Solar Power- if we bore climate change to death, then it might leave us alone?

Music Review- Solar Power- Lorde (2021)

After the year of suffering that has hit the working class and poor harder than anyone else, it is hard to listen to more and more artists release albums that for the most part want us to feel sorry for our protagonist for not enjoying the celebrity lifestyle and choosing to sunbathe in their multi-million dollar mansions. Celebrity culture is rough, but right now especially, I have very little care to give to Lorde or Billie Eilish or any star that is singing about the suffering of people idolising them and giving them money- Kim there are people that are dying.

The idealistically simple choices Lorde gets to make are not available to other people, so when she says we need to listen to nature and throw our phones away, it feels insulting and at times patronising. She has goodwill, and clearly been inspired by her recent trips around the world, but gone is the rage and will-to fight that was found in her previous albums and it is replaced with this dreary coo that sounds as if Daisy from The Great Gatsby wrote an album: a bit spoilt, exceedingly naive, and could easily be described as a beautiful fool.

Antonoffe, a once exciting light in modern pop music production, has become slowly less interesting with every release and his chokehold on modern pop women is getting uncomfortable. It is getting harder and harder to differentiate between our Lanas, Taylors and Lordes as they are all being washed out by this "atmospheric" sit near the window and look out to the rain blur of sound that is oh so dull. Where is the melody? Why does every song sound the same? Any production flare? Where is the concept of a chorus? I'm so bored by it that even when he starts putting blurring beeps and random noises it just melts into a sigh. Maybe it is subtle and I'm not educated enough to get it, but I remember a time when music was fun or if it wasn't fun it wanted to change the world, and sometimes, the best of times, it was both; this doesn't even try.

Solar power is at best background music on a summer evening, and at worst is tone-deaf melancholy meandering to the end with an insufferable amount of self-indulgence and teen angst. Its biggest crime though is being boring, very rarely is there much to discuss about any track as she never reaches the hights her topics and themes deserve. It is shallow cafe pop from an artist that can be so much better.

Album Review: 4/10

Track By Track Breakdown:

The Path- Opening like a modern-day jazz classic, the first verse sounds like it was ripped from Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever. I'm not sure why these modern artists think it is rebellious or interesting to tell us they are not anything interesting as it definitely seems to be a melodramatic trend of 2021 music; I understand the age of the superstar is over and society is looking for something 'real' in today's artists, but the woes of being a young millionaire are really not as interesting as they want them to be. The way society treats artists, especially young artists, is abhorrent but making unrelatable, maudlin and dull tracks about it feels uninspiring and uninteresting. The chorus, when it finally kicks in, is catchy as hell, and the production is dreamlike as Lorde suggest we should look to nature rather than the artifice that is celebrity culture for answers. However, as a self-reported DailyMail obsessive (The New York Times, April 2021), there is a funny irony in her wanting The Sun (the tabloid paper) to tell her what to think, and who knows maybe there is a deeper message here about propaganda and being fed problematic information by rich people, or, it is just her being angsty and sad about how the job she's chosen means she is influential- I don't know. (6)

Solar Power- A fun care-free summer bop that feels like it doesn't understand the irony of it following The Path. Lorde has just told us she is not the saviour and we shouldn't listen to her for advice, yet she spends this song telling us to stop caring about everything, to throw our phone away and just enjoy nature. Not to say it is tone-deaf for a multi-millionaire, who can leave the stress of her life and just live in her house off the millions she's made already (as she said in recent interviews), to say we should throw our phone away and go off-grid, well actually it is a little tone-deaf when the rest of the world need to work and can't do the things she has described. As she says, she is a prettier Jesus (even though The Path rejects this idea) as she can do and say anything she wants. Look, the care-free lyrics wouldn't be a problem as they are the same kind of thing any pop superstar comes out with to simplify the world's problems and give simple unrealistic solutions, look to any Katy Perry song for example, but this is the kind of thing Lorde has said she hates, even just on the last song for example, and Jack Antonoffe (the producer) has said is bad pop, so why is it here? Sonically, it is a light and breezy pop song that is fun and chill to listen to on a summers day, but seems to be the antithesis of everything Lorde has said so far. (7)

California- Another drab basic Antonoffe track about rejecting the celebrity lifestyle, yes Lorde, we get it, you aren't like other celebrities, gosh this album has more teen angst than Pure Heroine but much less interesting songs. Lorde seems to forget that she has experienced and had in her few years more than any average person will receive in their lifetime. So, when she rejects the glitz and glamour after divulging in it while she could, she makes a choice that none of us can relate to, we don't understand, can't conceptualise nor care; the choice she makes to sunbathe at home instead of working sounds like an idyllic dream that we would all choose if we could, so we don't feel the sympathy or victory cheer that Lorde seems to want us to have for her choosing the choice that is equivalent to winning the lottery. Fame has been dismantled in pop music into the horrid cesspit it is since about 2014, so another song selling the same narrative without adding anything is uninspiring and uninteresting. neither the production nor vibe can save it here. (3)

