'You're The Only Friend I Need': In Praise of (The) Lorde
Image Credit: Krists Luhaers via Wikimedia
Pure Heroine scored my early adolescence. Melodrama mapped out my late teens. Solar Power carried me through COVID. And Virgin? Well, we’ll get to that.
Lorde (real name: Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor) is something of a singularity in today’s pop landscape, defined by her intense focus on interiority, raw emotion, and what it means to be young. While tracks like ‘Perfect Places’ revel in the euphoric rush of modern youth, the soft synths of ‘Ribs’ remind us of the fragility of those early years: time spent balancing a yearning for discovery and an incessant pull towards destruction. Nothing makes me feel so grateful to be 20, yet so quietly terrified to turn 30, like her music.
Lorde was launched into the spotlight by her first EP (The Love Club) and its now ubiquitous single ‘Royals’. Her debut album, Pure Heroine, was released that same year, when Lorde was just 16. Nothing is more humbling than the thought of her writing the soul-crushing ‘Ribs’ at the age when I was revising for my GCSEs. An exercise in anthem-making, Pure Heroine captures the angst and anxiety of a restless generation finally coming into focus.
Her stunning debut was followed by an album that superseded the expectations of even Lorde’s most devoted fans: Melodrama. If Pure Heroine distils the ennui of suburban teenagedom, Melodrama stands as a monument to those years spent standing on the precipice of adulthood. Saturated in neon, Lorde’s sophomore album cemented her place in pop history. Haven’t we all screamed the lyrics of ‘Greenlight’ at an after-party, only to be brought back to earth by the emotional cataclysm that is ‘Writer in the Dark’? There are some albums that hold a special place in our psyche, melodies that carve themselves into our consciousness, and for me, that’s Melodrama.
Lorde took a sharp left-turn into hippiedom with her pandemic-era album Solar Power. I’ll admit, I didn’t understand it upon first listen. The transition to psychedelic acoustics was pretty radical, but it’s not like Lorde didn’t warn us (‘You're all gonna watch me disappear into the sun’ she portends in ‘Liability’). I first viewed Solar Power as one of those records an artist needs to make - an interlude in their oeuvre intended for experimentation and reinvention, paving the way to greatness rather than being great itself. Perhaps this interpretation was something of a dismissal. Deep cuts like ‘Oceanic Feeling’ hold as much, if not more, capacity for intense introspection as their edgier predecessors. Lorde’s sonic sunlight, while warm, is revealing - exposing hidden currents of emotional despondency and self-renewal.
This brings us to her latest release: 2025’s Virgin. ‘What Was That’, the album’s lead single, was a true return to form. Although I’ve come to appreciate Solar Power, I certainly welcomed the return of the ‘old’ Lorde. Strangely, Virgin seems to speak to me more than any of her other albums. ‘Favourite Daughter’ feels searingly authentic in its exploration of parental pressure; ‘Broken Glass’ remains excruciating in its examination of a shattered self-image; ‘David’s radical assertion of self-ownership reignites Lorde’s emotional interchange with her listener.
The Ultrasound Tour, which I caught during its London leg, brought Lorde’s entire artistic history into sharp relief. Behind the lasers, lights, and kinetic spectacle lay an understanding of just how much her music matters - both to the artist and to her listeners. Her work chapters what it means to be young in the 21st century. Each album chronicles a distinct phase of modern adolescence, giving me flashes of my future and glimpses of my past in equal measure.
Lorde isn’t just an artist; she’s an oracle, tracing the contours of our lives before we’ve even had the chance to live them.