Lorde has risen
"What Was That" is out and L4 is coming
I can’t pretend to write a single objective thought about Lorde. She holds the unique place in my life of being an artist I loved in high school that I only appreciate more now. Over time, instead of losing her shine to my older and somewhat more cynical/critical eyes, I’ve only grown to respect her more. I literally wrote, “What would Lorde do?” on the inside of my most recent journal as a guiding creative and just general life principle. No one embodies the kind of effortless cool and magnetism that comes from doing exactly what you want to or feel moved to do regardless of whether it aligns with some contrived image.
This unfettered abandoned, best embodied in her zealous, carefree dancing at her concerts where it looks like the music overtakes her body, has always given her a sort of rarefied air in my eyes. Instead of being calculatedly perfect, she’s always just perfectly Lorde, a distinction that can’t be taken away from her regardless of the commercial waves or critical reception.
“What Was That” comes four years after the release of Solar Power, an album that was a heel spin away from the darker, moodier pop that made her name. Solar Power tapped into a side of Lorde born out of the quiet of pandemic lockdowns and an exploration of her home, self-reflection, the color yellow, and looking on the sunnier side. It was such an 180, especially visually, that it was easy to miss, on the surface, how quintessentially Lorde the music remained. She followed it up with a theater tour, despite the fact that the notoriety of her previous two albums alone could’ve justified another arena run, and made herself one of the hottest tickets of the year, even with an album that got labeled a flop. From the two nights I attended in LA, I can vouch that she succeeded in her mission to limit the room size to the point where the concerts felt like a near spiritual experience, everyone in the room as deeply and passionately engaged as she was.
And then she disappeared, realizing the value of a break for both her place in the public consciousness and her artistic process. Since this is an increasingly rare tactic in the constant barrage that is content in 2025, her absence felt like a distinct hole by the time she returned.
Taking up the baton that Charli XCX passed partially to her as she declared Brat Summer concluded at Coachella, Lorde released the first single in her as yet unnamed project. It’s a song that will read as somewhat of a return to form for the casual fan. It contextualizes Solar Power as a needed zag to show that her palette was wide and will give this fourth project an out from the narrative that all her music paints with the same brush. She’s back to moody, electronic infused production, oozing with feeling and that “Ribs”-like trance musically that makes you want to jump along to the chorus. But this doesn’t feel like a sonic retreat in the slightest given the context of the lyrical content.
In “What Was That,” which, according to her Instagram story took a year for her and collaborator Jim-E Stack, who seems heavily involved in the overall project, to get right. It also features a production assist from none other than pop powerhouse producer in the making, Dan Nigro. This feels funnily full circle as Nigro produced much of Conan Gray’s early work, which is heavily influenced by Lorde’s first two albums. The sonic world feels intentionally honed to invoke a sense of nostalgia and reference the music that surrounded Lorde at the time she’s reminiscing about.
She spends the track reminiscing about a relationship with the most emotional distance she’s ever given a song. The therapy and self-work that inflected Solar Power with its unique aura is manifesting in a different way as Lorde tackles this break-up with a contemplative remove. “Since I was seventeen, I gave you everything / Now we wake from a dream, well, baby, what was that?” she asks in the first snippet released on TikTok that rounds out the chorus. The chorus offers a bit of whimsy as she remembers moments at Coachella captured in a line about “Indio haze” and taking MDMA in the back garden with the person the song is about. In the second verse, she traces through how this person shaped her worldview and still infiltrates her thoughts at random moments. Still, even the memories of the chorus aren’t entirely pure as she acknowledges between lines, “I didn’t know then that you’d never be enough.”
The first verse grounds the song in the present day, offering a glimpse into her present headspace, navigating through life in New York and starting over in a simpler way. She also lyrically tackles the difficulties around body image she dealt with during the Solar Power era and touched on in her verse on “Girl So Confusing.” Today, she shared a photo of the covered mirrors mentioned in the song on her Instagram story, further letting fans into her headspace at the time the song is set. It’s from this cocooned life that she steps into the city and is hit with the rush of memories connected to this person.
It’s the second pre-chorus that’s the most intimate link to the concerted effort at healing and recalibration that traces across Solar Power on songs like “Secrets of a Girl” where she sings, “I tried to let / Whatever has to pass through me / Pass through, but this is staying a while, I know / It might not let me go.” There’s a distinct will to move forward but also an acceptance that we don’t get to decide on the timeline.
The repeated refrain of the title, “What was that?” gives the song nearly a “Dear John”-like quality. Not in tone or lyrics or production but simply in the essence of growing older and having the somewhat queasy feeling about a relationship maybe not being what you thought it was as a teenager. Suddenly, everything is tinged a different color and the feelings are more complex. There’s something much less straightforward in the bouquet of feelings on Lorde’s latest track as the refrain “Cause I want you just like that” is heavily intermixed as well. Still, that twinge of nausea comes through again in the post-chorus’s refrain of “When I’m in the blue light I can make it all right.” There’s a relatable confusion and a particular mark to the song that can only be a product of so much distance. Lorde has tackled heartbreak extensively in her catalog but never from this vantage point.
Jack Anonoff is notably absent from this track as well as, it seems, the rest of the project with Jim-E Stacks as well as Blood Orange much more present in the conversation around this fourth album. It’s the beginning of a new era as both of Lorde’s albums recorded after her breakout, Pure Heroine, were created in close collaboration with Antonoff. That feels like a distinct choice for an album that seems poised to mine her feelings in retrospect of that period of her life.
Given that Lorde managed to shut down Washington Square Park with hours notice then turn the surrounding streets into an all-out dance party (partially captured in the song’s music video but better shown in the TikToks of attendees), there’s certainly an appetite for this new music and Lorde’s exacting lyrical writing. The song serves up a sound that should excite both longtime fans and casual listeners and proves to be an album appetizer that has, at the very least, left me wanting more. As much as Solar Power became a defining album in my life for releasing right as I moved to LA, “What Was That” is admittedly less of a head scratcher of a re-introduction.