Two Critics Examine Lorde’s Powerful Second LP, Melodrama

A few days after performing at Bonnaroo 2017, Lorde released her second album, Melodrama. The 21-year-old New Zealand-born multiplatinum pop star (born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor) co-produced the record with Jack Antonoff, who releases his own music under the name Bleachers but is known even more for his work with artists like Taylor Swift. Both the lyrical dissection of the complexities of relationships and the understated, danceable production on Melodrama have resonated with a massive audience since the record’s release. Among the fans are Ashley Spurgeon and Seth Graves, two longtime Scene contributors with a deep affinity for pop music and pop culture. In advance of Lorde’s stop at Bridgestone Arena on Sunday, we asked them to explore some of their favorite tracks from the album.

Spurgeon’s Picks

“Green Light”

There’s a piano hook that kicks in around a minute into “Green Light” that, the very first time I heard it, instantly took me back to my junior high days, listening to ’90s club hits on 102.5 The Party. “Green Light” is not a throwback track à la Bruno Mars — the lyrics and music are both far too weird. But it is a breakup banger, a “fuck you” you can dance to. 

“The Louvre”

The fact that Lorde can sing the word “lover” with a straight face is pretty funny, but then, “The Louvre” is a pretty funny song. A relationship — even a quick, sexy summer one — can be a work of art, worthy of museum walls. But it’s not going to hang in the highly trafficked parts of the museum that tourists ask about — it’s no “Mona Lisa.” But who cares? Still the Louvre!

“Writer in the Dark”

The record is called Melodrama, so maybe it’s no surprise when “Writer in the Dark” posits that a writerly love can be so strong, someone should probably call the police. There are shadow aspects of creativity — wit is just a stone’s throw away from sarcastic cruelty, and passion is close to obsession. The phrase “rue the day” is used unironically. It’s Lorde at her Kate Bush-iest, and it’s one of the best tracks on the album.  

“Perfect Places”

“Perfect Places” are not literal places, but rather the mental state you can jump into with the right combination of parties, dancing, booze and drugs. This is another banger from someone familiar enough with Thomas More to know that Utopias — capital-P Perfect Places — don’t really exist. But it never feels didactic, and like all the greatest party songs, it is best listened to at night. 

Graves’ Picks

“Homemade Dynamite”

There’s a strange tinge of nostalgia to Lorde’s second LP, particularly on the subject of partying. The singer is barely old enough to drink legally, but she’s much older than the woman who made her 2013 debut Pure Heroine. She recalls a time when going out was a freeing and novel adventure. Her casual allusion to a potential drunk-driving accident — “We’ll end up painted on the road / Red and chrome / All the broken glass sparkling” — neatly sums up a youthful sense of invincibility that gets old quickly.

“Sober”

This cut has new relevance for me, as I’ve recently adjusted from full-time freelancing to a 9-to-5 lifestyle. Lorde sings about the carefree, uninhibited “king and queen of the weekend,” but immediately and repeatedly asks, “What will we do when we’re sober?” It sounds like running commentary on the best Tinder date ever, but with the full understanding that momentary pleasures can sour quickly: “I know this story by heart / Jack and Jill got fucked up and possessive.”

“Supercut”

I spent a lot of my time with this record crying, since its release coincided with a breakup. This song is one of the record’s more upbeat bangers (and even nudged some worthy cuts from Paramore’s After Laughter out of the top spot on my summer-jam list), but it’s still a tear-jerker. The young songwriter describes the heavily edited sizzle reel that everyone makes in their mind after a relationship is over — only to drop the reminder that “it’s just a supercut of us,” with a lot of scenes missing.

“Hard Feelings/Loveless”

This one stings on a couple of levels: Post-breakup, “Hard Feelings” was lyrically too on-point to tolerate at times (“When you’ve outgrown a lover / The whole world knows but you” — ouch!) and there’s also an extended synth solo that sounds like a washing machine being dragged across a wet basement floor. Around five minutes in, the song transforms into the infectious fragment “Loveless,” which builds up the undertones of anger across the album into a vengeful mantra that should make so-called men’s rights activists shiver in their socks and sandals.