Solar Power is the third studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde. It was released on 20 August 2021 by Universal. Inspired by the death of her Golden Retriever mix dog and her visit to Antarctica in 2019, the album was written with producer Jack Antonoff to capture themes of solipsism and summer escapism. It mainly focuses on Lorde's leisure time in her homeland, New Zealand, while simultaneously expressing her disdain for fame and celebrity culture.
Classified by Lorde as her "weed album", Solar Power is a psychedelic pop and indie folk effort built around acoustic guitar arrangements, marking a departure from the electronic-based music of her previous works. It was met by polarised reviews from music critics, who commended Lorde's matured vocals, but were divided over its songwriting and production. Lorde later described the response to the record as "really confounding" and "painful". The album was led by its lead single and title track, "Solar Power", followed by "Stoned at the Nail Salon", "Mood Ring", and "Fallen Fruit".
Commercially, Solar Power reached number one in Australia and New Zealand, and charted inside the top ten in various countries. Lorde opted against manufacturing CDs for environmental reasons, releasing Solar Power to digital music platforms, streaming services, and as vinyl LPs only. A Māori-language EP, titled Te Ao Mārama, was released on 9 September 2021 as a companion project to Solar Power. It consists of Māori versions of five tracks from the album. To promote the album, Lorde embarked on her third concert tour, the Solar Power Tour.
Background and recording After concluding the North American leg of the Melodrama World Tour in May 2018, Lorde cleared out all her social media, leaving only three Instagram pictures and two tweets visible on her accounts. In November 2018, Lorde revealed in an email sent to fans via her newsletter subscription that she started learning how to play the piano and was outlining ideas for her forthcoming record. The singer made her first public performance since the conclusion of her tour in April 2019 at a benefit concert for victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings, which had occurred the previous month. Later that year, Lorde disclosed that she was indefinitely postponing work on her album due to the death of her dog Pearl, a retriever mix, after he suffered two cardiac arrests.
The singer expressed having been interested in visiting Antarctica since she was a child. When she was 16, the CEO of government agency Antarctica New Zealand tried to convince Lorde to visit the area. In February 2019, Lorde visited Scott Base, Antarctica for five days with the help of the government agency. To prepare for the harsh weather conditions, the singer was required to receive vaccinations, pass medical exams, and wear ECW gear before boarding an army jet. While visiting, the singer shadowed scientists, observed orcas, surveyed Adélie penguins, and performed weather recordings. She states that the abrupt transition from leaving the "beach and tans" in New Zealand summer to a "hostile, cold environment and back to the beach", provided influence in developing the themes of the album. The title of the album came to her as she returned home to New Zealand.
In March 2020, Australian radio station Triple J revealed the ranking spot of her 2013 song "Royals" on their Hottest 100 of the Decade contest. Lorde called in from the office of her New Zealand record label and revealed that "bits and pieces" of her upcoming album were "starting to take a very exciting shape". Two months later, the singer announced via her subscription newsletter that she was finishing Solar Power, still untitled at the time, and that she kept in communication with American producer Jack Antonoff, who assisted in the songwriting and production of her previous record. In July 2020, American producer Malay, who co-produced three songs on her last album, revealed to Reverb that he flew frequently to New Zealand to work with Lorde before the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike their production sessions on Melodrama, Malay and the singer "started from zero", which he described as "really unique and fun".
Writing and production
During a Beats 1 interview with New Zealand radio DJ Zane Lowe in November 2017, Lorde expressed her desire to improve her production and engineering skills within the following two years, and write and produce an entire record by herself within the next five years. However, after a tumultuous tour schedule and writing an "intense album", Lorde said she "needed to just go and slow down at home". By early 2019, the singer transitioned into domestic life, where she took an interest in cooking, gardening, swimming and walking. Lorde also began to reconnect with her family and friends in New Zealand, who she missed after experiencing homesickness while on tour. This provided her with inspiration for the lyrical content of the album, where she opted to write about the ordinary aspects of her life.
Solar Power was described by Lorde as a "celebration of the natural world." She compared her experience spending time outdoors and in the sun as seeing God, though not a Christian God, but "something higher". Furthermore, in an interview with Sean Evans for Hot Ones, the singer called Solar Power a sun worship album. While writing the album, Lorde visualized a utopia which she dubbed the "Island". This allowed her to take a different songwriting and intellectual perspective which culminated in her searching for "broader and clearer" viewpoints than her own. She named Canadian singer Joni Mitchell as an influence in writing from this approach. In doing so, Lorde began to observe the changing of the seasons, and compared this to the cycle of life and death. Initially conceived as an acid record, the singer decided to use cannabis to write material after a negative experience with the drug.
