With its dreamy, drugged out opening, “The Path,” Lorde makes it clear that she is on a very Lana Del Rey path (paved in part by Jack Antonoff for both)—in terms of paying homage to the music made in late 60s/early 70s-era Laurel Canyon. But Lorde was not born in the years of “pure” drugs like LSD and marijuana (speaking of, she has fittingly dubbed this her “weed album), instead making immediate mention of being “born in the year of OxyContin” (1996). As such, her Gen Z state of disaffectedness was pretty much sealed. Yet it’s clear that Solar Power is meant to be a celebration of life, specifically the purest part of it: nature. Which is almost cruelly ironic being that it’s in its most decimated state yet of late.
With her hippie-dippy mama aura, she talks of retreating from the “camera flash” while “having nightmares” as a “teen millionaire”—as though she endured anything like Britney—for the sanctuary of New Zealand (yeah, yeah…keep flaunting your country’s superiority and inaccessibility [unless you’re a rich person building a bunker]). It seems, in any case, as though Billie Eilish might want to give her a call. In fact, long before Eilish in her shapeless (a.k.a. sexless) attire, it was Lorde covering her body, commenting of that period in her life, “I didn’t want people to be talking about what my body looked like. I was a kid. And I really wasn’t ‘in’ my body. As a teenager, you kind of wear your body like an outfit that doesn’t fit yet.” She seems perfectly comfortable now as a result. What she isn’t comfortable with, however, is being viewed as some kind of god (as so many famous people are thanks to their stans). Or perhaps worse, a role model. And Britney was ahead of the game on announcing publicly on multiple occasions that she did not want to be seen as one. It’s too much pressure, and one is inevitably doomed to fail. Thus, Lorde lays it all out with, “Now if you’re looking for a savior, well that’s not me/You need someone to take your pain for you?/Well, that’s not me/‘Cause we’re all broken and sad/Where arе the dreams that we had?”
While Miley might be addressing a soon-to-be ex-boyfriend on Plastic Hearts’ “Never Be Me” when she sings, “But if you’re looking for stable, that’ll never be me/If you’re looking for faithful, that’ll never be me/If you’re looking for someone to be all that you need/That’ll never be me,” it still cuts to the core of what Lorde is saying as well. Lorde also offers the power of the sun (because solar power) in the suggestion, “Let’s hope the sun will show us the path.” Surely, it will—if that path is to total environmental destruction due to overheating the planet. So it is that we’re led into the first and eponymous single from the record, with Lorde getting slightly livelier as she assures, “Forget all of thе tears that you’ve cried/It’s ovеr (over, over, over, over)/It’s a new state of mind/Are you coming, my baby?” Probably not, as that sentiment is nothing more than some The White Lotus yarn. As the “ahhhh-ing” chants in the background allude to the wellness and California vibes she’s soon to deride on “Mood Ring” and, what else, “California,” respectively, we’re meant to feel the same reverence for nature and simplicity that Lorde does. And sure, she evokes her fair share of, “This would be great to walk outdoors to” moments, but there’s an overall disingenuousness to the songs of the record. Like Lorde telling fans not to worship her because she’s a celebrity and then turning around and saying, “I’m kind of like a prettier Jesus.” And so, it’s as though without the growing pains of youth or the first loss of a great love, Lorde is as rudderless as New Zealand (just out there alone bopping around in the ocean) in terms of finding material to inspire her.
Speaking of, the last thing the ASCAP music catalogue needed was another song called “California”—indeed, Chvrches’ forthcoming record, Screen Violence, will also have a song named as such. Oh, and let us not forget Del Rey also came out with a track titled that for 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell. The point is, it’s been well-played. Even non-homages to the state like Grimes’ own “California.” And then, of course, there is one of the most iconic and beloved Golden State anthems of all: 2Pac and Dr. Dre’s “California Love.” A phrase Lorde uses to throw back in its face as she recites her repurposed chorus, “Don’t want that California love.” Apparently, it’s not “real” enough or her. Because paradisiacal settings in New Zealand are.
