Growing up in public has been a rite of passage for pop stars since at least
Frank Sinatra but, as with any classic storyline, what matters is the execution.
Lorde, the preternaturally talented New Zealand singer/songwriter who became an international sensation at the age of 17, knows how to execute not only songwriting and public narrative but also a melding of the two.
Melodrama, arriving nearly four long years after her 2013 debut, picks up the thread left hanging on
Pure Heroine, presenting
Lorde as a young woman, not a sullen teenager. Tonally and thematically, it's a considerable shift from
Pure Heroine, and
Melodrama feels different musically too, thanks in part to
Lorde's decision to collaborate with
Jack Antonoff, the leader of
Fun. and
Bleachers who has been nearly omnipresent in 2010s pop/rock.
Antonoff's steely signatures -- a reliance on retro synths, a sheen so glassy it glares -- are all over the place on
Melodrama but
Lorde is unquestionably the auteur of the album, not just because the songs tease at autobiography but because of how it builds upon
Pure Heroine.
Lorde retains her bookish brooding, but
Melodrama isn't monochromatic. "Green Light" opens the proceedings with a genuine sense of exuberance and it's an emotion she returns to often, sometimes reveling in its joy, sometimes adding an undercurrent of melancholy. Sadness bubbles to the surface on occasion, as it does on the stark "Liability," and so does
Lorde's penchant for blunt literalism -- "Writer in the Dark," where our narrator sings "bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark," thereby suggesting all of her songs are some kind of autobiography -- but these traits don't occupy the heart of the album. Instead,
Lorde is embracing all the possibilities the world has to offer but then retreating to the confines of home, so she can process everything she's experienced. This balance between discovery and reflection gives
Melodrama a tension, but the addition of genuine, giddy pleasure -- evident on the neon pulse of "Homemade Dynamite" and "Supercut" -- isn't merely a progression for
Lorde, it's what gives the album multiple dimensions. [A bonus edition includes a remix of "Homemade Dynamite" with
Khalid,
Post Malone, and
SZA.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine