Emerging from the escapism of friends’ house parties as a way to avoid by night the pains of heartbreak, Lorde’s (Ella Yelich O’Connor) vivid sophomore album Melodrama stands as a testament to everything that 2017 was – neon, illuminous, almost delirious in its obsession with the nightlife.
It’s a farewell to the teenage years; part tribute to being alone, part frenzied obsession with new love. The album opens with Green Light, a song that sounds almost joyful in its telling of Lorde’s frustration with being unable to move on from her first real heartbreak.Warbled synths build anticipation into one of the most screamable choruses on the record, about how she’s “…waiting for it / that green light, [she] want[s] it.” She can’t move on with her life until “the light turns green,” until she is able to distance herself enough from her ex to feel like he isn’t dictating her emotions anymore.
Alongside moments like these, listeners can find tracks where silence is utilized to draw their attention to a key line, one of producer Jack Antonoff’s signature moves. Melodrama was the project that put Jack Antonoff on the map as a “real” producer, and The Louvre demonstrates exactly why. The track opens with a moody but clean guitar while dreamy, ethereal vocals wave behind the one-line hook of the song, “Broadcast the boom-boom-boom and make ‘em all dance to it.” The intensity with which she demands the listener’s attention be held by her heartbeat (which is what she’s referring to when she says boom-boom-boom) gives the song an air of desperation, that she needs this new love to work out, that she needs him to understand why she is the way she is. It closes with the same guitar line under a steel guitar riff fading out that feels like a montage of the best moments of a new love – breathtaking, hurried, the colors smeared together in wonder.
The strength of this album lies in its ability to be self aware and encompass both sides of the tragedy of love lost without being overly philosophical. By not taking herself so seriously, Lorde doesn’t risk losing her audience to ruminations on the “big questions of life” that youth in their late teen years tend to face. She stays true to where she is in life – and during that time, it looked a lot like partying and flirting around with the guys she knew. It also looked like healing, a large part of which being looking inward and noticing the way heartbreak has affected you. Hard Feelings/Loveless and Liability showcase O’Connor’s recognition that it takes two to crash and burn, as she sings about making her ex loathe her on one and her own insecurities about being “too much” for anyone to love her on the other.
Between drugged-up weekends and supercuts playing in the mind’s eye, Melodrama is a body of work that stands the test of time, and it only gets more relatable as one nears the end of their teenage years. This album is an homage to what it feels like to grow up – the feelings of melancholy at the end of parties and the adrenaline rush of newfound freedom.