Using a Quentin Tarantino turn of phrase, she commences, “Once upon a time in Hollywood/When Carole called my name…” This refers to the moment when Carole King (the only California-based songwriter of the hippie-dippy era Lorde and Lana bow down to as much as Joni) presented her with the Grammy award for Record of the Year for “Royals.” Of this moment, she recalls. “I stood up, the room exploded, and I knew that’s it/I’ll never be the same.” Once again reminding people of the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” Because while everyone wants the money and the artistic recognition that comes with an Establishment-backed career in Art, they never consider the automatic Faustian pact that comes with it. Some find it worth it (like Madonna), others aren’t so sure anymore if it was worth the tradeoff (but just strip them of their riches and see how they really feel).
The Weeknd, too, has explored this “shirking fame” concept through the lens of also shirking L.A. Incidentally, he’s sort of roundaboutly alluded to when Lorde mentions the cast on her arm in “The Path.” The one she sported at the 2016 Met Gala where The Weeknd performed. On After Hours’ “Snowchild,” The Weeknd, too, explores that tired concept of L.A. being hollow, the source of all pain, etc. Therefore, he notes, “For that money, I was fiending/Cali was the mission, but now a nigga leaving…/Twenty mill mansion, never lived in it/Zero edge pool, never dipped in it/Superstar neighbor in my business/Paparazzi tryna catch me slippin’ and goin’ on tour is my vacation.” Madonna also addressed this “fame monster” idea on the slightly more originally titled “Hollywood” in 2003. Coincidentally, she didn’t hate the town (or state) enough to not buy The Weeknd’s Hidden Hills “never lived in” mansion earlier this year. One that M seems to never be living in either due to her unfortunate loyalty to New York. Even though her current boyfriend is from CA’s capital.
In any event, Lorde’s “account” of California as a synecdoche for all things vain, frivolous and leading one into false temptation doesn’t really fit in with other iconic musical offerings regarding the state. This even includes the aforementioned LDR song. As she announces that California is “just a dream/Said it’s just a dream/I wanna wake up, I wanna wake up,” we can only hope she doesn’t end up lonely in her nightmare (like Duran Duran said) in New Zealand. Because it would probably be a bad look for her to trash her own bubble of an island as opposed to the adopted bubble of L.A.—everyone’s favorite punching bag for criticizing the very things that make them/are still coveted the world over. And yet, Lorde will be concluding the U.S. leg of her Solar Power Tour in Santa Barbara, following stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles—leading one to imagine how this song might be received in these venues.
Her wavering and quavering vocals continue on “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” ironically a California-themed phenomenon if ever there was one (bish, you sure you really want to leave?). Getting more existential, Lorde discusses another Billie Eilish favorite of a topic, “aging” and mortality. Once again acknowledging the notion of her “divorced” a.k.a. compartmentalized life—spending one part of it working as a “celebrity” in the U.S. and the other completely remote and sequestered from the trappings of fame in NZ—Lorde croons, “Spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you/‘Cause all the times they will change, it’ll all come around.” Meaning the pendulum will once again shift to her having to tour and promote and constantly be “on” instead of chilling out on the beach as is the wont of her other persona. The “Ella” one, not the Lorde one. Trying not to sound so self-serious, she adds “disclaimer” language to write herself off if necessary, including, “Whatever that means” and “I don’t know/Maybe I’m just stone at the nail salon.” Yeah, maybe.
But, for most, you have to be high to get through this life, especially with the realities that can’t be ignored. Namely, climate change—or, more accurately, our daily augmenting climate dystopia. This is lamentingly explored on the album’s most impactful track, “Fallen Fruit.” Acknowledging the generational contentions that have become more pronounced, particularly the hostilities toward the baby boomers who rode high on the crest of a capitalism apex thanks to their plundering of the Earth. Accordingly, Lorde refers to them when she says, “To the ones who came before us/All the golden ones who were lifted on a wing/We had no idea the dreams we had were far too big/Far too big.” This could refer to the baby boomers’ “big dreams” of their endless red meat and potatoes TV dinners in a suburban sprawl setting coming to an end, as well as to Gen Z, who can’t really dream of too much with their knowledge that the future is fucked.
