By Holly Haldane

Four years after her sophomore album, Melodrama, and nearly a decade after her original debut, Pure Heroine, New Zealand born singer-songwriter Lorde returned with her 2021 album Solar Power, a beachy record filled with introspection and light. On the surface, this album holds no similarities to the two that came before it and although some of the same themes are present – fear of the future and heartbreak – Lorde approaches them through a much more optimistic lens this time around, creating the perfect introspective record fit for springtime.

Lorde opens the album with ‘The Path’, a sunny, satirical track that details her experience with teenage fame. The singer criticises the modern obsession with idolising celebrities and calls out their bizarre nature. The chorus continues to poke fun at celebrity culture, as she sings “Now if you’re looking for a saviour, that’s not me / You need someone to take your pain for you? / Well, that’s not me”, she makes fun of the language used by young people on social media and the obsession with treating stars as God-like figures. Lorde satirises this obsession further in the title track in which she playfully states “I’m kinda like a prettier Jesus” and continues to point out the absurdity of celebrity culture throughout the record.  

The album also has plenty of moments of self-reflection and growth, found most abundantly in ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’, the most introspective track on the record, which is perfectly summarised in its opening line, “Got a wishbone drying on the windowsill in my kitchen / Just in case I wake up and realise I’ve chosen wrong”. The track perfectly encapsulates being in your early twenties, it is filled with longing for the past and simultaneous hope for the future. As the song wraps up, Lorde advises her listeners to “Spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you”, tugging on the heartstrings of everyone who hears it. This song feels exactly like springtime, it is a time of change and while things get lighter, nothing remains the same – it is the standout track on Solar Power.

Another fan favourite on the record is the nostalgic ‘Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen it All)’, during which, Lorde advises her younger self and her listeners as she talks them through their first heartbreaks and dealing with growing up, repeating “Everybody wants the best for you / But you gotta want it for yourself”. It is a bright track and is a response to her much loved 2013 track ‘Ribs’ which detailed her teenage fears of getting older. Lorde told Spotify that in making the track she “took two of the chords from [Ribs] and reversed them”. The outro is spoken by Swedish popstar Robyn, an artist Lorde admires, and is the perfect ending to the track, as she tells listeners “You’ll be fine”, something all of us need to hear at some point, it is a track that is once again only made better in times of change and sounds best in the sunshine.

Solar Power is a wildly misunderstood record, one that received an unnecessarily harsh critical reception despite being, in my opinion, the singer’s most personal one yet. Lorde opens up to listeners on her experiences with celebrity and tells them stories of her loves, while still being a guiding voice in times of struggle. If you haven’t yet listened to the album, now is the perfect time… let Solar Power change your life this springtime!