Album Review: “Melodrama”
“Melodrama” is a musical drama.
Lorde is a severely underrated artiste in my opinion. Melodrama is her second studio album and was released on June 16, 2017. It’s an amazing album and I personally think every track is a hit.
Lorde gives us the most intense vocals of her career. Songs like Supercut and Writer in the Dark hit the hardest for me.
Going through this album it was a great experience. I’d like to share some of my thoughts on the album as a whole.
“Melodrama” is the perfect title
This is one of those albums where the title embodies the whole work.
melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization — Wikipedia
Melodrama really means “music drama”. This is why in the early days of melodrama in theater there would always be musical accompaniment.
What Lorde has done with the title is let us know the concept that we will be seeing throughout the album. This concept is given on every track and is executed flawlessly.
Lorde gives us dramatic, emotional, and exaggerated content in this album in her vocal performances, instrumentals and lyrics.
We will see that even though we don’t get a lot of history for the characters portrayed on the album, we feel and understand their emotion and behaviors.
This is because Lorde is not interested in what we know about the characters but how we feel about the characters.
Or rather how the characters feel.
One last thing to mention about this album. Lorde in an interview with the New York Times discussed the album and how it represents a party. As she parties she is trying to numb herself and forget her problems.
Here is a quote from the article:
On “Melodrama,” her second album, Lorde’s nights out are a swirl of drunken flirtations and reckless hookups, where she tries to forget herself but ends up more lonely and self-conscious than ever. Momentary pleasures lead to lasting regrets; trivial interactions can seem cataclysmic. It’s an exceedingly narrow slice of life, but Lorde inhabits it with feverish intensity.
“Green Light”
What an opener. Green Light was Lorde’s lead single released on March 2, 2017.
The instrumental is killer on this track. The lyrics are catchy and it sets the tone of the album.
I do my makeup in somebody else’s car
We order different drinks at the same bars
Lorde is talking about an ex who shares the same interests after being separated. This ex will be the focus of the “melodrama” throughout the album.
This relationship based on lyrics throughout the album took place sometime before her fame.
Cause honey I’ll come get my things, but I can’t let go
One interesting thing about this opening song is that Lorde establishes that she is still holding on and “can’t let go”. This is something that will be revisited throughout the album.
“Sober”
This song plays well into the narrative of Lorde at a party.
King and Queen of the weekend
Ain’t a pill that could touch our rush
(But what will we do when we’re sober?)
Ah, when you dream with a fever
Bet you wish you could touch our rush
(But what will we do when we’re sober?)
Lorde speaks about drugs, alcohol, and being high at this party. She seems to be enjoying herself a lot but is still self conscious of what will happen once she sobers up.
Her “rush” is only a temporary one.
These are the games of the weekend
We pretend that we just don’t care
But we care
This is Lorde’s time at this party to pretend and “get loose”. She is partying but beneath everything she is in emotional pain, she is lonely and she is in denial. This is definitely, or at least in part because of her ex.
“Liability”
This song for me is the saddest song on the album.
Baby really hurt me, crying in the taxi
He don’t wanna know me
Says he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm
Says it was poison
This song represents all the sadness Lorde holds inside of her that she needs to express. You can’t help but feel bad for her on this song.
It seems like everyone has given up on her except herself.
So I guess I’ll go home
Into the arms of the girl that I love
The only love I haven’t screwed up
She’s so hard to please
But she’s a forest fire
I do my best to meet her demands
Play at romance, we slow dance
In the living room, but all that a stranger would see
Is one girl swaying alone
Stroking her cheek
Lorde in a very creative way shows us that the girl she is referring to is herself by using a stranger to visualize to us, that there is nobody else but her.
This is loneliness.
Lorde actually shared this with the crowd at a concert:
I was in this cab alone listening to “Higher” by Rihanna because Anti had just come out, and I had a little cry and I was just like ‘it’s always going to be this way, at some point with everyone it’s going to be this way.’ But the song kind of ended up turning into a bit of a protective talismans for me. I was like, you know what, I’m always gonna have myself so I have to really nurture this relationship and feel good about hanging out with myself and loving myself.
