After 5 years of “Solar Power”, Let's Finally Put Some Respect On Lorde's Name
Written by: Sophie Maloney
“Pure Heroine" is the pregame. Lorde’s debut album is for a chilly fall night, putting on eyeshadow while sipping on boxed wine cause it’s all you could get your hands on. Maybe you’re in a college dorm room, while “400 Lux” trills on a record player you don’t have room for. Or you're in the back of a car with friends while "Ribs" blasts on the radio, with the uncomfortable awareness that this won't last forever, but learning to make peace with that.
“Melodrama”, her sophomore album, is what follows that pregame. The late spring night at the club, where you scream “Green Light” with your friends, swearing off love forever because what has it ever really given you? It’s the less glamorous walk home, stumbling down a road you walk on everyday, but feels more foreign than it ever has as “Liability” quietly hums in your wired earbuds.
"Solar Power” by Lorde is the next day. That sobering Sunday (and maybe Lorde’s newest album “Virgin” is the mid-week crisis but I digress). However, “Solar Power” isn’t the hangxiety that follows, it’s the perspective that comes with distance. When “Solar Power" released in August of 2021 to mixed reviews, with even the most dedicated Lorde fans absolutely living by it or being absolutely indifferent to it, the album unfortunately has a lackluster legacy. It was a real shame because “Solar Power” isn’t boring. No it’s not the angsty teenage poet of “Pure Heroine” or the heartbroken party girl of “Melodrama”, but rather to quote the title track she’s a “prettier Jesus”: wisdom beyond her years behind all the charisma of a beloved pop star.
By only looking at the cover, there’s a playfulness about “Solar Power”. While there are many thoughtful revelations that take place in the songs about facing hard truths of self, the cover also features Lorde in a revealing bathing suit bottom, taken from a low angle, immediately showing it’s not taking itself too seriously. The visuals are sundrenched sepia, and warm yellows that capture everything you’d expect in an album called “Solar Power”. It’s a sharp departure from the visual world of “Melodrama”: looking through New York City in a dark blue lens. From a visual standpoint, the seven (!) music videos feature Lorde exploring the same island, with different aspects at the focal point, some focusing more on the island’s natural beauty, while others featuring Lorde’s loyal disciples who live on the island. Most notably in “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen it All)", Lorde is dressed as her younger selves in her previous two albums, and they all dance harmoniously together on a beach, creating a balance between past, present, and future selves. The “Solar Power” era also gave fans a video series of live performances with Lorde and long time collaborator Jack Antonoff from a plant covered New York City Rooftop in July. The breezy vibe of the videos between the two of them is so disarming. In “Dominoes", they laugh together as they sing about someone who now smokes weed even though they used to “do the most cocaine out of anyone”. It feels so intimate without losing the understated and carefree energy of the album. It’s very reminiscent of the millennial optimism era (think Buzzfeed, hipster fashion, and stomp-and-holler music) people nowadays are longing for a revival of. Here, Lorde and Antonoff accomplish the same home-made energy and bubbly sentiments of that time without even attempting to prey on nostalgia. “Solar Power”’s release was able to channel an effortless, earnest, fun that proves there’s something about the album that feels like coming home.
Despite its more calming and bright visuals, “Solar Power” discussed a lot of darker themes that come with settling into one’s adulthood. Lorde, now 24 at the release of the album instead of a teenager like in her previous releases, had advice to offer on tracks like “Secrets of a Girl (Who’s Seen it All)” for her younger self, but also new fears she had not yet come across. For example, in “The Path” Lorde is less charmed by her life of fame, and feels uneasiness at going to events like The Met Gala where “supermodels all dancing round a pharaoh's tomb”. Where other iterations of Lorde may have joined them, the luster had worn off, and echoes Lorde’s real life disappearance from the eyes of the media in the time while she was writing the album. Songs like “Mood Ring” and “Stoned at the Nail Salon” have deceptively whimsical titles that instead question why Lorde’s life feels empty and pointless. However all hope is not lost, as Lorde tells the listener “all the music they loved at 16 you’ll grow out of” not to scare them about the passage of time but as a reminder that change doesn’t mean losing oneself, but rather transforming into a more evolved version, as she says in the song “all the times they have changed it’ll all come around”, showing you never really lose an old version of yourself, it just shows up in different ways. The album “Solar Power” is a symbol of this change for Lorde herself. So many fans and critics pointed out the album didn't feel very "Lorde", but when looking at it more closely it’s the most self-examining she had ever been up to this point. It's a continuation of all the themes she has explored in the past but with a more complex understanding of them.
While “Solar Power" isn't a love at first sight album, it grows with you the more you listen to it, and after five years, it’s definitely been enough time to give it another chance. So go outside and soak up the last bits of sunshine of the year with this album whether it’s in a park, or on the beach, or taking the long way on a walk, and even after all of that if “Solar Power” still isn’t your thing, there’s no bad blood. She’s that unbothered girl who’s okay with not being liked by everyone. To quote the final song off the deluxe album "Hold No Grudge", she’s “sending you love…wishing you well, wherever you are”.
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