Melodrama by Lorde
by Lana Fleischli
I was listening to Pure Heroine, Lorde’s debut album a few weeks ago. It has held a special place in my heart since fourth grade. A friend of mine asked me if I had ever listened to Melodrama, Lorde’s sophomore release. I said that I hadn’t. I didn’t wanna ruin the beauty of Lorde in my eyes. Her image is nostalgic, and I wanted to keep it that way– stuck in the past. My friend convinced me, saying that I am going through my Melodrama era right now, except for the drugs according to her; (thank you Maria).
I was on my way to a friend’s birthday and I listened to the album in its entirety. I felt an immediate kinship with this piece of art. The reason I like it so much is because it’s about struggle, (as most music is), but it’s also about Lorde finding herself and her love for herself again through the pain.
My friend had seen me struggling for a while for a multitude of reasons, but she has also seen me find comfort in myself again. I think this is precisely why she said, “Lana, you are in your Melodrama era!”
“Lorde” is the stage name for singer-songwriter Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor. At 17, she won a grammy for her debut album Pure Heroine. She’s a pretty impressive artist. At 19, she released Melodrama, an album clearly about heartbreak, but also so much more.
One of the standout songs on the album is “Liability.” It is a song that conveys such a low point and feeling great doubt in herself. She claims “You're a liability/ You're a little much for me’/ So they pull back, make other plans/I understand, I'm a liability.” It’s the extreme pain of being potentially gaslit into thinking that you are too much and aren’t deserving of someone’s love so much so that you convince yourself.
Yes, this song is dark and sad, but the part that I kept coming back to was the first verse where Lorde sings, “Baby really hurt me/ Crying in the taxi/ He don't wanna know me/ Says he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm/ Says it was poison/ So I guess I'll go home/ Into the arms of the girl that I love/ The only love I haven't screwed up/ She's so hard to please/ But she's a forest fire/ I do my best to meet her demands/ Play at romance, we slow dance/ In the living room, but all that a stranger would see/ Is one girl swaying alone/ Stroking her cheek.” The song starts with the breakup and the pain of being told that she’s a “liability,” but then she talks about a girl. At first I was thinking, “Maybe this is a coming out song?” It isn’t. However, she makes the powerful metaphor of talking about herself as her love interest; explaining that she is gonna do what she must do to give her the love she deserves. I think that is an incredible way to express self love. It’s beautiful and inspirational.
I also find it necessary to examine how she describes herself as literal forces of nature: “storm,” “poison,” and “forest fire.” These are all supposed to come off as negative, but to me, it creates a picture of mother nature and the beauty and power that women exude. Oftentimes, women are criticized for their forceful characteristics, and therefore made to seem like a (yes I’m gonna say it) “liability,” going against what they are expected to do. The descriptors that Lorde uses really amplifies the tone of her feelings and the conflict that it creates within her.
I feel like I wouldn’t be acknowledging the album completely if I didn’t mention the song titled, “Writer In The Dark.” In this song, Lorde exposes the person who hurt her by singing about how he likely cheated on her and then left her for someone else. “Writer In The Dark” is a song that sits juxtaposed to her song “The Louvre.” In “The Louvre,” Lorde sings about how she essentially looked past all of the bad signs and continued into a relationship that she knew wasn’t good for her. She sings, “Our thing progresses/ I call and you come through/ Blow all my friendships/ To sit in hell with you/ But we're the greatest/ They'll hang us in the Louvre/ Down the back, but who cares—still the Louvre.” I found that these lyrics emphasize how she describes losing herself. The idea that this person– this relationship is so incredible, like a piece of art, that it would be hung in the Louvre, but she still knows it’s not good enough to be in the front of the museum.
Later in the album, a shift occurs and we, as listeners, get songs like “Supercut,” which is a song about healing and how she has to remind herself that whenever she misses that relationship, or that point in her life, it is only because she has been playing the “Supercut,” she highlight reel, and has blocked out the bad things that happened. The album ends with the song “Perfect Places.” The songs is about drugs, but I also took something more from it. She describes popping pills to find “Perfect Places.” She wanted to escape the reality that she was in, but then comes to the million dollar question, “What the fuck are perfect places anyway?” I like that she left us with the question. The way I thought about it was that a place can’t be perfect if you’re always on the hunt. Perfection should make sense. If you have to inebriate yourself consistently, and you still can’t be sure that you are in the “perfect place,” then you probably have some internal work to do.
Lorde’s Melodrama is an album about questioning everything and finding oneself. It is a beautiful way to show us the grittiness of pain, and the immense beauty and power that comes from healing.