Remember intense emotion is a key concept in this album and there is a lot to unpack here in this song. I would suggest you take some time to listen to the song and notice how you feel.
“Hard Feelings/Loveless”
This is a track with 2 songs infused in one. The first is Hard Feelings which speaks about falling out of love. Loveless is the conclusion of the process and discusses the type of generation we live in that is self centered and loveless.
Alone with the hard feelings of love
God, I wish I believed ya
When you told me this was my home
Lorde does not feel secure in this relationship.
I’ll start letting go of little things
’Til I’m so far away from you
Lorde is transitioning from having hard feelings to being loveless. At the start of a section of the song titled Loveless, we get a clear understanding of her headspace.
Bet you wanna rip my heart out
Bet you wanna skip my calls now
Well, guess what? I’d like that
’Cause I’m gonna mess your life up
Gonna wanna tape my mouth shutWe’re L-O-V-E-L-E-S-S generation
Not all relationships end like this and Lorde is here expressing her own experience for us to understand.
“Sober II(Melodrama)”
Lorde does such a good job of moving the narrative in her album with this track. The naming convention lets us know that this is an extension of the first Sober we heard. In that one, she was discussing how depressing it will be when they are finally sober.
Well here we are and she gives us a glimpse of being sober after everything and it is depressing.
Lights are on and they’ve gone home, but who am I?
Oh, how fast the evening passes, cleaning up
The champagne glasses
Lorde has found no purpose in partying at all. The lights are on and all that is left is a mess to be cleaned up.
And the terror
And the horror
When we wonder why we bother
Was it really worth it? The evening passed with nothing but fleeting enjoyment. In the end, the problems still remain.
Lorde does something I find creative and interesting.
All the gun fights
And the lime lights
And the holy sick divine nights
They’ll talk about us, all the lovers
How we kiss and kill each other
They’ll talk about us, and discover
How we kissed and killed each other
We told you this was melodrama
You wanted something that we offer
In these lines, we see a layout of many different things that are not really connected on their own but are being connected by Lorde.
They are connected by melodrama. Just like a movie or a play, she lays out all the action, gun fights, lovers, murder, betrayal, melodrama.
This is the melodrama that she offered. She did not offer us anything else in this album in regards to relief, release, or resolve. Only melodrama…
“Writer In the Dark”
It’s an intense song for sure. Lyrically and vocally she gives us intensity.
I am my mother’s child, I’ll love you ’til my breathing stops
I’ll love you ’til you call the cops on me
But in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power
I’ll find a way to be without you, babe
This song is about finding a way to move on. Lorde loves so intensely and needs to find a way to survive outside of this relationship.
I want to talk about the last 30 seconds of the song. The instrumental plays on and it slowly fades. To me, it feels like a musical sunset. An ending of a day/relationship. This is a musical nod of letting go and moving on. The relationship fades to black just as the song does.
“Supercut”
What is a supercut?
A supercut is a genre of video editing consisting of a montage of short clips with the same theme
Take a look at this example supercut from YouTube.
So with that explained let’s get into the song lyrics.
In your car, the radio up
In your car, the radio up
We keep trying to talk about us
I’m someone you maybe might love
I’ll be your quiet afternoon crush
Be your violent overnight rush
Make you crazy over my touch
But it’s just a supercut of us
Supercut of us
Lorde plays out scenes in her mind throughout this song and in the chorus, she keeps reminding herself that this is only a supercut. Only a montage of memories of what used to be.
Conclusion
This album as a whole can be seen as a kind of play, with Lorde showing us different scenarios and characters. Some of the other songs that I did not dive into like Homemade Dynamite, Perfect Places, Liability(Reprise), and The Louvre have even more important lyrics that further the concept of melodrama.
You need to listen if you have never listened. Or try it out for the first time. Lorde promises more albums with great execution and concepts like this.
Thanks for reading! For comments and suggestions email writer@patriziothedev.com.
References: Supercut, Melodrama, Melodrama Fandom, Melodrama New York Times.