The notion of “fallen fruit” pertaining to both dying and the saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is a deliberate double entendre. For there can be no generation farther from the baby boomers than Z, not just in their mentality and worldview, but in the fact that they will not get any of those riches that boomers already freely plundered. Almost mocking everything the generation represented with their hippie culture (despite also grafting that sound for this album), Lorde sings sweetly, “And we will walk together (we will walk)/Psychedelic garlands in our hair/Through the halls of splendor where the apple trees all grew/You’ll leave us dancing on the fallen fruit.” It’s a haunting image to envision, and Lorde takes that evocativeness to the next level with the lyrics, “From the Nissan, to the Phantom, to the plane/We’ll disappear in the cover of the rain (ah ah ah)/Took the great minds and the vapers/And a pocketful of seed/It’s time for us to leave (ah ah).” Well shit, move over Olivia Rodrigo—there’s a new chilling bridge in town.
The bittersweet twist about Lorde’s album showing such love for the environment is that she, like anyone not in denial, knows it is dying. And will soon turn against us all rather than being a source of comfort for much longer. Thus, she asks, “How can I love what I know I’m going to lose?” Well, we do it all the time in loving any living thing at all. In an interview with The Guardian, however, she wanted to make it clear she was no Greta Thunberg, a fellow “spokeswoman for a generation.” Indeed, the sentence she spouted as though it could be another one of her sardonic lyrics was: “I’m not a climate activist, I’m a pop star. I stoke the fire of a giant machine, spitting out emissions as I go. There is a lot I don’t know.” She’s also stated of the supposed “climate change theme” of the album title, “It definitely wasn’t a goal of mine to make people care; I can’t make that happen for you.”
But she certainly seems to have all the answers if “Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen It All)” is any indication. Speaking at the beginning of the song as her “current self,” she describes, “Dancing with my girls, only having two drinks, then leaving/It’s a funny thing, thought you’d never gain self-control.” Not like in the past, the place where it’s easy for “Future Lorde” to see from her current vantage point, “Guess it’s been a while since you last said sorry/Crying in the dark at your best friend’s party/You’ve had enough, gotta turn the lights up, go home.”
Making further mention of the period in her life that launched her, Lorde remarks, “Couldn’t wait to turn fifteen/Then you blink and it’s been ten years.” Of course, the fifteen-year-old Lorde still living her life in an alternate universe would never be able to see that. Nor would she believe “Future Lorde” when she promises, “‘Member what you thought was grief before you got the call?/Babe, you’re gonna wince, gonna feel the pain fighting/You’re gonna love again, so just try staying open/And when the time comes, you’ll fall.” But then, what does she know? These are just secrets from a girl who’s seen it all.
Robyn speaking the outro is what really gives the song its edge as she wields flight attendant lingo to ease the “Young Lorde” into her new adult life as she serenely declares, “Welcome to Sadness. The temperature is unbearable until you face it. Thank you for flying with Strange Airlines, I will be your tour guide today. Your emotional baggage can be picked up at carousel number two. Please be careful, so it doesn’t fall on to someone you love. When we’ve reached your final destination, I will leave you to it. You’ll be fine. I’m just gonna show you in, and, um, you can stay as long as you need to get familiar with the feeling. And then when you’re ready, I’ll be outside, and…we can go look at the sunrise by euphoria, mixed with existential vertigo. Cool.”
Getting Del Rey-level Electra complex-y on “The Man with the Axe,” many believe the love letter of a song is meant for Justin Warren, the forty-one-year-old American promotions director for Universal Music in New Zealand. It would account for the required love of music needed to impress Lorde, hence the cringeworthy line, “But you, with your tall slashes, your infinite t-shirts/I should’ve known when your favorite record was the same as my father’s.” With their age difference, to boot, it’s rather clear Lorde has some form of Daddy issues, or maybe she’s just “being European” in New Zealand. Or, more accurately, “L.A.” (rife as it is with plastic surgery blondes hanging on the arms of Hugh Hefner types)—the very place she feels above. Until this man with the axe cuts her down and she falls back to Earth. The “falling” part meant as a metaphor for, what else, falling in love.