Lorde cites How to Do Nothing, a 2019 self-help book by American writer Jenny Odell, as a source of inspiration when outlining concepts for Solar Power. She also found interest in the 1960s counterculture movement and flower child movement, comparing the philosophical, political, and environmental similarities between people from that era and her generation. Her interest in disconnecting from social media led her to communicate with a programmer who blocked websites in the "source code of her devices." This included blocking access to social media applications and web browsers on her phone and YouTube on her laptop and setting her phone to grayscale to combat her phone addiction. She also began to reassess her relationship with fame and its consequences.
During production stages, Lorde envisioned creating an album that combined 1960s and 1970s folk and early noughties bubblegum pop music. Her interest in nature translated to the music, which feature sound recordings of cicadas in the majority of the album. She took a liking to the guitar-based music of British group S Club 7, American girl group TLC, Australian-British singer Natalie Imbruglia, British singer Natasha Bedingfield, Canadian singer Nelly Furtado, and British girl group All Saints, as well as the folk rock music of the Mamas and the Papas, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Lorde described the album as her summer at home and when assigning a specific time to the mood of the album, she said it was "like 2 to 5 p.m.—it's golden hour." Furthermore, she stated in a separate interview that she associated the color gold with the album. Songs were written on a whiteboard with colour-coded columns for each piece of the album and a long-running note was kept on the singer's phone and notebook to develop the album's ideas further.
Artwork
The artwork for Solar Power was photographed by Lorde's friend Ophelia Mikkelson Jones on the beach, who laid on the sand, while she jumped mid-air over her. The photograph, captured from below with fisheye lens, shows the singer wearing a yellow rash guard and a swimsuit. The singer's body obstructs the sun view. In an interview with Stephen Colbert on his talk show, Lorde described the image as "a little hardcore" and "feral", but remarked that it also expressed joyfulness, innocence, freedom, and playfulness. In some markets, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, Lorde's buttocks are censored by a bright sunlight lens flare.
Meagan Fredette of W noted that the artwork expressed her sexuality without succumbing to the male gaze. Similarly, Jenessa Williams, writing for The Forty-Five, wrote that the image posed a "distinct challenge to society", as it tests reactions to "risqué female-made expressions of bodily autonomy." Williams further compared the artwork to other albums, including Night Time, My Time (2013) by American singer Sky Ferreira, The Haunted Man (2012) by English singer Bat for Lashes, Vulnicura (2015) by Icelandic singer Björk, and Island Life (1985) by Jamaican singer Grace Jones as they present nude aspects of the female body but are used to "say something stronger."
Composition Music
Lorde employed a higher vocal range on Solar Power, a departure from the lower vocal register heard in her previous records. The Washington Post stated that her vocals were placed "more centrally in the mix", while Stereogum described them as "gorgeous", noting that they sounded different from her usual "breathy, heavy intonations" of her previous works. The singer opted for guest vocalists to complement her multitrack vocals on several tracks on the album, which she had previously avoided doing in her music. American singers Clairo and Phoebe Bridgers as well as New Zealand artists Marlon Williams and Lawrence Arabia contribute background vocals on the majority of the album.
Solar Power is built around guitars and drums, eschewing the 808, synthesiser and electronic-based music of Lorde's previous releases. Unlike Melodrama, which sought production from multiple producers, Lorde recruited only two producers to assist her with the production of the album: Antonoff and Malay. The three worked remotely in between sessions in New Zealand and the United States. The song structures on the album are unconventional and unstructured, incorporating guitar-based melodies and sparse percussion work. Despite the album's heavy guitar influences, Lorde remarked that only one 808 was employed during production stages. Several publications noted its minimalist acoustic production; its minimalist approach was compared to her earlier works. Solar Power has been described by critics as an indie folk, folk pop, psychedelic folk, and psychedelic pop record, with soft rock elements.
Lyrics The album's lyrics primarily discuss escapism, retrospection, introspection, and solipsism. Lorde credits her dog Pearl and the 1974 non-fiction narrative book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by American author Annie Dillard for her interest in reconnecting with nature. The book How to Do Nothing influenced the singer to detach from social media. Lorde states that Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg's advocacy for climate action, and the recurring California wildfires also informed the record's climate crisis themes, though she denied that Solar Power was her "big climate change record", telling The Guardian: "I'm not a climate activist, I'm a pop star. I stoke the fire of a giant machine, spitting out emissions as I go. There is a lot I don't know." In an interview with Viva, she stated that she was content with making a "weird, sprawling album" that "admittedly asks more questions than it answers."
Songs