Melodrama is the second studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde. It was released on 16 June 2017 by Lava and Republic Records and distributed through Universal. Following the breakthrough success of her debut album Pure Heroine (2013), Lorde retreated from the spotlight, and travelled between New Zealand and the United States. Initially inspired by her disillusionment with fame, she wrote Melodrama to capture heartbreak and solitude after her first breakup.
Lorde chose Jack Antonoff as the main collaborator because she felt the need to expand her artistry from the Joel Little-produced Pure Heroine. The final product is a synth-pop, art pop, and electropop record incorporating piano-based melodies, pulsing synthesisers and dense electronic beats. Critics viewed the album as a maximalist departure from the minimalist hip-hop-influenced production of its predecessor, and considered it a loose concept album chronicling the emotions ensued from a house party. The songs "Green Light", "Perfect Places", and "Homemade Dynamite" were released as singles. Lorde promoted the album through several music festivals she headlined, and the Melodrama World Tour in 2017 and 2018.
The album was Lorde's first number one in the United States and Canada, and also peaked atop the charts in Australia and New Zealand. It received gold or platinum certifications in the said countries and the United Kingdom. Melodrama received universal acclaim from music critics who complimented its sound and Lorde's vocals and direct songwriting; it was featured on various year-end and decade-end lists. It won a New Zealand Music Award for Album of the Year, and received a nomination for Album of the Year at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards in 2018. In 2020, Melodrama ranked at number 460 on Rolling Stone revision of their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Background and recording
In December 2013, Lorde announced that she had begun writing material for an upcoming second studio album. The following year, she said it was in its early stages and that it was "totally different" from her debut album released earlier that year; she also said the shift in sound was due to the change in circumstances and settings of her life. Later in 2014, Lionsgate announced that Lorde would curate the soundtrack for the third installment of The Hunger Games franchise, which would be followed by the release of the film's lead single "Yellow Flicker Beat" to critical acclaim.
In an interview with Australia's Triple J radio network in February 2015, Joel Little, who produced Pure Heroine, said he was scheduled to join Lorde for a writing session in a recording studio the following month, although a definite plan was not yet established. More than a year later, he reported that even though he had written a few songs for the album, he would not serve as an executive producer, attributing this to Lorde "trying to do something different". Lorde was eventually featured on Disclosure's track "Magnets" which appears on the duo's 2015 album Caracal.
In January 2016, The New Zealand Herald reported that Lorde and James Lowe, her boyfriend, had ended their three-year relationship. The singer confirmed the break-up during interviews following the release of "Green Light" (2017), leading to her indulging in "heavy drinking" and noticing there was an "element of escapism and exploration" in doing so. Lorde eventually replied to a comment on her Instagram account in late August 2016 that she completed the writing process of Melodrama — still untitled at the time — and that she was in the production stages.
The singer went on to announce the album's title on 2 March 2017. She also began posting pictures of herself at Electric Lady Studios in New York City with Jack Antonoff on social media taken in and after December 2015. Further recording sessions took place at Antonoff's home studio in Brooklyn Heights, dubbed Rough Customer Studio, and Jungle City in New York City, as well as Westlake and Conway in Los Angeles. The duo recorded for 18 months. Melodrama was released through Universal, Lava and Republic Records on 16 June 2017.
Writing and production
Lorde said that during the early stages of writing content for Melodrama, she imagined writing the album from the perspective of aliens stepping outside a hermetically sealed environment for the first time, citing the 1950 science fiction short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury as an inspiration. This was a reflection of her disengagement with her early fame. She scrapped the aliens idea and decided to write about her own struggles with the early stages of adulthood. Lorde also took notes from conversations with her friends and would fly multiple times between the United States and New Zealand to examine the world around her. The singer also travelled by helicopter to a rental house on Waiheke Island, where she could write without distractions, would continue working through "false starts, fruitless detours and stretches of inactivity" as she retreated from the public spotlight.
According to The New York Times, Melodrama is about a "grapple with emotions" in the aftermath of a break-up. Interviewed by the publication, Lorde says Melodrama is not simply a "breakup album" but is rather a "record about being alone", featuring both the favourable and unfavourable aspects associated with "heartbreak and solitude". She did, however, call "Green Light" a traditional break-up song. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lorde said the title of the album is a "nod to the types of emotions you experience when you're 19 or 20." She cites her "love of theatre" and drawing parallels to Greek tragedies as inspiration for the album's title. According to Lorde, she had to deal with "very serious, vivid feelings" she needed to express after experiencing her first heartbreak and moving out of her parents' home; as a result, she spent time isolated in her own house.