Having written this at twenty-two, she admits, “I thought I was a genius, but now I’m twenty-two/And it’s startin’ to feel like all I know how to do is/Put on a suit and take it away.” She seems to allude once more to a certain disdain for the music she wrote in the time of Pure Heroine, remarking, “With my fist full of tunes that it’s painful to play”—unless she’s talking about being too shy and embarrassed to share a love song like this. Perhaps that’s why she comes at us with the “meaner” “Dominoes” afterward.
Interestingly, the constant motif of mocking “wellness,” “The Age of Aquarius” and all that jazz seems like more undercutting shade at the baby boomer set who acted as the lotus eaters that led to this entire environmental debacle. It’s present once again on “Dominoes” (yes, Nicki Minaj also has a song called that), which addresses the trope of “that guy” who graduated from the party, coke-addled lifestyle to the “hippie zen” of weed and meditation. In some ways, it’s like the hippie who turned yippie (a hippie that became a yuppie). Think Jerry Rubin, who was a major activist alongside Abbie Hoffman in the 1960s before making millions at the end of the late 70s after investing in Apple. Money changed his perspective quite quickly as he noted, “…wealth creation is the real American revolution. What we need is an infusion of capital into the depressed areas of our country.”
Lorde spotlights this concept of the man allowed to constantly “start over” and “reinvent” himself without anyone questioning it. She opens the song with the same accusatory tone on “Green Light” as she says, “I heard that you were doing yoga with Uma Thurman’s mother.” That would be Nena von Schlebrügge, the managing director of Tibet House US. The idea that Lorde could make many listeners do a double take about that reference emphasizes her current stance on celebrity, and how we’re all so swept up in it that we forget famous ilk have other people and causes in their lives that might actually be more worthwhile than fame. Or it’s just to accent what a phony baloney this dude is.
Bringing Mr. Start Again’s hypocrisy into its most glaring light yet, Lorde reminds, “I know/Know a girl who knows another girl/Who knows the woman that you hurt/It’s strange to see you smoking marijuana/You used to do the most cocaine of anyone I’d ever met.” In short, he’s a poseur who will take on any identity of the moment that allows him to stay “powerful” as a man in the culture. Elsewhere, she chides, “You get fifty gleaming chances in a row I watch you flick thеm down like dominoes/Must feel good being Mr. Start Again.” And yes, in truth, we have watched men in popular culture (whether real ones or fictional ones, like Don Draper) gleefully throw their chances down the toilette in the name of seeking some ephemeral pleasure instead.
While some would automatically assume “Big Star” is about a lover, it is actually an homage to Lorde’s now deceased canine, Pearl. The very creature who prompted this record’s production to stall so Lorde could properly grieve. Of the song’s title, Lorde explained, “…my dog was like a celebrity to me. I saw him and I felt that feeling that people feel probably looking at their child or they look at someone they really adore and look up to.” Here, again, she comes across as someone who would fit in perfectly among the pet-worshipping Los Angeles set.
Like most people, she recognizes that her dog is a large part of her cachet as she admits, “Everyone knows that you’re too good for me, don’t they?/I’m a cheater, I lie and I’m shy but you like to say hello to total strangers.” Wielding the symbol of the sun toward the bent of death/a light going out, she concedes, “But every perfect summer’s gotta say goodnight/Now I watch you run through the amber light.” The amber tone of Pearl’s fur now gone gently into that good light. Even so, “I wanna take your picture till I die,” she bemoans—the irony being that Pearl died before her.
Continuing the constant presence of the solar motif, “Leader of a New Regime”—a sort of interlude—provides some of the most striking imagery apart from “Fallen Fruit” as Lorde commences the song with the lines, “Wearing SPF 3000 for the ultraviolet rays/Made it to the island on the last of the outbound planes.” With the painting of this portrait, we get a flash of the rich making a beeline for their private jets to get to the one place where the broke asses will never make it: that’s right, New Zealand. She adds, “Got a trunk full of Simone and Céline, and of course my magazines/I’m gonna live out my days/Won’t somebody, anybody, be the leader of a new regime?” Although she’s trying to sound somewhat “activist” in these lines, she comes across merely as a privileged girl whose fate won’t really be affected either way. After all, she has her Céline attire, her Nina Simone records and the presumable fashion magazines telling her of all the things she should and can keep buying. Still, she notes with a blasé tone, “Free the keepers of the burnt-out scene/Another day lost and paranoia reigns supreme/We need the leader of a new regime.” But, to be honest, people in Lorde’s echelon would not really want to see that new regime, for it would entail every last one of them falling prey to the sentiment, “Eat the rich.”
