Within Lorde’s discography, there are many small connections and self-references that tie her works together. In her song “Still Sane” she said “Everything I say falls right back into everything” which is one of the hints that she used to tell her fans to listen closely to her lyrics to find the puzzle pieces of her ideas. All of these small lyrical connections contribute to the larger themes and deeper messages within her work about love, life, and the passage of time. As her Instagram bio says, “The themes are always the same.”
Lorde has three albums that each express the emotions felt throughout the different phases in her life. Her first album, Pure Heroine, which was released in 2013, is about the anxiety and numbness that she felt during her teen years. Melodrama, released in 2017, was about the chaos of shifting from her teen years into adulthood while dealing with heartbreak. Her most recent album, Solar Power, released in the summer of 2021, is about finally finding happiness and inner peace within her new life as a young adult. Although each album has a different tone and style, they each feature lyrical references to each other that connect her experiences into one life.
When Ella Yelich O’Connor first gained popularity, there was controversy over her stage name. Many assumed that she must be full of herself if she was brave enough to refer to herself as “Lorde,” but others view her stage name as commentary on how celebrities are placed on a high pedestal and treated as if they are saviors or royalty. Her ideas about power dynamics are one of the more prevalent themes throughout her work. The title of her first studio album, Pure Heroine, highlights how people view music as their drug and artists as their heroes. Two of the songs on this album, “Royals” and “Team”, express how she and her friends were able to have fun and enjoy life without any money or power. She also references this concept in a few of the songs on her most recent album Solar Power. In the song “Solar Power,” she ironically refers to herself as a “prettier Jesus.” This concept is clarified in the lyrics of her song entitled “The Path.” The second verse, “Arm in a cast at the museum gala / fork in my purse to take home to my mother / supermodels all dancing around a pharaoh’s tomb” shows how even though she is now one of them, she feels out of place in the celebrity culture. Her broken arm and stolen fork are reminiscent of her previously mundane life as she attends the 2016 MET Gala and notices how ironic it is for celebrities to casually dance around the graves of historical royalty. In the chorus of this song, she clarifies that she is not the perfect God that many expect her to be, “Now if you’re looking for a savior / well, that’s not me.”
Another recurring element within Lorde’s discography is references to travel and transportation, which likely represent how she views her life as a journey. “400 lux,” the first love song that she ever released, takes place in her boyfriend’s car, and features lyrics such as, “you drape your wrist over the steering wheel / pulses can drive from here.” The song “No Better”, a single that she released in 2013, features the lyric: “our legs stick to the seats of the car someone grew into,” which fans assume refers to the same car, since this is her only song in which her boyfriend is mentioned by name. So, when she dropped a new single in 2017 entitled “Green Light” to promote her second album, she was able to shock her fans with the first lyric, “I do my makeup in somebody else’s car.” This lyric alone was able to set the stage for her next album Melodrama as a story about change and heartbreak. Then in “Liability,” she recounts “crying in the taxi” immediately after her breakup. These lyrics symbolize how she had to leave her comfort zone as her life changed. In these earlier works, most of her transportation lyrics were about wanting to leave but not really knowing where to go. In contrast, her most recent album expresses how her return home to New Zealand was what she was really craving all along. For example, in her 2013 song “Tennis Court,” she sang, “Pretty soon I’ll be getting on my first plane,” symbolizing the beginning of her efforts to escape her current mundane life. Then, her more recent song “Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen it All),” ends with a mock flight attendant landing speech to reference that “Tennis Court” lyric and symbolize her return home.
Even though fans were surprised by how much more dramatic and emotional Melodrama was than her first studio album, nothing could have prepared them for the shock that came with the release of her third studio album, Solar Power. This album was the first time that listeners had heard Lorde express genuine happiness, as her previous works had more of a serious, somber, dark, and almost gothic tone. If you listen closely, she has been hinting at this sunny beach-themed album for a while. It’s almost as if she and her co-writer Jack Antonoff listened to her previous works for inspiration when planning and writing this album. “400 Lux,” the title of a song on her first studio album, refers to the level of illumination of the sun during sunrise and sunset. Her song “Liability” ended with the lyric “you’re all going to watch me disappear into the sun.” At the time, this lyric sounded like nonsense, but as she turned to the sun to cure her sadness in the lyrics of “The Path,” it all became clear. Not only did she foreshadow her newfound love for the sun, but she also hinted at the beach setting of her newer music videos. In her 2013 single “No Better,” she mentioned trying to teach her boyfriend how to swim but claimed that he was “no better at swimming” than he was “in the beginning.” Then in “Green Light,” she said “she thinks you love the beach / you’re such a damn liar / but those great whites / they have big teeth” implying that her now ex-boyfriend hates the beach due to his fear of sharks, which would certainly be a concern for someone who can’t swim. Even her collaborations with other artists tie into the rest of her work; Especially her work with the band Disclosure on their song “Magnets.” In the music video for this collaboration, a woman hires Lorde to seduce and murder her cheating boyfriend by drowning him in a pool. This music video was released in 2015 before she had even publicly announced her break-up. So, the release of Solar Power and the accompanying music videos are a clear indication that she is officially over the sadness expressed in Pure Heroine and the heartbreak expressed in Melodrama.
Her recurring references to power, travel, and sunshine all connect to express her journey through life and the passage of time. Although her experiences may not be relatable to everyone, they are carefully crafted and curated into her collection of music that has impacted the lives of many.