I do think it complicates this other narrative being pushed in pop right now, that going out is the worst (see: Alessia Cara’s “Here”). Myles: That’s actually one of the things that I like the most. Myles, how much did Lorde’s narrative "house party" concept influence your hearing of Melodrama? When you’re wrapped up in the best night of your life, every detail feels wildly important, even if it’s of no significance to anyone but you. Lorde captures the self-importance of first love so well: “They’ll hang us in the Louvre,” goes one song. Whether or not Melodrama is actually huge in the “real world” feels irrelevant, because within the universe Lorde creates and inhabits on this record, the songs and lyrics are already classic. The pop music algorithm tells us people want playlists, but I think people actually want stories.
Discussing the alt-pop influences on Witness, she said, “I’m going to stop making a playlist and just be the playlist.” The comment struck me as cynical and calculated, basically admitting her album is a curation of interesting sounds with little to bind them Melodrama, by contrast, weaves a compelling narrative. Not to bring up Katy Perry again, because I sincerely hate to pit women in pop against one another, but something she said in a New York Times profile this week has really burrowed into my mind. I think Melodrama taps into experiences that a lot of people have in common she did, after all, test it out by listening on her phone on the subway.Īimee, do you think this album will expand her audience?Īimee Cliff: I don’t think Melodrama is the sound of Lorde trying to expand her audience, but I also think that it will. Melodrama thrives on that messiness, from the carefree, wasted confidence of “Homemade Dynamite,” to the “The Louvre,” on which a biting call-and-answer pre-chorus flips between feelings of self-doubt and giddy romance. It takes me right back to the years I spent in my late teens and early 20s trying to figure out who I was - by getting blackout drunk all the time. Melodrama dives headfirst into the realities of growing up, the emotional ups and downs of young adulthood.
Pure Heroine wore its heart on its sleeve, capturing the minutiae of teenage life, knowing full well that it couldn’t stay that way forever (“It feels so scary, getting old,” went “Ribs”). Owen Myers: In a music world where this month’s other big pop album has clunky lyrics like “ Marylin Monroe in a monster truck,” I’ll take Ella Yelich O’Connor’s unabashed sincerity any day.
Owen, how do you think Melodrama advances the stories Lorde started telling on Pure Heroine? Now, though, we’ve got Kate Bush-like wails on “Writer in the Dark,” second single “Liability” has the folksy unease of mid-career Bright Eyes, and the guitar outro of “The Lourve” sounds like Disintegration-era The Cure, or maybe something by The Cranberries.īut, like Myles said, these still feel like Lorde songs, thanks to some of her not-so-subtle trademark touches: wordy pre-choruses, dynamic tomfoolery, sentimental poetry. You can hear the patchwork of Lorde’s influences more clearly than on her debut, which was maybe too forward-thinking to be at all nostalgic. Overall, Melodrama feels like a map of a freshly expanded universe, one drawn by a music nerd with a bevy of new resources and collaborators at her disposal. I love that it’s such an opener that nearly a cappella first verse would likely empty a dancefloor in the middle of a set, but it works great here, as an introduction. I was a huge fan of “Green Light” off the bat. McDermott: To my ear, the sound of Melodrama is a remarkable upgrade. Patrick, what are your thoughts about how the tweaks she’s made to her sound on this album?