Lorde 2017 is more Swift and less Del Rey. Even after the deranged euphorics of two of Melodrama’s already circulating tracks – Green Light and Perfect Places – the maximalism of these 11 songs still unsettles. This resulting work is hefty enough to tick industry boxes, and just weird enough to intrigue a qualified success. Little’s role is now taken by Jack Antonoff, who first surfaced as guitarist of Fun and went on to produce bits of Taylor Swift’s mighty 1989 album his bona fides include being Lena Dunham’s boyfriend. Where Pure Heroine – her minimalist, hip-hop-indebted debut – was meticulously pieced together (with producer/enabler Joel Little) well outside pop’s sausage machine, Lorde’s second grew inside one of the bellies of the beast: New York. Success has seen the New Zealand 20-year-old join the glitterati she once coolly scrutinised. Lorde’s breakout hit of 2013, Royals, eye-rolled at the luxe obsessions of distant pop stars. Once your eardrums adapt, you begin to appreciate the subtleties on offer It has an unenviable act of tonal balance to pull off: yielding glossy ear-crack that will burn its way through Spotify playlists, while retaining Ella Yelich-O’Connor’s signatures: her smeary husk of a voice, her gimlet eye, her outsider’s viewpoint. The singer’s second album, however, is emphatically not a cry from a draughty atelier.
Melodrama’s cover art – by New York artist Sam McKinniss – casts Lorde as a colour-dappled bohemian synaesthete.
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