Apparently there’s a new trend afoot where post-00s “icons” steal titles from bona fide 00s icons. For, on the heels of Lizzo and Cardi B releasing the rather terrible single, “Rumors” (a.k.a. a song and song title that will forever be associated with Lindsay Lohan), Lorde has now decided to make her third single from Solar Power “Mood Ring.” Better known as: a ditty that Britney Spears already made her own last year when she released the deluxe edition of Glory (because, evidently, rather than releasing new albums, she would prefer to just keep “fine-tuning” this one so as not to give her father more of her money). Not to be confused with the Lorde track, “Glory and Gore.”
It would be one thing, of course, if Lorde’s “Mood Ring” was actually decent, but, at best, it’s subpar (though, at the very least, more listenable than Lizzo and Cardi B’s “Rumors”—which doesn’t really say too much). Co-directed by Lorde and Joel Kefali, the video opens with the faux profound title card, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” Well, that comes slightly after the camera pans down from an oculus-type center in the “edifice” that reiterates Lorde’s whole “solar power” motif for this record. We then see Lorde amid her harem with long blonde hair that looks like a wig and maybe (/hopefully) is. Referencing her new couleur in the lyrics, she remarks, “Can’t seem to fix my mood/Today it’s as dark as my roots/If I, if I ever let them grow out.” Which she might want to because, as Michele said to Romy, “You look so good with blond hair and black roots it’s like not even funny.” Even though that doesn’t seem like it would be the case for Lorde. But one digresses.
Subsequently, Lorde and her “goddess circle”—all coordinated in minty green pastels—sit, lounge or generally frolic about for the majority of the video. Almost as though acknowledging she’s ripped off an 00s legend (otherwise the lyrics feels like something of a non sequitur), Lorde demands early on in the song, “Don’t you think the early 2000s seem so far away?” Uh, not really. Especially considering that not only is Bennifer back together, but the U.S. is also still scrambling to deal with the Taliban. So maybe Lorde ought to check her perspective. Especially since she clearly thinks Britney remains relevant enough to borrow from (and her “later work,” to boot).
But Britney isn’t the only icon being kifed from here—there’s also oodles of Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers vibes to capitalize on the “wellness” trend that seems to think incorporating “witchiness” is now part of the “brand.” Hence, Lorde burning sage and fucking with some crystals. Oh, and there’s a small ice bath the “goddesses” can dip their hands and feet into as well. For someone who claims she likes New York more than L.A., Lorde would certainly fit in far more with her hippie-dippy bullshit in the latter town. “Ironic” or not.
The sardonic tone regarding “wellness” that seems to be trending more than “wellness” itself “manifests” further when Lorde chants, “You can burn sage, and I’ll cleanse the crystals/We can get high, but only if the wind blows.” Lorde addresses the notion that all of these “acolytes” who do their best to adhere to the “tenets” of whatever “guru” they’re following still tend to feel just as hollow as before—if not more so because they were expecting to at least find some “spiritual meaning” on the “journey” they paid out the ass for. Hence, the nihilism of the lines, “I can’t feel a thing/I keep looking at my mood ring/Tell me how I’m feeling/Floating away, floating away.”
To that end, Lorde also assures sarcastically, “I’m tryna get well from the inside/Plants and celebrity news, all the vitamins I consume,” rounding it out with a coup de grâce kind of shade about white Westerners’ grafting “Eastern things” when she urges, “Let’s fly somewhere Eastern, they’ll have what I need.”
As though calling out to her Jack Antonoff sistren, Lana Del Rey (herself synthetically “ethereal” and “witchy”), she adds, “All the sad girls sing/We’ll keep dancing ’til the mood rings.” Even in the face of all this “cleverness,” the “message song” intent of this single is no competition for Britney laying it down with, “My love is a mood ring/Up and down emotions, all these mood swings.” Its matchlessness is further solidified with Mustard’s complementing beat that actually makes you feel something (you would be hard-pressed to avoid dancing at some point during the three minutes and forty-eight seconds… unless, of course, you’re as pulseless as Lorde at this “wellness” center). In contrast, Lorde’s “Mood Ring” is designed to make you “feel,” essentially, “not smart” if you “don’t get” her tone. Ah, but we get it. And it still doesn’t move one.
At the end of the song, Lorde mimics the sentiments of anyone without celebrity vacationing clout this year (as though she actually knows the plight) by demanding, “Take me to some kinda—take me to some kinda place (anywhere).” Even if that just happens to be via the astral projection a paying customer is supposed to learn about at the “wellness” center. And god (or whoever) knows Britney learned how to do that shit long ago in order to escape the clutches of her own prison. Never losing enough touch with her highly reactive Sagittarian (Lorde, a Scorpio, instead mentions “Pluto in Scorpio”) emotions to not set the mood ring off for the Britney Army to interpret.