Arguably the most condescending of all, “Mood Ring” doesn’t quite strike the snarky tone necessary to make it outshine Britney Spears’ earnest, without irony “Mood Ring.” And it’s also annoying that Lorde thinks this song has an 00s sound when, no, it doesn’t. More vexing still is when she asks, “Don’t you think the early 2000s seem far away?” Taking into account how much that era’s pop culture and politics are bleeding into our present-day lives, one would tend to say: not really.
The finale to the standard edition of Solar Power is “Oceanic Feeling”—her most oozing-with-New Zealand-pride number yet. Indeed, the country might owe her either a great debt or vice versa for the sudden influx of people that try to move to NZ after hearing all about how idyllic and utopian it is on this record. You know, when there’s not a mass shooting to ruin that dreamlike haze. Showing off her Daddy’s girl aura once more, she murmurs, “When I hit that water/When it holds me I think about my father/Doin’ the same thing/When he was a boy.” But, for the most part, the song is an expression of gratitude for Nature, a sonic offering to the gods so that perhaps they’ll leave the Earth undamaged and unchanged for just a little while longer.
Amplifying the “sacrificial” tone of the song, Lorde concludes it with a totally different intonation (in unison with Marlon Williams), describing, “On the beach I’m buildin’ a pyre (used the wood brought in by the tide)/I know you’ll show me how/I’ll know when it’s time to take off my robes and step into the choir.” A metaphor that highlights a not so subtle nod to the idea that one day, maybe sooner than we think, Lorde will fade entirely from the limelight that music has provided.
As part of a way to motivate people to buy her eco-friendly “music box”—an environmentally viable alternative to the conventional CD, “Helen of Troy” kicks off the bonus track edition of Solar Power, and leaves the listener wondering why she wouldn’t include it on the standard version of the album. Riffing on “Let’s Hear It For the Boy,” Lorde instead suggests, “Let’s hear it for the girls/Living in the modern world.” She also advises her listeners to be kinder to themselves instead of so self-hating when she urges, “So when you’re broke and get ahead/Or when you take it out on your boyfriend/I know it’s hard but do your best/Give yourself a break, have a little faith.” Another element of the song appears to showcase her approach to remaining “relevant” in the music industry as she states confidently, “My little thing is keeping ’em keen/And they could be drinking with you, but they’ll be looking at me/This whole time I’ve been playing it coy/The city’s falling for me, just like I’m Helen of Troy.” Or Ella of New Zealand.
Almost like a negation of what was said on Melodrama, the final bonus track, “Hold No Grudge,” offers Lorde at her most “chill ex-girlfriend” tier. Seeming to make reference to how the world has turned all the more upside down post-pandemic, she sings, “No I don’t keep a list, can’t hold a grudge/Don’t you think that we both might have done some growing up?/Yeah, I know that some shit was said and done/But it’s such a different world now, I can’t hate anyone.” Some fuckin’ Scorpio she turned out to be. And, speaking of that, she also delivers the Blink 182-inspired insight, “Acting my age, not my horoscope/Guess it’s growing up/Now I’m sending you love and wishing you well/Wherever you are.” Hopefully not New Zealand, because that would really fuck up Lorde’s Walden-like sanctuary.
And, speaking of, Henry David Thoreau might have revolutionized the concept of self-reliance and transcendentalism in the aforementioned seminal work, but Lorde has brought his manifesto into the twenty-first century for a new generation to more easily digest. Like Thoreau, she has two warring sides within her: the one that pushes her to be part of “civilization” through celebrity culture and the one that urges her to run as far and as fast as she can from it. As E. B. White said of Thoreau’s retreat into the woods, “Henry went forth to battle when he took to the woods, and Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives—the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.” For Lorde, setting the world straight is at its most efficacious when she’s “out there,” “using her platform” as a celebrity. And yet, like the clerk in Bartleby, the Scrivener, she would prefer not to.