While writing content for the album, Lorde took influence from a number of settings and tested new material by listening to demos through earphones at a diner near Columbus Circle, which she did for about four months to understand how the music would sound in everyday life. The diner usually played Top 40 radio, which she said would occasionally distract her from writing, although she sometimes removed her headphones to let the songs "wash over" her. She also took inspiration from strangers' conversations, often hearing certain phrases that she would think about for hours. These phrases also illustrated a "tableau" in her thoughts. In her home in New Zealand, Lorde had a wall of notes for her songs, which she used to "skim" the whole album; it allowed her to find connections to each track and "fill in their blanks". Each song was colour coded due to her sound-to-colour synesthesia; Lorde arranged the colours according to its theme and emotion. In a 2021 interview with Vogue, Lorde stated that the album was also influenced by her use of the drug MDMA.
Artwork
The cover artwork for Melodrama was painted by American abstract painter Sam McKinniss, with whom Lorde had communicated by email. The pair agreed to meet and started discussing a collaboration. Lorde later visited McKinniss' studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she took a liking to a full-figure portrait of the cover photograph of Prince's 1984 album Purple Rain and a painting of Lil' Kim. Lorde asked McKinniss to create a painting with a "kind of colorful teenage restlessness and excitement and energy and potential".
McKinniss and Lorde met in November 2016 at his friend's studio on the 42nd floor of Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street skyscraper, which consisted of coloured bulbs on a lighting rig and a space with several windows. For the album shoot, Lorde wore a vintage negligee and posed for two hours. According to McKinniss, the album art is the "converging of two like minds" and "simpatico spirits". The pair considered making the photography session "operatic" and pre-Raphaelite-inspired, but scrapped the idea because they were satisfied with Lorde's facial expressions on the resulting images. McKinniss made two paintings from his photographs; one featured a blue glow with a warm flush on Lorde's cheek and the other has different lighting, with "paler, sweeter" colours. The unused painting was later revealed in an interview with McKinniss for Dazed.
NME placed the cover on their list of the best album artworks of the 21st century so far. Paste ranked it at number 11 in their year-end list for album covers, and it also appeared on Billboards unranked list. Tatiano Cirisano, writing for the latter publication, said McKinniss "perfectly communicates the intimacy and coming-of-age storyline" of the record with its "hazy twilight hues and bedside setting". Fuse also ranked the cover in their year-end list. Rolling Stone ranked the artwork at number 67 on their all-time list for album covers.
Music and lyrics
Lorde's vocals on Melodrama have been noted for her emotional and multitrack delivery. She cites the emotional vocals of Kate Bush and Sinéad O'Connor, as well as Laurie Anderson's use of vocoder as inspiration for her vocal delivery on the album. The Daily Telegraph writer Neil McCormick noted that Lorde's vocals locate "different levels of intimacy in different vocal timbres, multi-tracking her voice so that it often sounds like songs are being delivered by competing versions of herself". According to NME, different personae of Lorde, ranging from the "strong, composed young woman" to the hidden "psycho", are showcased through her vocal performances on the album.
Melodrama is built around Antonoff's signature production, which incorporates drums, synths, layered vocals and straightforward hooks. Lorde and Antonoff met in early 2014 at a Grammy after-party and later had several "exploratory" writing sessions before Lorde hired him as the main co-writer on the album. Lorde worked on Melodrama in Antonoff's Rough Customer Studios in New York City and at her home in New Zealand. The song structures on the record are traditional in construction, with piano-based melodies in contrast with the hip-hop influences on Lorde's first album. The singer took a classicist approach, usually composing a melody and then trying different vocal falsettos; Lorde said that because of this, the whole album can be played in acoustic form. She also cited her desire to explore a "cathartic mode" for the album. Several publications noted its maximalist pop production, a departure from the singer's signature minimalist style. Melodrama has been described by critics as a pop, electropop, synth-pop, and art pop record.
The album's lyrics are about heartbreak and solitude. Though it has been denied by Lorde, music critics have described Melodrama as a loose concept album. Lorde has stated that the record has only a loose narrative; it follows the framework of a single house party, and the events and moods that ensue. According to the singer, the album's shift in narrative focuses on "I" in contrast with Pure Heroines inclusion of "we" and "us". Lorde wanted to showcase contrast, going from "big and grand" to "really tiny and intimate", as well as desired to reference personal events, headlines and themes associated with the World Wide Web. She drew inspiration from Paul Simon's 1986 album Graceland, describing it as "enlightenment after love lost". She also mentioned the 2016 song "Somebody Else" by English band the 1975 as a track that provided influence on the tones, colours and emotions of the album. Lorde uses numerous metaphors on Melodrama, such as the teeth of great white sharks, continuing her incorporation of teeth in her lyrics.
Songs Tracks 1–5