lorde discography
methodology: from songs to albums and discographies
curating discographies feel like performing a series of titrations, where you know the volume and learn about the concentration in time. when I talk about volume, I am referring to how much the artist have composed over the years (how many albums they have, etc.) concentration is trickier to define, but think about it as the potential of a random song in an album to be as good as a the single.
most albums have a few popular songs and some songs that people kind of know. what makes an album good is the connection between the songs and how they link to the overall theme. it's not sheer happiness, but guilt, bitterness, and many things with it. songs work together to enhance one another throughout an album. with the right order, an album can create this flow that helps convey its overall message better. as you master each album, you build your oeuvre, your discography, where continuation is key.
when I listen to a song, I look for cross references: reversed chords, slightly altered phrases with connections to previous albums, but most important of all, how each album contrasts and highlights one another.
when I choose an artist to curate their discographies, I prefer artists with a consistent history of composing and songwriting, as that makes assessing their performance and quality (concentration) better.
surprisingly, lorde's discography have all of that. it is now the standard solution for most of my titrations or discography curations.
lorde, the lord
lorde has a strong fascination with all things royals and aristocracy, but most important of all, she is a big word fetishist. the name lorde itself is originally lord, but she added an e to make it more feminine. I don't know if it was her intentions, but her name's affinity to lord makes me thinks of her every time I read the bible: I am the lord(e) your god. why I read the bible? it's a long story, but it also has something to do with the discography of an artist that I've yet to cover.
lorde also stands among the artists that I know from watching TEOTFW music videos. hard feelings wasn't even in the soundtrack, but it fits the movie miraculously. similar to the 1975, it takes me a few years to actually listen to songs that aren't from the movie. still, it's a good reminder that things will find you when you reach this specific stages in spiritual development.
when and how to listen to lorde
I know it's a bad habit, but I often multitask when I curate discographies. however, I happen to curate lorde's discography when I was going to the countryside, with absolutely no distraction to existence. with my airpods on and my eyes fixed to the lyrics, I ocassionally close my eyes and feel the beats and the way she accentuates words throughout the song. it lifted the experience, and I enjoy it so much more than listening and reading genius analyses at the same time as I did for previous artists.
another great time to listen to lorde's music is long road trips, especially through the countryside. I remember listening to a world alone at night with the everchanging forest backdrop. it was a very transformative experience, and I've never felt more connected. it's a song about isolation and yearning for human connection, which happens to be the thing I was looking for that moment as well.
dissecting discographies
listening to lorde's discography feels like traversing through various landscapes and cross sections of her homeland, new zealand. unlike taylor, lorde's songs don't usually paint a specific canvas or portrait of a place or a person, but it's often abstract. you don't look for a person or a place when you listen to her music, but rather, a feeling and sentiment lost in time that wants to be relived.with her gifted songwriting, the resounding instrumentals accentuates and further highlights her words, as much as the waves the ripples created when a pebble is tossed across the lake.
lorde discography consists of three albums, one extended play, and a few singles. with the discography being less than 3 hours, its size is amazing for me to listen to more songs repeatedly and feel the album better, which was not always possible with artists with massive discographies.
- the love club (extended play)
- pure heroine
- melodrama
- solar power and te ao mārama (the enhanced album)
- singles: swinging party, no better, yellow flicker beat (soundtrack)
THE LOVE CLUB & PURE HEROINE / GREEN
despite being two separate album and extended play, the love club and pure heroine has the same vibe and instrumentals. this album's insturmentals and overall themes like a longing for human connection, and it draws strong allusions to caves with grand stalactites and norwegian wood. the sound layering also reminds me of poems' metrical feet and accents.
400 lux feels like a swirling glass of wine, with antibacchius metrical foot (2 unstressed syllable, 1 stressed syllable) and ocassional chaos sound effects, while ribs is straight up heartbeat with the tension builds up and the eventual catharsis. however, my favorite soundscapes remain team and a world alone, which has that misanthropic yet reassuring vibe.
MELODRAMA / (ULTRA)VIOLET
I don't entirely agree that melodrama is violet, as the extremes are clear, so I'd go with ultraviolet. both the instrumentals and album cover of melodrama has less of an earthly and natural setting. it reminds me of hangovers and flashbacks after doing some heavy drinking at a random bar in auckland. days spent losing sobriety and running after hormones to make us feel better about ourselves. definitely not healthy, but there's definitely this allure to it.
the album cover's strong color use and harsh contrast between the cold background and throbbing yet static figure allows the viewer to experience the vulnerability and the bare of the figure on the bed. oil on canvas also enhances the listener's experience, meaning that it is not only auditory, but visual and sensual. if lorde's discography is a graph, this is the inflexion and the minimum point. it is also the apex of the redemption arc. without this, the continuation from pure heroine to solar power wouldn't make much sense.
if you're looking for a continuation of team and a world alone, try perfect places. 100% outdoorsy and long road trips vibes. additionally, it's also about escapsim, idealism, and all the bad habits that our brains like to play with us. there is no use finding perfect places, because such places don't exist.
travelling is not about where you go, but who you travel with. the people is the spirit of a place. the place history and architecture are built from and by the souls of people.
SOLAR POWER & TE AO MĀRAMA / GOLDEN
just an fyi, but te ao mārama singlehandedly inspired me to learn māori the same way sufjan steven's carrie and lowell inspired me to read the bible, videoclub inspired me to learn french, and manhua inspired me to learn chinese (I quit). this is just to show how good this album is. it is so good that they name california after one of her songs.
if pure heroine takes us to the forest and waitomo caves in new zealand, solar power takes us to cactus bay, where we are caught in the complex divorce of the seasons. besides sounding super organic and spontaneous, in contrast to the controlled rhythms and beats of the first album, a highlight for solar power was having the best continuation I've seen in ages. secrets from a girl (who's seen it all) is a continuation to ribs, done by reversing the chords of the song. this is the song that inspired me to start a conversation with myself today, when I'm 17, so that I can continue that conversation at a later time.
while most of the album has been upbeating, some traces of melodrama can still be found in big star, which is a song dedicated to her dog. this song touches me the same way taylor's evermore's majorie tug my heartstrings. it grows our appreciation for non-romantic relationships where togetherness is a prioirty and value.
the idea of using māori in her enhanced album really pays tribute to her home country and heritage, while also educates us, the listeners, on the problem of dying language (although māori is still doing okay) and grow our appreciation for non-eurocentric languages and their concepts.
if you have the time, listen to the enhanced album, listen to te ao mārama, don't stop at solar power. some songs are better felt in māori than in english. stoned at the nail salon is one of them.
my favorite lines
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