed due to the death of her dog, Pearl. Lorde’s Melodrama has been named as one of the best albums of this decade by various sources and, aside from some weird stories speculating as to how old Lorde really is, it has been a fairly quiet year for the New Zealand-born songwriter. Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, was well-received and was noted because of Lorde’s brilliant delivery and phrasing; her strong and memorable songwriting in addition to something genuinely fresh and exciting. Whilst a lot of people associate this decade’s best with artists like Lana Del Rey, I think Lorde is an artist who has made a big impact. I am not sure when her new album is due, but it will be among the most anticipated of next year – unless she needs to delay it further. I think there are some great and innovative Pop artists out there, but many of them are generic and have very little personality. One reason why Lorde’s music connected with people from the off is because the music is personal; she is a songwriter who does not copy everyone else and, when her age is not being called into question, there is a lot of interest as to her story and inspirations.
Pure Heroine was a promising debut, but I don’t think it was Lorde in full flight. Maybe she was still finding her feet; Melodrama is a huge step forward and, rightly, it is considered one of this decade’s most remarkable works. The album fuses Pop and Electro-Pop; there is the intimacy of piano with the rush of heavy beats and electronic swathes. Whilst there are a few producers in the mix – including Lana Del Rey’s collaborator, Jack Antonoff -, Lorde co-writes every song and ensured her voice was not lost. I like the fact she has a team that gave new skin to each song, but it is Lorde’s imagination, songwriting ability and incredible voice that it is the biggest asset. Melodrama was recorded following Lorde’s break-up with her long-time boyfriend James Lowe in 2015. Released in June 2017, Melodrama is a sort-of concept album that investigates loneliness and uses a house party as the scene; a single night where she goes through a variety of moods and situations. Melodrama sounds more accomplished and worldly than Pure Heroine. Lorde spent a lot of time in the U.S. and New Zealand whilst writing the album, and she spent a lot of time away from the spotlight – there were periods of writer’s block and inactivity; none of which shows in a very fluid and filler-free album. It is clear Lorde was struggling with the break-up and wrestling with myriad emotions and questions. Lorde stated in interviews how Melodrama is more than a single break-up: instead, it is about loneliness and the negatives and positives that come with that state.
Unlike a lot of Pop albums, Lorde digs into art and theatre; there is an aspect of Greek tragedy in many numbers. Lorde faced her first big break-up and moved out of her parents’ home; she was isolated in her own house and, with Antonoff’s assistance, wrote an album that beautifully reveals all her emotions and struggles at the time. Not only was Lorde inspired by her own experiences but, apparently, she was compelled by strangers’ conversations and certain phrases; this gave her work a sense of the conversational and provided some wonderful lines. In terms of musical inspiration, Lorde cites Prince, Don Henley; Tom Petty, Joni Mitchell and David Bowie as important. The vocals on Melodrama are especially impressive. In terms of other artists, Lorde has cited Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson and Sinéad O'Connor as inspirations. I do think a lot of artists suffer because their voices are one-dimensional and do not expand that easily. It is hard, because of that, to convey that many emotions or give albums different contours. Lorde’s vocals on Melodrama range hugely, which makes the album so compelling and gives the young artist different personas – from the composed and mature young woman to someone losing control. Looking back at the reviews Melodrama received, it was clear Lorde had truly broken through and created one of this decade’s best albums. Here is NME’s glowing take:
“With its pounding piano house sound, ‘Green Light’ brought back sounds not heard in pop music for years. It’s indicative of the album as a whole only in its determination to be bold and different. ‘The Louvre’ updates Phil Spector’s girl group formula as it imagines Lorde and her partner hanging in The Louvre (“in the back, but who cares, still The Louvre”), ‘Liability’ is a hymnal ballad reminiscent of Mercury Rev’s ‘Deserter’s Songs’ and the string-drenched ‘Sober II (Melodrama)’ is like something from a musical, albeit describing a desolate scene of champagne flute-strewn carnage. And there’s that voice of a generation thing in play again, always framing experience through a modern lens, like in ‘Supercut’, in which a relationship plays out in condensed highlights, like a YouTube clip.
It’s a rudely excellent album, introspective without ever being indulgent, OTT in all the right ways, honest and brave, full of brilliant songs with lyrics to chew over for months. The message might be that Lorde considers herself wild and flawed and bruised (“I’ll love you till you call the cops on me,” she sings, on the deliciously bitter ‘Writer In The Dark’), but we all do sometimes. That’s the neatest trick the album pulls off – universal connection, in spite of the squad and the praise and the superstardom and the pressure. Humanity intact. Artistry assured. Brilliance confirmed”.
