Lorde | ||
 | Album: 1 of 5 Title: The Love Club EP Released: 2013-03-08 Tracks: 5 Duration: 16:03 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Bravado (03:41) 2 Royals (03:10) 3 Million Dollar Bills (02:18) 4 The Love Club (03:21) 5 Biting Down (03:33) |
 | Album: 2 of 5 Title: Tennis Court EP Released: 2013-06-07 Tracks: 4 Duration: 14:14 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Tennis Court (03:18) 2 Swingin Party (03:42) 3 Biting Down (03:33) 4 Bravado (03:41) |
 | Album: 3 of 5 Title: Pure Heroine Released: 2013-09-27 Tracks: 10 Duration: 37:11 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Tennis Court (03:18) 2 400 Lux (03:54) 3 Royals (03:10) 4 Ribs (04:18) 5 Buzzcut Season (04:06) 6 Team (03:13) 7 Glory and Gore (03:30) 8 Still Sane (03:08) 9 White Teeth Teens (03:36) 10 A World Alone (04:54) |
| Pure Heroine : Allmusic album Review : Signed to a major label at an early age, she was groomed in the darkness of studios, the label knowing the potential they had in their singer/songwriter. She wrote on her own, then she was paired with a sympathetic producer/songwriter, live performances taking a back seat to woodshedding. If this story in the early years of the 2010s brings to mind Lana Del Rey, its no coincidence that it also applies to New Zealand singer/songwriter Lorde, whose 2013 debut, Pure Heroine, contains all of the stylized goth foreboding of LDRs Born to Die and almost none of the louche, languid glamour. This is not a small thing. Lana Del Rey is a self-created starlet willing herself into stardom but Lorde fancies herself a poet, churning away at the darker recesses of her soul. Some of this may be due to age. Lorde, as any pre-release review or portrait helpfully illustrated, was only 16 when she wrote and recorded Pure Heroine with producer Joel Little, and an adolescent aggrievance and angst certainly underpin the songs here. Lorde favors a tragic romanticism, an all-or-nothing melodrama that Little accentuates with his alternately moody and insistent productions. Where Lana Del Rey favors a studiously detached irony, Lorde pours it all out which, in itself, may be an act: her bedsit poetry is superficially more authentic but the music is certainly more pop, both in its construction -- there are big hooks in the choruses and verses -- and in the production, which accentuates a sad shimmer where everything is beautiful and broken. There is a topical appeal here, particularly because Lorde and Little do spend so much time on the surface, turning it into something seductive, but it is no more real than the studied detachment of Lana Del Rey, who Lorde so strongly (and intentionally) resembles. Born to Die is meant to be appreciated as slippery, elusive pop; Pure Heroine seems to hint at the truth...but the truth is, Lorde is a pop invention as much as LDR and is not nearly as honest about her intentions. | ||
 | Album: 4 of 5 Title: Live in Concert Released: 2013-11-03 Tracks: 4 Duration: 16:21 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Buzzcut Season (04:12) 2 Swingin Party (03:53) 3 400 Lux (04:33) 4 Royals (03:43) |
 | Album: 5 of 5 Title: Melodrama Released: 2017-06-16 Tracks: 11 Duration: 41:01 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Wikipedia Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Green Light (03:54) 2 Sober (03:17) 3 Homemade Dynamite (03:09) 4 The Louvre (04:31) 5 Liability (02:52) 6 Hard Feelings/Loveless (06:07) 7 Sober II (Melodrama) (02:59) 8 Writer in the Dark (03:36) 9 Supercut (04:37) 10 Liability (reprise) (02:16) 11 Perfect Places (03:42) |
| Melodrama : Allmusic album Review : 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, its a considerable shift from Pure Heroine, and Melodrama feels different musically too, thanks in part to Lordes decision to collaborate with Jack Antonoff, the leader of Fun. and Bleachers who has been nearly omnipresent in 2010s pop/rock. Antonoffs 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 isnt monochromatic. "Green Light" opens the proceedings with a genuine sense of exuberance and its 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 Lordes 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 dont 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 shes 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" -- isnt merely a progression for Lorde, its what gives the album multiple dimensions. | ||