LAVA/Republic RecordsIt turns out that Lorde’s new album, Melodrama, due in June, is a concept album…kind of.
Speaking to the New York Times, Lorde says she decided that the songs on Melodrama should tell the story of a house party, so she could string together different moods and emotions and have them all fit together somehow.
“With a party, there’s that moment where a great song comes on and you’re ecstatic,” she tells the Times. “And then there’s that moment later on where you’re alone in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, you don’t think you look good, and you start feeling horrible.”
Lorde also says that while the album was partially inspired by her 2015 breakup with her longtime boyfriend, Melodrama isn’t “a breakup album.” “It’s a record about being alone,” she explains. “The good parts and the bad parts.”
The album’s first single, “Green Light,” is a lot more pop-oriented than Lorde’s previous work, and she tells the Times that, in fact, pop music is something she worships.
“I have such reverence for the form,” she explains. “A lot of musicians think they can do pop, and the ones who don’t succeed are the ones who don’t have the reverence — who think it’s just a dumb version of other music. You need to be awe-struck.”
She cites Katy Perry‘s 2010 #1 hit “Teenage Dream” as an example of a perfect pop song. “When I put that song on, I’m as moved as I am by anything by David Bowie, by Fleetwood Mac, by Neil Young. It lets you feel something you didn’t know you needed to feel,” she explains. “There’s something holy about it.”
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