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| Photo cred: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/ lorde/melodrama/buy/ |
Since I was on a mission throughout 2013 and most of 2014, I missed the sudden, wave-making arrival of Lorde onto the music scene back in 2013. Which also meant I was oblivious to its tectonically impactful lead single "Royals," which catapulted this naught-but-16-year-old girl into the stratosphere of pop stardom before any one could even blink. "Royals" was still so popular once my mission ended, about a year and a half after the single's release, that I very quickly got exposed to the song and its accompanying album Pure Heroine. I thought it wasn't a bad song, for a teenage pop up-and-comer, but it didn't captivate me by any means or make me want to check her album out. So, to be frank, until this album dropped, I never gave Pure Heroine or Lorde the time of day. And as three years proceeded to pass without a word from Lorde, I just subconsciously assumed she was another pop one-hit wonder.
But all that changed with the release of this new album, Melodrama. Out of seemingly nowhere, Lorde has come out of the shadows and released what I think is the best pop album of the year, and one of the most emotionally salient pop albums in recent memory. Where Pure Heroine was Lorde's hollow-sounding framework, showing her potential as a songwriter, Melodrama fills in the empty spaces with color and emotion and just plain good songwriting.
The best example of this may be the single "Liability." We find Lorde alone at a piano in a dark room, writing in a diary via keys and voice about lovers current and past. And it feels almost intrusive that we are here, too--watching and listening and peeking over her shoulder at this diary and all its intimate details. We watch as she confesses her insecurities and her deep, passionate emotions of love and regret towards a boy and towards herself most of all. Heartbreakingly, she concludes by agreeing with her emotionally aloof lovers: that it's always her fault when passion dies--she just isn't good enough.
With this song and other album stand-outs--"Writer in the Dark," "The Louvre," and "Supercut"--Lorde exhibits a rare gift to distill these complex, yet relatable emotional experiences not just into concise, smart lyrics, but also into immediate pop gems. The album, throughout its tracklist, recalls the best musical moment of artists with this same gift, like Adele, Whitney Houston, or even Alanis Morissette.
Now, of course, it isn't a perfect album or a masterpiece or anything. Lorde still succumbs to pop cliches, like on "Green Light," which begins promisingly enough with these same confessional lyrics and piano balladry mentioned earlier. But then the song just kind of stumbles into a dance pop, let-me-see-your-hands, singalong chorus that feels awkward and like she just didn't know what else to do after the verses. This same, safe kind of songwriting pops up on songs like "Homemade Dynamite" and "Hard Feelings/Loveless." Still, even if these songs aren't as bold and breathtaking as others on the album, they're still enjoyable enough pop pieces.
Lorde has definitely proven she has something special to say and a gift for saying it. As she continues to take risks and be bold like this, Lorde is quickly and impressively cementing her place among the pop greats, and away from the depressing one-hit wonder status that was previously threatening her. It will definitely be interesting to see if she can continue to produce solid material like this.
| OVERALL SCORE: 9.0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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