One would be hard pressed to find an album that isn’t fully positive and adoring. AllMusic were keen to have their say on a truly remarkable album from an artist who had come quite a long way from her debut:
“Melodrama, arriving nearly four long years after her 2013 debut, picks up the thread left hanging on Pure Heroine, presenting Lorde as a young woman, not a sullen teenager. Tonally and thematically, it's a considerable shift from Pure Heroine, and Melodrama feels different musically too, thanks in part to Lorde's decision to collaborate with Jack Antonoff, the leader of Fun. and Bleachers who has been nearly omnipresent in 2010s pop/rock. Antonoff's steely signatures -- a reliance on retro synths, a sheen so glassy it glares -- are all over the place on Melodrama but Lorde is unquestionably the auteur of the album, not just because the songs tease at autobiography but because of how it builds upon Pure Heroine.
Lorde retains her bookish brooding, but Melodrama isn't monochromatic. "Green Light" opens the proceedings with a genuine sense of exuberance and it's an emotion she returns to often, sometimes reveling in its joy, sometimes adding an undercurrent of melancholy. Sadness bubbles to the surface on occasion, as it does on the stark "Liability," and so does Lorde's penchant for blunt literalism -- "Writer in the Dark," where our narrator sings "bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark," thereby suggesting all of her songs are some kind of autobiography -- but these traits don't occupy the heart of the album. Instead, Lorde is embracing all the possibilities the world has to offer but then retreating to the confines of home, so she can process everything she's experienced. This balance between discovery and reflection gives Melodrama a tension, but the addition of genuine, giddy pleasure -- evident on the neon pulse of "Homemade Dynamite" and "Supercut" -- isn't merely a progression for Lorde, it's what gives the album multiple dimensions”.
I think Melodrama is an enormously powerful record and would have inspired so many artists coming through. Rather than conform to expectation and do what other artists of her age are doing, Lorde created something different and evolved in Melodrama. It is a stunning album that pushed Pop forward and confirmed her as a star. NPR ran an interesting article that explored Lorde as this century’s author of adolescent evolution:
“It's that teenage rebel streak at play. But it proves that for Lorde, now past the age of adolescence, working outside the norm is part of her creative practice and not just a facet of her age. When Lorde broke in 2013, her sound was singular on the radio and her voice like nothing else in music. Since then, a flood of teens have taken over the airwaves carrying souvenirs of Lorde's spirit: Alessia Cara's moody R&B hit "Here" mimicked Lorde's above-it-all attitude; Khalid's debut American Teen similarly chronicles the trials of high school; Billie Eilish spits out confident dark pop that might not have been taken seriously before a different 16-year-old spurned candy-coated, puppy love pop.
It was no easy feat for Lorde to deliver on her sophomore album after shifting the paradigm of popular music so strongly on her first try. Not only did she deliver, she reminded us that adolescence doesn't set the high-water mark for all-consuming emotion. It may be period in our lives when it's easiest to cede control from our heads to our hearts, but there will be many moments after our teenage years end when our brains betray us, when our physiology follows orders from the wrong organ. Lorde's ability to tell these stories at her young age speaks less to her as an unprecedented figure and more to the fact that we have been ignoring young voices for far too long.
Wisdom and youth are not inherently opposite: Calling Lorde an old soul, as many writers have, denies her the potential to stand as an avatar for not only her generation, but for all young people with opinions and experiences that speak precisely to their age. Deciding that teenagers with a hard-earned understanding of the present reality must be "old souls" underestimates their intelligence and innate potential for complex thought. It ignores the consequences of rearing a generation on technology that allows them an unparalleled ability to be social, but also to be informed about and exposed to the tragedies and joys of the world, perhaps maturing them past a point seen in previous generations of teens.
So no, Lorde is not an old soul. She's a young woman of the 21st century”.
I really love Melodrama, and I think it is one of the strongest albums of the past ten years. I wonder when Lorde will give us a third album but, seeing as a four-year break from her debut to Melodrama resulted in a masterpiece, one can wait until 2020 at the least for a new record – that would only be a three-year break. It is clear things have changed in her life since her 2017 release – not only the death of her dog; Lorde has risen to new heights and is a global star -, so I wonder what themes will be addressed on a future album. It will be exciting to find out and, as we look forward to 2020, a new album from one of music’s finest talents will be…
A definite boost.