Lorde Talks Melodrama Album Details, “First Major Heartbreak” in New Interview
To coincide with the release of Lorde‘s new song and video “Green Light,” an interview with the pop star was aired by Zane Lowe on his Beats 1 show on Apple Music today. It was Lorde’s first interview about the track and her upcoming album Melodrama. (The highly anticipated follow-up to her 2013 debut Pure Heroine is out this summer.) In the interview, Lorde revealed the meaning behind “Green Light,” talked about co-writing and co-producing the new LP with Jack Antonoff, her new music being influenced by “all the gross moments, all the great moments” of early adulthood, and more. Listen to the interview below, and read excerpts, courtesy of Apple Music.
On the feeling of finally releasing a new song:
For me it’s been a couple years since I’ve put anything out and really at least a couple years that I just dropped off the radar. And for me it was kind of about processing what I want to say next and I knew it just couldn’t be any old thing. It had to be really special and really singular and it couldn’t sound the same as the old stuff and there was a lot of discovery that went on. And then wrote the song and I was like “oh shit, this is it”. This was kinda the first thing that we really… all of a sudden everything else we’d written for the record started to make sense. What a feeling, what a bloody feeling. It was amazing. The production of that one starts to inform the rest of them and it all sort of comes together.
On working with Jack Antonoff:
So I ended up basically doing the entire record with Jack Antonoff of Fun, Bleachers, an amazing songwriter and just an amazing person. We are totally like best friends and family at this point. We’ve spent 18 months every day together working on this recording in his house. We wrote the song together. Oh God it was just such a collaborative thing with him. He’s so wonderful and totally understands me and is such a great listener. And the stuff that we’ve made I just really feel like we’ve pushed each other to make stuff that is better than anything either of us have ever done. I tell him everything, he knows everything about me. And it’s a very special kind of rare thing that we have.
We produced it together, we’ve produced the whole record together. Then the wonderful boy wonder Frank Dukes came in and gave us the little drum break. He’s a tiny little boy wonder, always in his little hats and stuff. So the production was a big thing for me this record. I’m a producer on every song. And this song in particular, it took us so long to kind of craft what it was. My role as a producer is I am an editor. I will pull that away or I’ll push that forward. And when I listen to this it’s cool for me. I’m like “ah God that’s what I can do now.”
On the meaning of “Green Light”:
The song is actually about a heartbreak. And it’s not something that I really am used to writing about. It took me a while to be able to figure out how to write about that. It was my first major heartbreak. And the song is really about those moments kind of immediately after your life changes and about all the silly little things that you gravitate towards. I say, “She thinks you love the beach, you’re such a liar”. What the fuck, she thinks you like the beach?! You don’t like the beach! It’s those little stupid things. It sounds so happy and then the lyrics are so intense obviously. And I realized I was like, “how come this thing is coming out so joyous sounding?” And I realized this is that drunk girl at the party dancing around crying about her ex boyfriend who everyone thinks is a mess. That’s her tonight and tomorrow she starts to rebuild. And that’s the song for me.
On adulthood influencing the album:
I think I had that year. Everyone has that first year that feels like the first proper year of adulthood. I moved out of home and all of a sudden I was kind of figuring out who am I when I’m alone? Who am I when I’m doing things just for myself? And I feel like you can really hear that on this record. There’s definitely moments where it’s like “oh, she really went there.” That’s what that is. I had to tell the truth so starkly to myself and to my friends and people around me. It’s an amazing feeling. It’s amazing actually listening to this body of work and being like, “wow, that is that year of my life in all of its kind of glory and disgusting…” All the gross moments, all great moments. It’s really special for me to listen to.
On getting away from it all and going back to New Zealand:
We’re from New Zealand, and you can just be like “I’m gonna go back down that end of the world” and everyone’s like “I couldn’t reach you if I tried.” I literally put myself in a way no one knows how to get me. And just dived off the grid and it was wonderful. I didn’t come back to this part of town for a while and it was good for me I think. It’s crazy when you are so young to be spending all your time in LA or New York. I think it can kind of fuck with you if you’re a kid. It was important to me to kind of step back from that and go to Golden Dawn and go to Peach Pit and go to these amazing bars in Auckland and live my life there. It was a real year of reflecting on the dichotomy of my life. I have this life here and I have this life in New Zealand and figuring out what that meant. But just generally every time I go home I’m so pleasantly surprised that nothing has changed with the people that I love and the place where we live. My relationship with the city and the country is so strong and I know that I’m gonna live there for a long time.
Read “Tracing Lorde’s Little Clues About Her Sophomore Album” on the Pitch.
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