Stoned at the Nail Salon- Reflecting on the post-tour come down, Lorde finds a fragility in going from such a hectic lifestyle to having no purpose. It is the kind of celebrity insight that is more interesting than "woe is me". As a teacher, I can certainly relate the six weeks holiday being a peculiar and uneasy comedown as you try to piece together your life again without the constant stress of work; or, the post-break-up phase where you try to rediscover yourself and you realise whether the music you were listening to was actually what you loved or loved to enjoy with your ex-partner. It is certainly a more relatable parallel between celebrity life and the real world, even if the chorus is clunky as hell and the production leans too far on the side of maudlin reflection to give any replay value. The song is the direct opposite to Solar Power: you like it more the more you think about it. (6)

Fallen Fruit- Singing about how past generations have flown too close to the sun and have therefore passed on the negative consequences to this generation, Lorde facing the behemoth of suffering that is climate change seems to pass it off with a shrug and a disdained meh. It offers no interesting commentary or bold take, it is just an acknowledgement that climate change exists and we've caused it- which surely in the year 2021 is anything but a controversial statement, like duh. The production is infuriating: when it slows down like she is being all-powerful and original on the bridge just becomes grating and cringe, the reversing van beeps are just uncomfortable and so is the overall lackadaisical approach to something that should scare the daylights out of people. Who is this going to change/help/educate? It is half baked, but at least the chorus is more memorable than many others on the album. (5)

Secrets from a girl: Firstly, the end is exceedingly cringe and I don't think it is meant to be. But, the overall sentiment of the song of losing your youth quicker than you thought and struggling to grapple with what this means, at least is the first relatable song on the album. One of my friends is a big Lorde fan because they felt like they were growing up at the same age together and therefore each album resonated with a different part of their life; this is the first time I can understand what they meant while listening to this album. The repetitive chorus leaves a little to be desired but at least it is memorable unlike many of the other tracks on here. This feels much better territory for Lorde's writing than the tame aims of nature's healing power of some of the other tracks. But, it still doesn't stand near the best of Pure Heroine or Melodrama. (6)

The man with the axe: The melancholy disdain works better here as for the most part the production has this bubbling energy like a crackling fire that mirrors the coffee and book evening vibe of the album but also works narratively as the bubbling suffering of her fame always under Lorde's surface even when trying to be in love. It never leaves her and infests every aspect of life. However, it does mean even when she is writing a love song for her man, she spends the majority of the time talking about her fame and her sadness. So, this feels like another track where releasing it mid pandemic was a mistake- it feels self-indulgent, ignorant and not self-aware. I know if I was the bloke id find it very insulting to find my girlfriends love song about me was more about how sad she is. The song overall is just not very memorable. (5)

Dominoes: a somewhat breakup song about being upset the man moves on too easily and when he moves on he changes his personality to fit his new woman. And what is there more to say than that? No idea. That is the problem with most of this album, you can capture the whole song in a sentence. What I mean is that Lorde's calm dreary delivery tells us nothing extra, is she pissed off, devastated, over it or anything as I have absolutely no idea; her delivery is the same here as it would reading a shopping list. She is so emotionally distant in most tracks on the album that even when she has an interesting narrative we can't get invested as we don't know what to feel. It then leads to the question of so what? If she is not going to give me anything other than the bare bones of a story, then why should I be invested. (6)

Big star: Apparently about the loss of her dog, but after 8 other songs about self-pity and woe is me, this just feels like more of the same. There is not enough distinct lyricism to the sad situation to make the song feel personal or show us anything about her relationship with her dog- you wouldn't even be able to tell if she didn't say it in interviews. Maybe on a different album, this would be the emotional centre where we pause to reflect on our own personal loss, but as every song has tried to be that so far, this drowns in the weight of the album. The chorus has some beautiful line delivery from Lorde but the rest is non-descript and dire. (5)

Leader of the new regime: I think the only point of this song is to trick the listener into thinking there has been a constant weighty theme throughout this album, but as we've seen other than melancholy woe is me, Lorde left the new regime storyline in song one. There is no reason to revisit this song other than forgetting to skip because you are passed out from boredom. (1)

Mood ring: I don't know if I'm just cynical, but when an artist puts one of the lead singles right at the back of the album, I feel someone is trying to hide something (whether it is Taylor Swift's lover where she is trying to hide two of her most negatively reviewed and cringe-worthy singles; or, Ellie Goulding and Brightest Blue where she clearly wanted the album to have a different vibe than the label so put all the singles on side B). All I can say is this song is the only thing remotely commercial on the album as it is the only song with a good chorus and distinct sound; in addition, all her fans say she's being sarcastic in the lyrics, so it seems to suggest this was more of a label decision than Lordes. But either way, thank the lord as it shows she can still write a competent song with some kind of structure and fun. It is the saving grace of the album and will most certainly be torn apart by critics for not having the ambitions of the previous tracks, but at least she hit what she was aiming for here: a decent pop song. (7)

Oceanic feeling: The lyrics about her future daughter are sweet and poignant, the way we raise our children is a reflection of ourselves and the lives we've led; so, it brings full circle the themes of the album where she is unpicking her life, in particular, whether her fame will impose on her daughter's life. It is the first song on the album where her disdain of fame makes sense and it slots into place that we won't be seeing another Lorde album in a while because different priorities in her life like family are more important. There is hope and strength in Lorde reclaiming her family and her life that is not found in the wallowing self pty of previous tracks. It is a perfect closer bringing everything to a full circle as well as giving Lorde a path to the future. (7)