After releasing three seven-second teaser clips over the course of the past week and sending fans in Auckland, NZ on a scavenger hunt, Lorde has released the video for “Green Light,” the first single off her sophomore album, Melodrama. “Green Light” arrives after three long-anticipated years since Lorde’s first album, Pure Heroine, released in September 2013.
Departing from the soft melancholy of past songs like “Buzzcut Season” and “Ribs,” “Green Light” gets off to a slow and powerful start before evolving through a key change into an explosive dance track. Creative pop beats, layered vocals, and piano chords played by Bleachers–aka Jack Antonoff–burst into what can only be described as pure, unfiltered emotion. The build the the chorus is phenomenal.
“Green Light” is essentially about loss and the struggle to let go–a song so well born out of twenty-year-old heartache. Lorde opens with “I do my makeup in somebody else’s car / We order different drinks at the same bars / I know about what you did and I wanna scream the truth / She thinks you love the beach you’re such a damn liar.” Like her past work, Lorde’s lyrics are poetic and only hint at the details of what she’s singing about. Lines like “Thought you said that would always be in love / but you’re not in love / no more” aid to this. We never get the whole story, and that clouded mysticism is what makes her music so relatable.
The video is no “Tennis Court,” either. In the video for “Green Light” we see Lorde disguised under green and blue strobes. She runs through a city street, music player and headphones in hand. She sings out car windows with her head rolling and eyes closed to the wind. Later, she’s washed in red light, this time standing on top of the SUV–with an indifferent driver standing closeby, vaping. Through all of it, she is dancing, dancing, dancing. Watching the video, we can’t help but want to dance with her. “Green Light” is a catalyst for euphoric release.
Lorde’s evolution can most easily resonate with the fans who are around her same age. In a way, many of them are growing up right alongside her, finding themselves at sixteen in the music she made when she was the same age, and now reliving that experience a few years later. No matter one’s age, to listen to Lorde is to experience adolescence. As she is maturing, it seems, so is her music.
Watch the video at imwaitingforit.com.